Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 4; July 03

Our International Workshops

Mario Rinvolucri

The highpoint of the year for Pilgrims teacher trainers is July , August and early September, when some 400 teachers from all over the world come together on our Canterbury Hilltop, over-looking the Cathedral, to teach each other, to learn from each other, to learn from the tutors and to have a light-filled fortnight.

However marvellous these summers may be, not everybody can get a grant from their school, their region, their country, or, in the case of Europeans, from Brussels to go on a course abroad.
Not everybody has a mother, a husband, a sister or a friend who is happy to look after children for two weeks. Not everybody feels good away from home.

For many people it is much easier when a trainer comes to you, and works with you and your colleagues in the context of your school, or of the local language teachers' association.

Over the past nine months Pilgrims trainers have worked in these places and for these people:

• British Schools chain, all over Italy,
• Centre d'Etudes de Langues, Chamber of Commerce Language Schools in France
• Stockholm Chapter of the Swedish Lang Teacher Association( 150 people came together to work on Multiple Intelligences)
• Plenary at APAC, the Catalan Language Teacher's Association, Barcelona
• The German Volkshochschule in Hessen ( round Frankfurt)
• The "Englische Woche" of the Steiner Schools across Europe
• Major Language School in Belgium
• Plenary at the APPI Conference in Portugal
• National Workshop of the Lycees Agricoles across France. etc….

( The whole list would be tediously long)

You may ask about the topics people ask us to deal with:

Here are some recent ones:

Dictation many ways
Humanising your coursebook
Methodology for primary teaching
How to teach the 3-6 age group English
Story-telling in the Language Classroom
Grammar is too vital not to be fun
Using Mother Tongue sensibly in the L2 classroom
Ideas for language teaching from NLP
Exercises to teach multiply intelligently
Drama in EFL
Creative Writing
How to teach very advanced students
Using NLP ideas to teach business students presentations, negotiations etc

( not a complete list )

If you want a Pilgrims trainer to come and work with your colleagues in your area then please get in touch with us.

Just send an email to my colleague Mandy Briggs mjbriggsco@hotmail.com