Making speaking matter: Use SEL to Unlock Authentic Student Voice

This workshop explores how to use elements of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) to transform routine speaking activities into meaningful communication. We'll move beyond scripted exercises to discover practical tasks that build fluency, teach speaking strategies, and develop active listening. Drawing on the idea of emotional, personal and social authenticity, we’ll look at ways to create speaking opportunities that genuinely matter to learners. The participants will walk away with a toolkit of SEL-informed activities to create a more empathetic, confident, and collaborative classroom.

Fewer words, sharper meaning, higher English proficiency – lexical precision at its best

The more we develop this competence – Cambridge exams and CEFR requirements state – the higher our language proficiency soars. And it's no surprise that top experts rank this linguistic feature so highly. Mastering it can transform you into a far more successful language user across a dazzling array of contexts. From academic excellence – like writing an exceptional CPE essay to ace your exam or debating complex ideas with top-level mastery – to real-world applications, such as creating captivating social media headlines or delivering presentations that melt hearts.

This competence is lexical precision.

In my talk, you’ll discover:
what lexical precision really is,
what is special about the lexis that can help you sound particularly precise,
practical tips and activities to boost your lexical precision – and your students’ if you’re a teacher.

Ready to elevate your English from good to extraordinary? Let’s dive in!

Differentiating & extending activities for different teaching scenarios.

Whether you’re teaching mixed-ability groups, high-flyers who finish everything early, or students who need more help, there is a way to keep lessons inclusive and effective! In this hands-on session, we’ll look at how to tweak, simplify, and extend the same activity to suit different learners without increasing your prep time.

Know Yourself, Grow Yourself: Self-Awareness for Teachers and Learners

We talk a lot about learner motivation, autonomy and engagement, but we rarely start with the most basic question: who is doing the learning and who is doing the teaching? Self-concept, a term coined by psychologist Carl Rogers, is one key that can open the door into teaching and learning that is more productive.
By the end of the talk, you’ll have a small toolkit for designing lessons that don’t just teach language, but also help both you and your students see yourselves more clearly — and learn more effectively as a result.

Effective reading to expand your vocabulary in an exam course.

Expanding your vocabulary is the cornerstone of any exam preparation course. And reading is known as an effective way of achieving it. But how much should we read? How can we pick up texts at the right level of difficulty and with the content appropriate for the exam? Should we work with all the unknown words in the text? If yes, what are the best ways of working with them?

In my talk, I’m going to address all these questions, deal with approaches to extensive and intensive reading for exam preparation and talk about some research about good reading habits and the positive impact they may have on vocabulary acquisition. I will also share some practical activities that will turn reading into a powerful tool of vocabulary expansion.