‘Meaningful Fun’ ie the purposeful deployment of ludic activities which foster engagement and are rooted in a clear pedagogic rationale.

"I have gained so many new games to use in my teaching which will improve speaking, listening, reading and writing and which I know will be motivating to my students."

Course Outline

Join us for this one-day CPD course for MFL teachers in Sheffield which will provide delegates with a wide variety of engaging and motivating classroom activities and with a framework and rationale underpinning their classroom implementation.

Session 1: The key principles underpinning an Input-to-Output pedagogical cycle

This session will:

• lay out the key principles that should inform the design of (1) instructional sequence, (2) the selection of the linguistic content and (3) the choice of the task/game
• provide an overview of tried and tested input-to-output instructional sequence and the purpose of each stage

Session 2: Engaging ludic activities: their rationale and implementation

This session will:

• provide a vast array of games for each language skill with a specific focus on Vocabulary, Grammar and Phonology
• demonstrate the games through the teaching of an Asian language
• consider the pedagogical rationale which underpins each game
• address the challenges that surround the implementation of the suggested activities

Session 3: Sequencing tasks

This session will:

• focus on fluency games
• consider the sequencing of the games proposed in the light of Cognitive Load Theory and Progression from Input to fluent output.

Presenter Profile

Gianfranco Conti

Founder and owner of the popular language learning website The Language Gym, Gianfranco is an applied linguistics MA and PhD graduate with many years of classroom experience. He has taught Modern Languages for nearly 30 years both at primary, secondary and university levels.

He has researched the impact of metacognitive strategies training and error correction on L2 essay writing under the supervision of Oxford University Ernesto Macaro both during his PhD and a large-scale project in English comprehensive schools documented in Professor Macaro (2001)’s book. In his current role as Visiting Fellow at the University of Reading, he has lexicogrammar acquisition, listening instruction, metacognition, error correction and learner autonomy as his main research interests.

Formerly head of languages at various schools in England and abroad where he has developed and implemented his instructional approach (Extensive Processing Instruction), he is currently a researcher at the University of Reading in his capacity of Visiting Fellow and a highly renowned and sought-after conference speaker and CPD provider very active in the UK, South-East Asia, Middle East and Australia. He delivers keynotes in major international events all year around, conducts an average of 150 workshops for language teachers a year and visits roughly as many schools in the same period of time either to provide professional development or to help schools improve their curriculum design and delivery.

He is well-known internationally for his teaching resources that have won him the TES Best contributor award and have been downloaded over 4,500,000 times by over 100,000 teachers around the world.

His blog on MFL pedagogy, The Language Gym (gianfrancoconti.com), is one of the most influential in the world and has won him several international awards. The professional development group he founded, ‘Global Innovative Language Teachers’ is one of the largest and fastest-growing communities of its genre.

Gianfranco has co-authored with Steve Smith the best-selling handbooks for MFL professionals, ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’ and ‘Breaking the sound barrier: teaching learners how to listen’. He has also recently published a Spanish workbook for beginner to pre-intermediate learners of Spanish, "Spanish Sentence Builders - a Lexicogrammar Approach", written with his former colleague Dylan Viñales.

Cost: £185 per delegate - includes lunch and resources (please contact us for multiple booking discount)

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