We’re finally back home after the IATEFL conference in Exeter. The conference ended on April 11^th, but we stayed on to take the opportunity to visit old friends in the south-west of England. We live in the north-west and it’s a long journey from Kendal to Exeter so we decided to make the most of it while we were there.

The conference was as enjoyable and engaging as usual. I went to plenty of interesting talks, but I’d like to mention just three. Paul Knight, who works on a University of Nottingham programme in Ningbo, China, gave a talk entitled Is it a task? Is it an activity? Confused? He gave a summary of task-based teaching/learning over the last twenty years and tried to pin down exactly what we mean when we talk about a task in the language classroom. He raised a number of interesting questions. One of his main points was that people are not very careful about the way they use terminology. Sometimes terms are deliberately used dishonestly in order to sell books or courses. Paul didn’t really answer the question ‘What is a task?’, but he did look at definitions offered by a number of authors, myself and Jane included. Paul and I had a chat after his talk and I have just got an email from him following this up. So perhaps I’ll have something to report later.

There were two talks on teaching young learners which I thoroughly enjoyed. One was Cooperative learning in primary EFL by Daniela Calligari and Annavaleria Guazzieri from Italy. Daniela teaches at the Instituto Comprensivo ‘G.C. Parolari in Venica and Annavaleria is a researcher and teacher at the University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice. The second was Focusing on form in content-based classes for young learners by Vanessa Tenorio and Fatima Tenorio from System Language Schools in Brazil. Both these presentations has a lot to say about how to engage and motivate young learners. Both were presented with enormous enthusiasm and charisma. I have some doubts about rolling out the ELT curriculum to include young children all over the world. But these presentations showed how much we have to learn from primary school teaching at its best. Above all they gave a clear message. If learners are positively engaged in what they are doing, and if they are doing most of it in English then they are certainly learning from the experience. How about EBLT: Enjoyment-based learning and teaching? But it wasn’t only enjoyment. Both presentations showed a concern with language learning theory as well as basic educational principles.

We actually arrived home three days ago. Our first evening back was taken up watching our oldest grandchild, ten-year-old Lana, starring in her school production of Annie, the musical. We were inordinately proud of her. That same evening we took charge of the two youngest grandchildren, Sam, aged 4, and Jesse, aged 2, while their parents are away on holiday over the weekend. This explains why I’ve only just got round to posting this blog. But in the meantime I have enjoyed a great trip to the zoo, plenty of games and bedtime stories.

Looking through my notes I’ve found a couple of other things I’d like to say about IATEFL, but I’ll save those until tomorrow.