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Showing posts from August, 2014

Joan Shin Kang & the end of the 11th Anglo Congress

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The final plenary  of the  the 11th Anglo Congress   invited us to ask ourselves the question ' Are you a 21st Century Teacher? ' and Joan Kang Shin started by saying that she believes the most commonly used approach to teaching young learners in the 20th Century led to separation between local and global.  Joan shared the stunning TED Talk by Eric Whitacre , featuring a virtual choir of 200+ voices singing one of his pieces. This kind of collaboration is an example of what was beyond imagining in the 20th century. Mentioning Kachru's classification of English as a world language consisting of three circles (1988) and in particular the importance the outer circle has taken, with English being used more by non-native speakers among themselves than by native speakers with non-native speakers, with all that this signifies when it comes to the English we teach in the classroom.  She encouraged the audience to bring both the local and the global into the classroom th