The Northern Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
ELT, 21st Century Skills, the Climate Emergency and You
The interaction between ELT and the global climate emergency has been moving up the agenda of our community in recent years, and this talk will look at ways that the 21st century skills can help our learners engage with the crisis.
Time & Location
08 Oct 2022, 10:00 – 11:30 BST
Webinar
Guests
About the event
ELT, 21st century skills, the climate emergency and you.
One of the main challenges around integrating 21st century skills into ELT (apart from their assessment) is that they can often feel irrelevant to the learners. They don’t seem to have any immediate use, or application to the learners’ realities. This is partly a product of their nature but also a product of the way they are presented in many course books.
The interaction between ELT and the global climate emergency has been moving up the agenda of our community in recent years, and this talk will look at ways that the 21st century skills can help our learners engage with the crisis. For example, critical thinking can help them uncover ‘greenwashing’, communication support them with eco-campaigning, and collaboration can support them in working on school gardens or beach cleaning projects and writing up the process. This approach can help us in our role as climate educators, yes that should be part of our role, and also show learners the application of 21st century skills.
Bio
Christopher Graham holds a degree in Politics from Warwick university, a Cambridge DELTA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a freelance English language teaching consultant, teacher educator and author based in the UK. He has worked in the field since 1981 in over 30 countries for the British Council, ministries of education and international publishers.
He was one of the founders of ELT Footprint, a 2020 ELTons Award winner, and is currently working on research, materials writing and media activities around ELT and climate change for the British Council as part of the Climate Action in Language Education project.
Recent publications include:
Climate action in language education. Activities for low resource classrooms, with Bilsborough, K, Barber D and Kral, T, British Council, 2022.
50 Ways to be a Greener Teacher Wayzgoose Press, 2022.
21st Century Skills in the ELT Classroom – A Guide for Teachers, (contributing editor) Garnet Education, 2020.
He is currently working on a guide for teachers around integrating Intercultural Education into ELT.