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I attended this forum for the primary reason that I know little about EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) and wanted to know more. Happily, I was not disappointed and came away with my knowledge much expanded and a greater sense of clarity about the meaning, purpose, reactions to and uses of EMI. The forum featured three great speakers who know their subject extremely well: 1. Frances Amrani who focused on essential definitions and concepts: 2. Dr Michelle Hunter who reported on the results of her academic research into the use of EMI: 3. Dr Evangelia Xirofotou who desscribed how EMI is used at her university in Greece: I took away a lot from this forum in terms of my knowledge: EMI is about teaching technical language and subject concepts to others in English; while it may help develop competences in English, this is not the primary focus (unlike CLIL). EMI is not only about translating lectures (indeed, EMI is used in lectures but also seminars, MOOCs and other settings) and high proficiency in a language does not necessarily equate to the capability to use EMI. EMI involves asking questions as well as telling. EMI may when research has not been conducted in a particular language and can be for status and marketing purposes as well as in internationalisation efforts; it may also serve as a lingua franca and facilitate international collaboration. Everyone needs EMI competences in an academic environment, including native speakers of a language (for example, how to write up research). Emi creates a discourse community based on special language of a field and provides access to this community in an academic environment. EMI can be implemented through familiarisation with jargon, development of understanding of context, remembering content and subject objectives, training instructors how to not only use language but also do things like ask questions, provide feedback and so on, and standardisation across departments with working structures to support students. This was a well-structured forum with great speakers and a coherent and cohesive structure. There was a largely seemless flow from the initial discussions about definitions and purpose with Frances to reflections on research and data with Michelle and finally what served as a case study of the application of EMI in the setting of a Greek University with Evangelia.

Sarah Plochl is someone I have frequently bumped into at IATEFL and BESIG conferences and someone I always learn from in some way. It was Sarah who assisted me in overcoming my biases against (and lack of expertise in) various social media platforms at last year's IATEFL conference in Harrogate and I have since had the benefit of her expertise at BESIG's 2023 conference and elsewhere. As such, I was interested to see Sarah's talk as my first post-plenary session of IATEFL's 2024 Annual Conference. Her title was "English for Artists" and she began by asking us for our associations with the word "artist" which immediately generated interesting responses and engaged the audience - this set a lovely tone for the rest of the workshop. Sarah stated that: "An artist is someone who is trying to make sense of the chaos of their experience of the world by bringing their feelings into an outside form that other people can perceive and (perhaps) understand." Sarah explained how she works with creative individuals including artists, amongst others, as her coachees A primary concern for these individuals is how to get their vision across. The artist as a language learner struggles between “control” (poetic function of language, exact use of words, complex expressions and meanings, being uncontroversial is not a priority) and “flow” (get the message across, intercultural communication). This gave us a lot to reflect on in our own teaching and training. Sarah shared some wonderful case studies of situations she has acted as a coach in relating to creatives and asked the audience, in small groups, to put forward ideas for what could be done to support each individual with their diverse objectives and unique barriers to development. This might link to questions and a coaching approach, input, discussion and more. Sarah also invited us to consider which "boxes" we can use in our training based on approaches she has used. These included: Coaching approaches Neuroscience Actors' methods Design thinking Polyglot methods Creative writing Outdated materials (and using them in a different way to what they were intended for) Dance The first word that comes to mind when listening to Sarah speak is "authenticity"; this is a teacher and coach with a true interest in helping and supporting others and a person with that rare ability to genuinely listen and who balances accomplishment and ideas with modesty . These are, in my view, rare traits in a field requiring self-promotion and dominated by a sales-like approach to their own ideas. Truly, a highly recommended speaker and brilliant professional! Visit Sarah's website here - https://www.edgycoaching.de/about

Pondering on two different panel discussions at IATEFL Annual Conference - Brighton 2018 and Brighton 2024 At this year's IATFEL annual conference in Brighton, I shall be one of three panelists in the 'Forum on EMI in EAP settings: Perceptions and Practices' (Wednesday 17th at 10:20-11:35, Meeting Room 1A - Brighton Centre). Along with Frances Amrani and Evi Xirofotou, we shall be exploring how EMI and EAP intersect and inform each other's fields and practices. The last time I attended IATEFL in Brighton in 2018, I had been in the audience for a panel discussion focused on EMI, mostly because one of the authors of the paper that had inspired my PhD study was speaking - Prof. Carol Griffiths. It was such an exciting moment to talk to Carol and share the impact her research had had on me just months before embarking on what turned out to be a nearly 6 year PhD journey. Now, returning to the same venue I have the results of that journey to share in a similar setting. I'm looking forward to making an impression with my contribution to the field of EMI as well as seeing if we - myself and fellow forum presenters - can contribute in some way to what is increasingly being seen as potential for collaborative support and development between EMI content teachers and EAP practitioners. Between Carol's talk in Brighton 2018 and mine in 2024, the need for open discussion about collaboration across fields and disciplines is more pressing than ever. EMI is a topic that has become increasingly relevant in world of internationalized Higher Education. It is equally becoming more and more relevant for us in the business of teaching English for specific purposes - in particular EAP. But I think most experienced, research-informed ESP professionals have something to contribute where our content teaching colleagues are called upon to shift their teaching approaches and methods to meet the needs of multinational, multilingual student groups. Ben and I are working on ideas for how we can support ESP professionals who are keen to leverage the potential in this upcoming area of collaborative opportunities. When you are next at an ELT / ESP / EAP / teaching in HE conference, listen out to how much attention is given to the subject. You'll too see we're on the cusp of exciting times. For now, I offer the handout to go with my panel presentation here. Feel free to peruse the pages there and do reach out with any comments, ideas or questions. Or even better, if you're are at IATEFL this month, come along to the forum on 17th April at the Brighton Center, meeting room 1A at 10:20am.

This was one of those conference talks in which you are so engrossed by the speaker and their content that your notes (or in this case, your company blog) end up being neglected. This was easily THE standout talk of the conference for me that resonated with me on the professional level with truly innovative, applied and practical ideas while engaging me with the speaker's style and approach. This was all the more impressive when Konstantin revealed this was his first conference talk. Konstantin defined "media training" which, ostensibly, relates to public speaking and self-presentation skills required for media appearances that appear credible and competent - we need to think about situations that c-suite leaders will find themselves in such as public apologies, statements and TV interviews. Konstantin showcased work produced by his students in circumstances such as delivering public apologies and more as well as how he achieves this in practical terms. He also showed how he trains prosody by annotating scripts with elements such as word stress, pausing and more. I challenged Konstantin on one element of his talk when he quoted figures from Albert Mehrabian about how messages are communicated (an example of a theory being shared as remembered in the collective memory rather that as it was) and his response to me was excellent - no hesitation, listening and a clear and positive reaction when he could have easily become flustered. This was clearly a speaker who practises what they preach (unlike many in this business). I'll greatly look forward to seeing this speaker in future events and would urge anyone and everyone to choose Konstantin's talk next time you see his name on a conference programme.

The 36th annual IATEFL BESIG conference in Stuttgart over the first weekend in November was full of innovative and creative ideas from a multitude of brilliant business English teaching and training professionals. What a buzz there was. In this blog post, I share not only a little bit from our talk, but also some of my impressions and takeaways from the truly intelligent (as opposed to "artificially" intelligent) friends and colleagues I spent the conference with. Saturday afternoon Ben and I were scheduled in the same slot as some brilliant speakers. If we'd not have been presenting, I would have been at one of those talks too!! But as a wise trainer once shared with me, "those who are meant to be there, will be there." And so, with a small intimate group, we enjoyed 30 minutes together looking at the concept of innovation. As tends to be the case with people coming to our talks, they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience. The exchange and sharing which ensues is always enriching. We covered what innovation entails, how it is typically defined and measured, what might prevent innovative thinking, and what tools from industry could we integrate into our own teaching contexts. Having a clear definition became useful towards the end of the session when exploring how to differentiate creativity from innovation. On the surface, it could be tricky, but Ben directed us towards an earlier slide with a helpful list of what is included in the slide "Our View of Innovation" On Sunday, Ridha Mejri talked about his innovative and creative approach to designing a business communication course at his university. He offered a blend word which captures the inter-connectedness of creation and innovation: "creovative"! Thanks for that Ridha. Rachel Paling epitomizes being "creovative". As a pioneer of integrating knowledge from neuroscience into language teaching, and founding Efficient Language Coaching and Neurolanguage Coaching®, Rachel is a beacon for creative and innovative minds. In her talk, she got us thinking at a metacognitive level about how we can make friends with our brain. Understanding how the brain works can enhance self-regulated learning and increase a sense of psychological safety within our learners. Rachel invited us in pairs, to be creovative and practice how we might hold a dialogue with students in need of some learning strategy coaching. Another example of creovativeness came in John Hughes' presentation of how to train language teachers in the art of materials writing. He got us thinking about how we had previously learned to write materials. Most people seem to go with the learning-by-doing approach and integrating what we pick up from published materials along the way. Luckily, John, along with co-developer Kath Bilsborough, have a course teachers can sign up for. We can learn what to (not) do when creating materials far more efficiently from two experienced writers. As a teacher with many years' experience, I found Rob Howard's talk on giving intelligent instructions less innovative, and wonderfully creative. His opening gambit with the rope-tying was an impactful example of some pitfalls around instruction-giving. And his slides, with the short video clips peppered throughout, added that touch of interactive, interchangeable creativity that captures an audience's attention. Rob's talk served as a reminder - even to old hands - the importance of slowing down and allowing more time to think in our classes. The second half of our whirlwind workshop saw the group divided into 3, each with a different tool for measuring growth and innovation. They evaluated and discussed the tool in view of their own context. We encouraged 2 layers of meta-level thinking: how could the tool be used with a particular set of learners, and how innovative was your thinking around your approach to doing that: I have to say, whether we describe people as being creovative or truly innovative (in the full sense of the meaning), the bottom-line is BESIG is a group of people who are committed to doing the best they can for their learners while striving to grow, develop and flourish themselves. The fact of attending and contributing to this - and all the other - conferences is proof of that. Feel free to grab a copy of our workshop handout here: Send us an email if you want to talk more about becoming a certified international business English trainer: info@the-distance-cert-ibet.com And if you are already fully certified and / or qualified, think about becoming an associate trainer with us. Email ben@distance-cert.com or michelle@distance-cert.com

Following on from my resolution at this year’s IATEFL conference to attend conference talks on themes that I would normally avoid, I decided to attend Wilim’s talk on AI - something I know little about beyond the names of a few commonly-used tools. Wilim started off with a balanced statement about the dangers and “wonders” of AI and the lack of preparedness in people’s minds for the impact this will have. Wilim posed the question of what AI is and offered his definition linked to processes and systems and introduced three terms that were new to me: 1. Narrow AI – AI able to do one job 2. AGI (artificial general intelligence) - AI doing more jobs and understanding context) 3. Superintelligence - AI exceeds human intelligence in a way only imaginable in science fiction. Wilim asked us to get past sensationalism linked to AI and said there will always be gaps in AI and that, when we receive an answers from AI, we must be cautious of any bias we have in the answers we received and the extent to which we immediately take these answers as accurate. AI generates responses based on patterns but fails to understand content or context. Wilim provides the example of Chat GPT as generative AI. This was a hugely interesting talk in which I learned a great deal about a subject I have traditionally avoided. It’s up to us now to think about how to use this.

The focus of this talk was the economic benefits of bilingualism. Bilingualism is a subject that I am always keen to hear about as it resonates with me on a personal level; raising a child in an Anglo-Chinese / Sino-British home, this has been something my wife and I have been very keen to develop in our son. Indeed, one of the first gifts we received when expecting our little one was a copy of Barbara Zurer Pearson’s Raising a Bilingual Child from fellow Distance Cert director Michelle Hunter. Peter Started his talk with some interesting definitions of bilingualism as can be seen here: Peter continued to talk about some true or false statements: - Bilingualism helps you learn other languages - Bilingualism has (Positive) health consequences - Bilingual people are more open-minded and flexible All of which, according to what I know, are true. Peter highlighted the following benefits that can be seen here: Peter went on to highlight the economic benefits that bilingualism brings such as: · Enhanced employability · Higher salaries · Higher job security · International trade options increasing between countries with one common language I felt Peter gave a wonderful single sentence summary - "as a company you will always trade more but as an individual you will always earn more". At a company and individual level, there is always a guaranteed return on investment. The more a person learns, the more productive we will be. This was a great talk that spoke to me on a person level but was also hugely interesting on the professional level.

On Sunday 8th October, Ben presented a talk on "Getting Gamification Right: Training Teachers to Gamify" at IATEFL TDSIG's (Teacher Development Special Interest Group) Web Carnival. This was a well-attended event with an audience of engaged teachers who were eager to share their thoughts, contribute and grow their competences in the positive environment that you would expect from a TDSIG event. You can download Ben's slides here: If you are interested in gaining a certification on gamification, Distance Cert offers our new Certificate in Gamification of Learning. You can find out more here.

On Saturday 26th August, Ben and Michelle were joined by a group of BE teachers and trainers online, for one of BESIG's renowned weekend workshops. The theme for the afternoon as Critical Success Factors for Business English Trainers. We talked through 5 points that we believe are important to think about when aspiring to be the best BE trainer you can be - and that means more than being a good trainer! Ben developed a handy model: The 5 Cs of CSFs Model! As a case study example, we talked about how the Distance Cert IBET programme that we run fulfills the 5 criteria: The key features of a Cert IBET course are: •A recognised certification •Accredited by English UK and LanguageCert •All the fundamentals that a Business English trainer needs •Development of new knowledge and skills •Currently the only accredited certification programme available •Great understanding of processes such as needs analysis and evaluation •Opportunity to design your own material •Tutorial support •Objective assessment from moderator A lot of the people who joined in for the webinar were highly experienced fellow BE professionals with whom we were able to share stories and views. It was encouraging to have much of what we practice at TDCI affirmed by our peers. If you weren't able to attend, feel free to download a handout from the session (with a link to the Jamboard we used in break out chats). If you are a current IATEFL BESIG member, you can watch the recording in the Members' area of the BESIG website. If you're not a member, consider joining - you'll be able to view not only our weekend webinar recording but a multitude of others.

The last couple weeks had been tough. Dark clouds had been looming. I felt pretty low. My situation was bleak. Wednesday to Friday of last week for the first time in-person, I attended the annual BAAL conference hosted by the Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Education at the University of York. As I am currently based in York, this was the silver lining opportunity that allowed me to shrug off the dejection I'd be labouring under. It was the ideal opportunity to mix with colleagues in the British applied linguistics community. It was a wonderful few days of networking and knowledge building, socialising and sharing of ideas, something I have treasured over many years as an IATEFL BESIG member. To feel so quickly at home with a 'new-to-me' group of friendly, open academics was just the re-set I needed. (The conference theme, btw, was "Opening up Applied Linguistics"!) This led me to thinking about the value of attending conferences. After all, they can be costly and time-consuming; arranging travel and accommodation can be frustrating, and often thwarted by external forces (there was a national train strike the day after BAAL ended, forcing people to race off Friday afternoon instead of leaving at a leisurely pace on Saturday). On balance, for me personally, being involved in and actively participating in events that bring together communities of practice are priceless. Within hours of the day 1 networking activities, I'd forgotten my trials and tribulations at work and was engaged with fellow delegates talking all things language and linguistics related, as well as how to leverage conference connections for one's ongoing professional and personal success. This is not, sadly, something to be experienced by many people - probably the majority of teachers and researchers in our fields (business English and applied linguistics). I am acutely aware of the privilege I enjoy that enables me to attend conferences. Discrepancies between global North and global South are much under scrutiny - talks at the BAAL conference touched on this also; the opening plenary delivered by the amazing Alison Phipps, aimed to address issues around transparency and delcolonisation in language learning and use. These are huge conundrums that need innovative solutions; I for one feel utterly inadequate and under equipped to step up to make any big changes. But perhaps I can make small, local changes. I can deepen my knowledge of the issues around fairness and equity in my fields; I can raise awareness of what others are faced with when trying to further their professional skills; I can become mindful of my thoughts, so imbibed with lifelong prejudices born of my privilege and community history; I can develop behaviours and actions of kindness and openness; and I can be gentle with myself when I fail with all or any of these aims. I can't make it possible for all of those excluded through circumstances from experiencing the benefits and boosts that I have from attending conferences, but if I can facilitate attendance for one or two people through my actions or words, then that's what I shall do.

Lina's talk was entitled "The Hidden Trauma: Empowering Learners through Coaching Conversations". I immediately took to Lina's talk when she began; she clearly defined and exemplified coaching as something non-directive yet purposeful that simultaneously can exist and be used alongside an input-based teaching approach. She did not, much to my relief, treat coaching and one-to-one teaching as synonyms (as so many do). In my view, Lina's approach to true coaching is spot-on and I wish understanding like hers could be shared more widely as, with every passing conference, misunderstandings and misnomers about coaching continue to spread. Lina then turned to how she uses coaching to create the right conditions for learning and to investigate and address issues and barriers that prevent effective and enjoyable language learning. She detailed a range of case studies as successes for her coachees and how she achieved this through the combination of teaching and coaching: - Teaching to develop knowledge and skills in English - Coaching to analyse and remove obstacles to learning often caused by past experiences such as negative influences, lack of support, poor resources, criticism and more Lina spoke about challenges too. Lina showed, in my view, great ethical values as a coach when she detailed the exiting of an unsuccessful coaching relationship (as coaches, we have all been there). Truly, this is best practice and, unquestionably, the right thing to do for both coach and coachee. Inevitably, when words like "trauma" are used in coaching contexts or coaching-focused conference talks, the discussion will turn to therapy, counselling and so on. I am often dismayed that coaches feel they can venture in this area. During Lina's question and answer session at the end of her talk, I pushed her on this and I must say I was delighted with her response. Her responses were, to me, perfect. She answered mine on the ethical, methodological and legal boundaries between coaching on the one hand and counselling and therapy on the other. She also stressed how she clarifies this with coachees, she explains, openly, that she is a teacher and coach and not a counsellor. I interrupted her at this point to push her on the role of coaching contracts / conditions of coaching and, again, she responded that she protects both herself and her coachee with such an agreement. She continued to explain that a coach can support some into and through therapy even if the coach is not the one with the professional standing or capability to provide it. This was a superb talk with a committed and unflappable coach who knows her craft and impresses with her professionalism.

A few years ago, I either read or heard some interesting advice from a highly respected colleague advising teachers giving a talk at a conference to do just that - give a talk! He pointed out that despite many language teachers' natural tendency towards interactive discursive sessions (i.e.: a classroom style, Socratic session), peers attending a conference want to listen to a talk - to hear the speaker share (preferably new) knowledge. A good example of this was Evan Frendo's opening plenary talk at this year's IATEFL conference in Harrogate; Evan presented a proper conference talk from which many people were able to learn about how we business English practitioners approach English language teaching for workplace purposes. I reflected on the 'give a talk' advice at a time (c. 2017) when I was someone who felt uncomfortable standing in front of my peers at a conference, presuming to have something worth saying that would be of enough interest to listen with interruption for 20 minutes. My preference (comfort zone?) when giving conference talks is to involve my audience, to co-create knowledge and share experience. On the other hand, what that advice made sense. When I'm sitting in the audience, I want to sit, listen and learn. I want the experience we got from the conference auditorium in Harrogate. What I do not want, however, is be subjected to content with which I'm already familiar and where the speaker makes no concession for the possibility that many in the audience might feel the same way. But how can the speaker be expected to know how much their audience might already know? One clue is when the speaker looks out into the sea of expectant faces and recognises over 50% as colleagues! Knowing full well how experienced and knowledgeable these wonderful, supportive colleagues are, how to proceed with a talk pitched at early career teachers or the more experienced-but-new to business English professionals? Which way to go? Stick to your guns and talk through the presentation as planned, or go off piste and make the session an interactional sharing of experiences - leveraging the expertise in the room rather than "teaching grandma how to suck eggs"? At the IATEFL conference, the slot we had been assigned for our talk "What does it take to become a business English teacher?" was the penultimate one of the conference. So, we decided to take a spontaneous, go-with-the-flow approach. I went away from the formal presentation approach in consideration of the more experienced members of the audience; Ben presented the input intended for those less experienced people interested in finding out about how to become BE professional. I'm not sure how well this worked in the end. Someone attending based on the abstract might have left feeling short-changed. However, if we'd stuck to the script, how many of the highly experienced BE professionals would have left feeling bored and uninformed? Ultimately, we went with it - me jumping in and interrupting Ben with questions to the audience. Knowing what they were likely to contribute, i.e.: the "answers" to the prompts on the slides, I felt it a safe bet. From my perspective, there was a buzz of collective sharing of knowledge and experience. One person completely new to the BE profession, said to me afterwards he'd learnt more in our session than any other the entire conference. I like to think the approach Ben and I took to leverage the group expertise contributed to this person's positive experience. I also feel that such an approach is indicative of the way many of us like to run our BE training courses. However, was this a "conference talk"? Not really. So in answer to the titular question, "when is a conference talk not a conference talk?" - when it's a collegial exchange session. Or what do you think? How would you define what a conference talk should be / what you would like it to be? To make up for the lack of input for those who would have liked it, there is a copy of the slides we didn't manage to get through on the day below. Keep an eye open for an edited version of the video we made on the day. Once it's ready, anyone who didn't attend and can't quite imagine what went on in light of reading this blog post can watch it! Finally, I send a heartfelt thanks to my colleague, friend and very patient co-presenter, Ben for going with the flow and letting me go so far off-piste. Cheers matey. NB: Edited 8.5.2023 because I couldn't find a record of what I am sure I heard / read about the 'give a talk' advice. Knowing how unreliable memories can be, I've also left out mention of who I think offered the very wise advise ;-)