Low expectations

Having just returned from a language teaching conference in Switzerland, I am reminded that my expectations of such conferences are usually fairly low. As a result, I am rarely disappointed. And often, as in Winterthur on Friday and Saturday, I am delighted.

Let me be a bit more precise. In many areas, I certainly do have high expectations of conferences. I expect them to be well organized and to run on time (this, not surprisingly, is always the case in Switzerland). I also expect speakers to give talks that correspond to the descriptions in the conference programme (sadly, not always the case).

I also look forward to the networking opportunities that conferences provide — with both existing contacts and new ones.

So why did I say that my expectations are low? What I meant is that I don't expect to come away from conferences with a large number of new ideas that will have a significant, lasting impact on my work or thinking.

That doesn't mean that there aren't lots of interesting talks and ideas at conferences. It's just that most of them — including, no doubt, most of mine — have only a temporary impact on participants.

My rule of thumb is that I'm happy if I encounter two important new ideas per conference. In Winterthur, at the 18th annual conference of the ICC, the International Language Network, my expectations were exceeded by 50 per cent. The three ideas that particularly impressed me at the conference, which was titled "Language Teaching in a Multilingual Society", were:

• A brilliant plenary talk (and follow-up session) by Russell Stannard from the Centre for Applied Linguistics at Warwick University in England. His award-winning website, www.teachertrainingvideos.com, shows teachers, through the use of videos, how to incorporate technology into their work.
• A report by Jana Cepickova, a teacher of technical English at the University of West Bohemia in Plzen, Czech Republic, on the PELLIC project (Practice Enterprise for Language Learning & Intercultural Communication). The concept of a "practice enterprise" is that students practise their communication skills by setting up and running a fictional company in a virtual learning environment (VLE).
• A talk by Timothy Phillips, managing director of Skylight GmbH, which looked at "intrinsic motivation" in business English learning. As Phillips pointed out, the real motivation of learners is normally neither to learn English per se nor to carry out commmunication activities, such as making a phone call or giving a presentation. In the case of a presentation, the real motivation is likely to be to influence people, or to make you, your boss or your company look good. Vocabulary and grammar are simply tools for achieving these ends.

With these three ideas, I came away from the ICC conference more than satisfied. Or, to misquote Meat Loaf, three out of two ain't bad.