Event Registration - BC TEAL
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Collaborative Attending Skills Training
9/23/2023 - 10/28/2023
9:30 AM - 11:30 AM PST

Event Description
Attending skills training, as developed initially by psychologists about 70 years ago, in essence, teaches learners (or counselors) to be good listeners while keeping a conversation going. This version of the training, for teachers of nonnative speakers, provides the skills and classroom procedures for (a) creating groups of three or four students, who (b) carry on an engaging, short conversation, and then (c) review that conversation with their instructor, exploring the strategies used and key pragmatic features of the interaction and the story, itself. The system can be done either face to face or online with students. Each session includes small breakout rooms and (modest) homework assignment, and optional reading list.

The system can be done either face to face or online with students. Each session includes small breakout rooms and (modest) homework assignment, along with an optional reading list. All sessions will be recorded, so if the Saturday morning schedule doesn't work for you, you can still watch the videos!
Note: Each week a set of strategies will be introduced that, ideally, participants take to their classrooms and then report back the following week. This is the first time for me to do this seminar online (hence the nominal fee), something of a "Beta test." The plan is to offer it three or four times annually to the public and also make it available to individual schools and institutions.  Join us! Bill

Acton, W. & Cope, C. (1999). Cooperative attending skills training for ESL students, in JALT Applied Materials volume, Kluge, D. and S. McGuire (Eds.), Cooperative language teaching in Japan, pp. 50-66.
Van Dyke, A. & Acton, W. (2022b). Role-play and dialogic meta-pragmatics in developing and assessing pragmatic competence, in Pedagogical Linguistics, available online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.22004.van
Van Dyke, A. & Acton, W. (2022a). Spontaneous classroom engagement facilitating development of L2 pragmatic competence: A naturalistic study. Pedagogical Linguistics 3(1) 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.20011.van

 
Details
Outcomes:
Outline of the six sessions:
1. Introduction
2. Simple, one or two-word strategies
3. Expressions that collaboratively keep the story going
4. Strategies for “reading minds”
5. Instructor techniques and preparation
6. Pragmatics (language use in context) kicking off stories!

Facilitator:

William R. Acton, PhD

Professor of Applied Linguistics
"I often begin workshops or papers with the comment that in about 40 years in the field I have had just one idea: that the systematic use of body movement is essential to effective and efficient pronunciation instruction. That has never been more relevant than today, with the general de-emphasis on pronunciation and introduction of technology into the field. From both perspectives, the "haptic" perspective approach developed here offers great promise."  -- Bill Acton