This CPD course for MFL teachers will provide delegates with a detailed reference framework for curriculum design, based on cognitive and second language acquisition theory and research.

Delegates will consider:

• The key components of curriculum design;
• The principles underpinning effective short- / medium- and long-term planning;
• The procedures involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of a course;
• Acquisition-enhancing strategies (e.g. recycling, interleaving, universals, fluency training) and their application to curriculum design;
• The role of assessment as a means to advance learning and how to embed it in the curriculum.

Session 1: A principled framework for curriculum design

This session will:

• Provide an account of the key components of curriculum design (from goal-setting to course-evaluation) and a principled framework for medium- and long-term planning;
• Raise the delegates’ awareness of the challenges surrounding effective curriculum design and implementation and provide solutions to address them;
• Propose a communicative-function-based approach to curriculum design.

Session 2: Applying language Acquisition Principles and memory-enhancing strategies to curriculum design

This session will:

• Lay out the key tenets of instructed language acquisition;
• Suggest ways in which the above can be applied in short- / medium- and long-term planning;
• Explain the role of fluency training and how it can be embedded in the curriculum.

Session 3: Designing pedagogy cycles and progression units and using assessment to enhance learning.

This session will:

• Provide a principled approach to the design of pedagogic cycles and units of progression;
• Suggest assessment procedures designed to advance learning not merely to evaluate it.

Presenter Profile

An applied linguistics MA and PhD graduate with lexico-grammar acquisition, listening skills, metacognition, error correction and learner autonomy as his main research interests, Gianfranco Conti has been teaching MFL for over 25 years both at secondary and tertiary levels.

Formerly head of languages at various schools in England and abroad, he is currently a French and Spanish teacher at an international school in South-East Asia where he has been implementing his methodological approach: Extensive Processing Instruction (EPI).

Dr Conti is also a renowned conference speaker and CPD provider mostly active in England and Australia. This is what CEO of researchED and educational influencer Tom Bennet has written about one of his workshops:

“As an organiser of research conferences I am constantly looking for individuals who can do something very special- disseminate a broad field of complexity, in a way that is intelligible to practitioners but loses little in the process; simplification without reductivism. Gianfranco was wonderful in this regard: witty, literate, personable and very, very engaging, but all the while absolutely focussed on content, quality and the effective transmission of useful information and techniques. As such he was one of the most popular speakers of the day, and in my opinion one of the best presenters I have seen in the UK. I wish he was available more often, as the impact he has on his audience is palpable.”

He is well-known internationally for his teaching resources that have won him the TES Best contributor award and have been downloaded over 3,500,000 time by over 100,000 teachers around the world. His blog on MFL pedagogy, The Language Gym, is one of the most influential in the world and has won him several international awards.

Dr Conti is also the founder of the interactive language learning website www.language-gym.com and the co-author of the best-selling handbook for MFL professionals, ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’. He is currently co-writing with Steve Smith his second book ‘Breaking the sound barrier: teaching listening bottom-up’ based on his own classroom research.

Feedback from teachers on Gianfranco's courses

Amazing energy - so compact and phenomenally rich in sensible, exciting ideas!
Fantastic course packed with practical ideas which are not too time consuming to prepare.
A really good training session. Loads of useful techniques as well as research and ideas of where to implement them. A wealth of ideas and inspiring course.
An excellent session - best I have attended to date - lots of food for thought and lots of changes going to happen in my dept. Huge thanks.
Brilliant - extremely useful and an engaging speaker.
Extremely informative, with significant "take-away" to change my pedagogy for the better.
Reviving and inspiring, with research to support ideas as well as practical experience!

Cost: £185 per delegate which includes lunch and resources

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