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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 ;-)

I feel I was "young" for a very long time. Now I feel - not so young anymore. Is it a vanity thing, or did I just get used to being the enthusiastic and naive young thing in my circle of friends and colleagues? (Disclaimer: this is from my perspective, as delusional as it may be. The blog is a bit of a personal rumination on what I'm noticing in myself of late - an internal shift in self-perception within a professional development context). For years I felt 2 steps behind my peers who generally seemed far more experienced and knowledgeable. I would invariably hold back on sharing my thoughts for fear of showing my ignorance. I lacked a background in many ELT basics, had no idea about SLA and was 100 miles away from contemplating any evidence-based research relating to my job - how do you even access such a thing...?! I'd find myself double checking before posting any simple Facebook comment that could be picked on by a far more erudite reader, sarcastically pointing out an innocent (ignorant) error, or even spelling mistake. Oh the shame of it! (Wasn't Facebook supposed to be for fun?!) Fast forward 20 years, I now know that I know stuff. And my confidence is growing with every opportunity I have to express what I think about what I have learned - what I continue to learn - about language learning and teaching; and I know what SLA is now! (Second Language Acquisition - it's really interesting, especially when you read the controversial things! Do you subscribe to Chomsky's input theory of language learning? Or find corpus linguistics has more to offer when grappling with understanding how we learn a language? This Twitter thread caught my attention recently: Do check the whole thread, especially the last comment - I certainly learnt at least 2 things from reading it: https://twitter.com/FocusCorpus/status/1652585151350579205?s=20) Since engaging with giving feedback (or as I prefer to think of it feedFORWARD) to our participants on the Distance Cert IBET, the knowledge I've gained over the past 23 years of teaching is coalescing for me. I don't profess to know "everything" (that's not humanly possible) and what I do "know" may be differently "known" by our TDCI participants. This, I feel very keenly, is an essential element to what I have learned: we all bring to the table our own perspectives based on experience and input and no one person can claim to know better than the other. Irrespective of how many years they may have under their belt. The concession is that, us slightly older folks who've been around the block and back again at least a couple of times (as opposed to the really old folks who've been around since dinosaur times!), have collected a lot of experiential knowledge. Perhaps more importantly, we've grown personally alongside our professional selves. I feel this is what gives some of us an edge when it comes to sharing what we know - we have a sense of how to share. And when not to share. As I type these wandering thoughts, I can almost hear indignant brain cells whirring: "What about all the older people who still haven't learned how to appropriately share their knowledge, and younger people who are brilliant feedforward-givers?" I appreciate the ageist undercurrents of what I'm suggesting here. Indulge me. I'm exploring some thoughts born of my (recently) lived experiences. Ultimately, what I'm getting at is, if you feel like I used to as a greenhorn teacher, keep at it. Keep going to training courses and conferences, engaging in social media exchanges (you soon learn to spot the trolls you need to stay clear of), reading books related to your areas of interest - and occasionally dip your toe into the more academic-ky ones. Remember to check in with yourself and acknowledge what and how much you are doing well - perhaps even better than you did this time last year. When with trusted colleagues, explore wild ideas about how to teach a certain type of learner, or lesson, or grammatical point. Then gradually, you'll have the confidence to speak up in other settings, safe in the knowledge that you do know what you're talking about. And if others disagree with what you say, that's OK. As long as they're not factually incorrect (yeah, I know, that's a moving target these days...), who are we to denigrate their point of view? We may not stay young and energetic forever, but we'll have earned every wrinkle and grey hair when we can stand up confidently - and respectfully - engage with others to share the knowledge and experience we've diligently gathered and acquired.

The Distance Cert IBET approach to delivering the Cert IBET is built on the principles of autonomy and self-directed learning. So of course, I went along to Sarah Mercer's talk on #IATEFL2023 Thursday. More than Sarah's highly engaging style of presenting on teacher-centered topics, I also got access to a report she and colleagues, Chris Farrell and Donald Freeman had written on behalf of OUP. More on the report at a later date - I'm still reading through and reflecting, but it includes a useful 7-step framework of the self-directed professional development process that I want to delve into more deeply. I know we ought to attend conference talks with one ear of criticality always open, but Sarah talks my kinda language (and I don't just mean English language!!). I admit, I went along for the enjoyment of having my views on professional development and human flourishing confirmed! So rather than a report on what Sarah said in the presentation, this is a reflection on how I feel about the points she covered in relation to my own professional (and personal) development. With her opening gambit, I felt a degree of surprise (shock?) to discover that professional development (PD) is often the butt of jokes among teachers. As an inveterate developer of my professional self - and when permitted, of others - I find it hard to imagine other people not taking it as seriously as me. But there you go. It seems that this may be due to a deficit approach to PD - a 'failing' teacher needs fixing, send them on a PD course. Or, if they're doing a really poor job, call in the school coach. (This I heard from a family member who reported that in her school, being sent for coaching was used as a remedial tool - something that goes against EVERYTHING I learned about coaching). The point about PD is that it has to be a choice - not foisted upon anyone. Development only works when it is sought out and actively engaged in by an individual. Equally, it shouldn't be used as an incentive, or as a substitute for a decent wage. (Also something I've come across working in companies: management has no budget left for a pay rise? No worries, send people on some PD course somewhere. Can't give that promotion your junior manager has been after for years? Send them to London on a 2 week language course. Whether they want to go or not!) Anyway, back to Sarah's talk... The focus was on self-directed professional development (SDPD) and the premise that this avenue offers an autonomous way to intentionally engage in our own PD. The caveat being that we should watch out for when PD is becoming a burden - are we doing another PD / SDPD course because we feel pressured into doing it? Do we have enough time and capacity to truly engage with the content, and reflect on the learning we are gaining from the course? Sarah's points about good PD recognising the teacher, being learner-centered and being principles-based rather than prescriptive made me review our aims at TDCI. I genuinely believe that our values and principles are very much in line with Sarah's here. Of course, the proof is in the learners' experiences and feedback. It's early days for us with the Distance Cert IBET self-directed course we offer; there's always room for improvement and we welcome any and all feedback from our participants. We want to provide a "satisfying and meaningful" PD experience for fellow teachers who put their trust in us to accompany them on their ongoing CPD journey. As Sarah maintains, professional development is not only for job improvement, it's also for life beyond teaching, a life that should be lived well. To download the OUP report Sarah referred to in the talk (it's free!), go to: www.oup.com/elt/expert/professional-development When I have finished reflecting on the report, I'll get back to you. There's lots of good stuff about SDPD worth sharing, so if you don't feel like reading the original, perhaps my summary / review will be worth a look! And if you want to explore more about what OUP offers for teacher PD, check out: www.oup.com/elt/professionaldevelopmentonline

BATNA, WATNA, HIT, ZOPA and More: Thinking About Teaching Negotiation Skills in Dublin The second of my talks focused on what knowledge and skills we need as teachers or trainers to effectively develop our trainees’ capabilities in negotiation. Negotiation is traditionally considered one of the “big six” functions of Business English along with presenting, telephoning, socialising, writing and engaging in meetings and for which key structures and lexis are required. Being an audience of English language teachers, there was little need to talk about the vocabulary and lexis so our focus was on how we can teach negotiating and what we need to know and teach beyond set language. After a brief introduction, the audience were, without preparation or warning, dropped into a border dispute negotiation which, while was not representative of how the task would be conducted in a real training room with time for the negotiators to prepare and so on, served to involve people and get them thinking about negotiation and its teaching. In a short, intensive lesson, a classic TTT (test, teach / train, test) approach for such tasks works well: - conduct and reflect on a negotiation - deliver input and conduct practice tasks - conduct and reflect on another negotiation allowing learners to apply the training We the moved on to talk about the knowledge that a teacher may lack but which is required to teach negotiating; this included: - acronyms such as BATNA, WATNA, HIT, WAP and ZOPA - tactics such as highball-lowball, brinksmanship and so that negotiators need to use (if they judge it the right course of action) and guard against. We concluded with the classic buyer-seller negotiation to allow the audience to test these approaches. This all seemed to be well-received by a positive audience who engaged well with the tasks, who were willing to try and the approaches and keep the atmosphere light and positive. ELT Ireland’s Annual Conference will return in February 2024. Michelle and I will be back representing Distance Cert. You can download the slides below: Teaching negotiation skills is one of the 40 units of The Distance Cert IBET. Find out more here: https://www.the-distance-cert-ibet.com/units-and-content