Conferences

	Feedback Kathrin Schwarz, 2010

As a teacher at secondary level and a teacher trainer, the topic “Preparing for the world of work – language and education for the future” was of particular interest to me. We often hear complaints from the tertiary level about the poor preparation of our school leavers for the world of work or for further education. That's why I was looking forward to hearing which competencies representatives of the business world as well as staff from universities and colleges would define as the basics for students to successfully continue their career.

I decided to attend the presentation by Gabriele Eilert-Ebke from Henkel KgaA and Ingrid Hartmann-Scheer from the Comenius Gymnasium, Düsseldorf. They gave an impressive example of how a company and school can co-operate in language training in order to secure a better transition from school to the world of work. Even though it is unlikely that we will manage to organize such a big project in the rural area I come from, I'm at least aware now that language teachers can and must do much more to develop business-oriented communication skills at school without changing their entire teaching concept. In the same way the panel discussion on Friday afternoon exploring a joined-up language policy for smoother transitions across the sectors and the presentation given by Rudolf Camerer made me all the more determined to also offer more teacher training focusing on task-based learning and methodological approaches to develop communicative and interactive competence.

The keynote lecture by Michael Byram on Plurilingualism in Europe really gave me food for thought. What I took home is the question of what my language teaching is good for, because teachers sometimes forget the social purposes of language teaching. As a result I'm more consciously considering how far my English lessons can contribute to citizenship education and how we can go about organising more cross-curricular projects.

That conferences do not necessarily mean only hard scientific work was proved by Marko Maglic with his very entertaining talk on media literacy. It gave me a nice break from all the serious issues I had to consider before. Of course, the very many personal conversations with speakers, colleagues and friends also made the conference such a memorable event.

So what did I take home? - “food for thought” , teaching ideas, suggestions how to monitor and assess teaching and how to develop reflective competence, new contacts and friends and the determination to come back next year to the 5 th British Council ELT Conference in Berlin.

Thanks a lot again to all people involved in organising and running the event.

Kathrin Schwarz
Secondary teacher and teacher trainer, Brandenburg , Germany