A day in the life of a newbie ESP material developer

This June, Natasha Jovanovich will share with you the presentations they delivered at the 44th Annual International IATEFL Conference in Harrogate.

A day in the life of a newbie ESP material developer
Who is afraid of making a transition from general English to ESP? No worries. I’ll just follow off the shelf course book. Allegedly, it only takes three Cs: curiosity, collaboration and confidence or does it? A fat chance! In this talk I will explain insights I gained and hurdles I encountered while designing content - based syllabus for English for human rights.

To sum up, should a non-native speaking teacher & non-expert in the field - be a scenario for an imminent disaster? It might be a major disadvantage in any effort to develop content based material but I hope I will come up with arguments that this doesn’t necessarily mean a cul–de- sac of ELT, provided there is a resilient and motivated teacher and abundant resources around.

In the workshop part of the seminar we will try and test some activities and lesson designs and share views on the participants exerience in ESP material design.



ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Natasha Jovanovich has had a substantial 15 year - long experience in ELT working with a private language studio for more than ten years now; her ESOL experience and a range of ESOL courses taught extended over the years to teaching advanced levels of proficiency and Cambridge ESOL exams and IELTS, TOEFL and ESP English, to name but a few. She has also been running teacher trainings and seminars with British Council Serbia, American Corners in Serbia and has presented at two international conferences this year: IATEFL Harrogate, England and Estonia.

Apart from teaching, both material development for ESP and translations feature in her work as well. Her translation of the book by Dr. Helen Fisher, an American author and research professor at Rutgers University, USA was published in 2005. The book embraces the issues of gender studies and the role of women in today’s world, business, science and family life.

Webquests, Blogs, Podcasts in an ELT Classroom

Webquests, Blogs, Podcasts in an ELT Classroom

Webquests, Blogs, Podcasts in an ELT Classroom


31 January 2010 - British Council, Terazije 8/II
12.00-16.00

The workshop will be based on the online course "ICT in the classroom" by the Consultants-e, the winner of the British Council award for innovations ELTON 2007 and it is the continuation of the BC sessions with the same title in March 2009.

In this day and age when "learning escaped from the box" and when the teachers are to educate digital natives, we can learn how teachers can make ICT work for them. It will introduce teachers to the usage of ICT tools, how to design webquests and to set up blogs. We will learn about podcasts, blog resources, virtual learning environments VLEs and how to incorporate chats and chat resources into teaching.

This will be a 3 hour long joint presentation by Natasa Jovanovic and Jacqueline Gardy.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Natasa Jovanovic has had a substantial 15 year - long experience in ELT working with a private language studio for more than ten years now; her ESOL experience and a range of ESOL courses taught extended over the years to teaching advanced levels of proficiency and Cambridge ESOL exams and IELTS, TOEFL and ESP English, to name but a few. She has also been running teacher trainings and seminars with British Council Serbia, American Corners in Serbia .

Apart from teaching, both material development for ESP and translations feature in her work as well. Her translation of the book by Dr. Helen Fisher, an American author and research professor at Rutgers University, USA was published in 2005. The book embraces the issues of gender studies and the role of women in today’s world, business, science and family life.

Jacqueline Gardy is a graduate of American University in Washington, DC with a Masters in TESOL and holds a BA from California State University Monterey Bay in Global Studies, with concentrations on Spanish Language and Earth Science Systems & Policy. She has experience in teaching in many levels of ESL instruction, including secondary, EAP, ESP, and IEP programs. She has taught secondary ESOL at Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland on the border of Washington, DC, and most recently has taught beginning, intermediate, and civics courses for the Montgomery College Adult ESOL Literacy and GED Program.

In addition, she has trained teachers through the new pilot teacher-training institute for Montgomery College in Maryland. She is currently teaching at the University Of Novi Sad Faculty Of Philosophy as an English Language Fellow. Her duties include teaching Language Skills 1-4 and Academic Writing to university students. In addition, she will be presenting at all eight American Corners in Serbia throughout the upcoming year.
In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and is an amateur embroiderer.