54th Meeting in Rybnik November 2016

On Saturday 19th November 2016 the IATEL Silesian Region organised its 54th meeting in Rybnik. Teacher trainer Mark Andrews conducted a workshop entitled, “Changes in the English Language, challenging stereotypes and Brexit.”

The workshop began with a live lesson in which Mr. Andrews taught a small group of Polish teenagers whilst IATEL members looked on. The lesson started with a bottle of Zybrowka which comes from Bialystok, the birthplace of the famous Polish linguist Ludviv Zamanhof, who the majority of participants knew little about. Zamanhof invented Esperanto and was opposed to the divisive influence of nationalism. Students were presented with different newspaper covers depicting the global reaction to Donald Trump’s US election victory. The use of nationalist language in tabloid newspapers during the Brexit leave campaign in the UK was also illustrated in many different slides as well as in a song about the Daily Mail newspaper. At the end of the lesson students provided feedback on what they enjoyed or did not enjoy about the lesson. Mr. Andrews stressed the importance of student feedback in lesson observation. 

After lunch the workshops focused on how the English language is changing. The meaning of the word ‘friend’ was discussed in relation to Social media. The influence of technology on language was discussed in relation to new words and ‘word of the year.’ New grammatical structures which are commonly used in spoken English, as opposed to traditional written English, were presented, e.g. the Mc Donald’s advertising slogan, “im lovin’ it.” Which uses the stative verb love in the ing form.

The workshop provided a fascinating insight into how the English language is changing and was thoroughly enjoyed by all those presen

Mark Henderson