RAY PARKER
TRINITY COLLEGE LONDON

Bologna, 4 marzo 2008
Milano, 6 marzo 2008

"Long term motivation – maintenance & enhancement”

Abstract

Ray will briefly review research and current theory in the area of motivation. He will then examine the challenges that high and low levels of motivation present both to the classroom practitioner and to other ELT professionals. He will go on to discuss strategies for enhancing both short-term and long-term development of motivation and look very briefly at techniques that can be expected to enhance motivation. He will end his contribution by posing the questions – “How motivated are we as ELT professionals?”, and “Is motivation (and especially our motivation) infectious?”

Biodata

Ray has been involved in English Language Teaching since graduating in Hispanic Studies in the late 60’s. The bulk of his time is now devoted to teacher education. He has taught, trained and examined teachers in more than 30 countries and co-authored a well-known teachers’ textbook on the phonology and pronunciation of English.

After a long career as teacher, followed by many other roles in ELT he is now a free-lance teacher trainer and ELT project manager with a particular interest in in-service professional development for non-native English speaking teachers. His work takes him to every corner of the world and he tries to develop one aspect of ELT each year through international seminars and workshops. This year the theme happens to be “motivation”.

CLAUDIA BECCHERONI
TRINITY COLLEGE LONDON

Roma, 13 marzo 2008

Abstract

"Trinity Exams and motivation to learn"

The first aim of the talk is to look into the theme of motivation to learn and to increase the teachers' awareness on the effect that testing has on motivation.

The second aim of the talk is to show how Trinity exams are in fact designed to foster motivation to learn.

Biodata

Claudia Beccheroni started out as a teacher of English in 1987 and has been involved with Trinity College London as a representative for Italy since 1992. She has been involved in many teacher training projects.
She has researched the effect of external exams on young learners for her MA TESOL dissertation.

She is a member of the EALTA (European Association of Language Testing and Assessment) Guidelines for Good Testing practice implementation group.

Milano, 6 marzo 2008

ABSTRACT

New directions in linguistic research:
From cognitive linguistics to neuropragmatics

Marcella Bertuccelli Papi
Università di Pisa

It has been said that every decade or so, a grandiose theory comes along, bearing similar aspirations and often brandishing an ominous sounding C-name: in the 60s it was Cybernetics, in the 70s it was Catastrophe Theory, then came Chaos Theory in the 80s, and Complexity Theory in the 90s. If a new C-name is to be found for the prevailing theories of language in the new millennium, the most plausible candidate can be none other than Cognition. Admittedly, Cognitive theories are not recent inventions. I will claim that in fact different generations of cognitive revolutions can be identified in linguistics over the last fifty years, from N. Chomsky’s UG hypothesis, through G. Lakoff’s and R. Langacker’s foundational work in “cognitive linguistics”, Ch. Fillmore’s Frame Semantics and Construction Grammar, D.Sperber and D.Wilson’s Relevance Theory, to mention but a few. I will then concentrate on recent contributions on the neurobiological bases of cognition - the neuro-cognitive turn. It will be pointed out that the advent of advanced neuroimaging techniques in recent decades provides important evidence about different patterns of brain activation for different aspects of language processing, thus making the complexity of human cognition more transparent and suggesting new directions of research in language learning and language processing.
As far as second language is concerned, the neural, cognitive and computational bases of its acquisition are still not well understood. The cognitive neuroscience perspective offers empirical data about the biological structures supporting such crucial processes as attention, motivation, aptitude, procedural and declarative memory, memory consolidation, and about the interactions of internal with external factors. On the face of it, such data may seem to simply shed new light on long acquired notions in SLA. On closer consideration, however, research into the dynamics of the complex systems underlying cognitive processes may raise the suspicion that something more is happening, and that the new scientific paradigms will actually bring about important changes both in our views of SLA and in our teaching methods.

Biodata

Dopo aver insegnato per alcuni anni nella Facoltà di Lettere dell’Università di Ginevra, Marcella Bertuccelli Papi è attualmente Professore Ordinario di Lingua Inglese presso il Dipartimento di Anglistica dell’Università di Pisa.
E’ autrice di numerosi lavori di linguistica inglese ed italiana, alcuni dei quali tradotti in altre lingue.
Membro delle principali associazioni di linguistica nazionale ed internazionale, ha fatto parte inoltre del Comitato direttivo della Società di Linguistica Europea, ed è membro attualmente dell’Editorial Board del Journal of Historical Pragmatics, e della rivista Atlantis.
Ha organizzato, in collaborazione col segretario generale dell’IPrA, il primo congresso internazionale di Pragmatica ed è referee per la casa editrice Benjamins di Amsterdam. I suoi interessi sono rivolti principalmente allo studio del significato (semantica e pragmatica), e si estendono dalle patologie del linguaggio (è membro del comitato editoriale della rivista Riabilitazione e Apprendimento, invitata come plenary speaker in numerosi congressi di neurolinguistica, insignita del premio “Alexander Lurjia” 1998 e curatrice della sezione “Neurolinguistics” per lo Handbook of Pragmatics, Benjamins 1998), alla sintassi storica e sincronica dell’italiano (è autrice di una monografia sul passivo in Italiano antico e di saggi sulle frasi participiali, gerundive e relative), alla lessicologia e lessicografia, alla traduzione .

Bologna, 4 marzo 2008
Roma, 13 marzo 2008

Abstract

"SWITCH ON" to biolinguistics, W. Tecumseh Fitch

Language is part of the biological inheritance of all human beings, and viewing language from a biological perspective has led to important breakthroughs in our understanding of language in the last decade, and to the birth of a new cross-disciplinary field termed "biolinguistics". Unlike many animal communication systems, language does not consist of a fixed set of innate calls. Rather, the human language faculty consists of an "instinct to learn" language (as well as other cultural attributes like music or dance). Human fetuses are already learning in utero, before birth, and infants continue learning at a rapid rate through the first decade of life. In this lecture I will discuss start by discussing two aspects of biolinguistics: phylogeny (explaining the biological evolution) and ontogeny (explaining the child's acquisition process). But in the case of language, an additional level of cultural evolution (termed "glossogeny") is imposed between these two standard ones: By absorbing, and recreating, the language of the community of its birth, the child acquiring language instantiates a new level of "evolution" at the cultural, historical level. This aspect of language, too, is beginning to yield to biological approaches, and I will end by briefly describing some results from this newest branch of biolinguistics.

Personal webpage

Bologna, 4 marzo 2008
Milano, 6 marzo 2008
Roma, 13 marzo 2008

Abstract

"SWITCH ON" your eyes, an audio visual approach, Christian Evans

"How do I motivate my students?" is the million dollar question to teachers. In this presentation, we will look at one "super-motivator" - DVD. This presentation will provide teachers with answers and practical solutions on how to use DVD in the classroom with maximum impact. We will look at various types of films and how they can can be integrated into lessons to improve language learning, breaking them into their audio and their visual components.
Finally, we will design a "blueprint" for perfect DVD lessons, guaranteeing DVD as a springboard to a better level of understanding.

Biodata

Christian Evans is responsible for the development of ELT Books and Media for Zanichelli Editore. He graduated in Leeds in 1997, with a degree in Education, specialising in secondary school teaching. After that, he came to Italy and started his career in teaching English as a foreign language. After many years of teaching both children and adults in the private language school sector, he specialised as a Business Skills Trainer, working in multinational companies in northern and central Italy. Here he trained business people in techniques for presentations, negotiations, successful language learning, and body language.
In 2004 Christian became the Didactic Consultant for central Italy for Oxford University Press. In 2006 he won the award for Best Consultant in Europe.

Bologna, 4 marzo 2008
Milano, 6 marzo 2008
Roma, 13 marzo 2008

Abstract

If music be the food of love, play on.*

Music and verse set us apart from other animals. At the same time, music and verse in its popular form, pop music, is what unites us, irrespective of language o nationality. From the day we were born we hear music, be it from people, family and friends or from loudspeakers or headphones (radio, television, in the supermarket, in the car, at the cinema, on the stereo, on the telephone). While we play, travel, shop, work, study, sleep.
Given that a part of our collective music memory bank is in English, Speak Easy is a demonstration of language acquisition without books, using only ears.

*William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1, line 1

Biodata

Clive Malcolm Griffiths is the author and presenter of “Speak Easy”, a daily musical lesson on Radio Monte Carlo (at 13.50, 16.50 and 20.30). Often known as DJ Clive or to a whole generation of Italians now in their late thirties as Clive of Videomusic. After a degree at the University of Kent at Canterbury, Clive has dedicated most of his working life to music and English. After the birth of Europe’s first music television, Videomusic, in 1984 Mister Speak Easy has made English programmes on Italia 1 (”So to speak”), Telemontecarlo (”Yes I do”), Stream (TVL), Radio Deejay.