Students enroll at the ALC to benefit from English classes. ALCs have clubs that students could benefit from to improve their soft skills. The poster presents a unique club, ALC-ALIF Model UN club. The poster encourages teachers’ initiatives to create clubs at their ALCs to raise students ‘awareness of the political and economic issues and sheds light on the importance of MUN in improving students’ English language skills.

This proposal follows a Project- Based Learning approach where students are assigned to create comics while working on the four skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing). Comics represent an opportunity to measure student comprehension of different concepts and also gives a chance for students to truly express themselves in a visually appealing way. Furthermore, comics can be a great way to introduce ELLs to the culture and humor of English-speakers. The students are given controlled activities in which they can recycle languages learned in class and then move to freer activities and more student-centered activities where learners can present their creations. This way the learner can acquire a more vivid mental image of the contexts studied in class.

This workshop will focus on integrating grammaring into student-centered classrooms, first by presenting and uncovering grammar as a process and second by enabling learners to discover grammar in alternative ways through some enabling activities. The workshop will provide teachers with hands-on activities that tackle practical ways of integrating grammar effectively as a process in classrooms. The workshop will be hands-on and rich in interaction and group work.

Foremost among higher-order thinking skills are activating background knowledge and making inferences. These skills, which are necessary for comprehension, can be challenging for students with reading difficulties, especially young learners. For adult ELLs, completing comprehension tasks may be hampered due to limited vocabulary and grammar. When students work individually, comprehension tasks can be frustrating for the students and teacher. In this workshop, we demonstrate three collaborative strategies, namely Think-Pair-Share, Listen-Read-Discuss and Jigsaw, to promote reading comprehension skills.

Classroom management is the direct contact teachers have with students. During this contact, teachers should be mindful of the various and interconnected needs of the learners, some of which are unexpected. This meeting hopes to shed some light on major classroom management techniques, with reference to the literature, and find out the best solution for the situations that pop up.

Collaborative learning (CL) is a classroom practice which involves assigning learners to work in groups to do an activity or a task. This practice is associated with learner-centered education, as it incites learners to teach and learn from each other to perform the task at hand. Research established a link between collaborative learning and the effective development of learners' communicative skills. (Álvarez & Bassa, 2013; Kirbaş, 2017; Koşar, 2021; Pattanpichet, 2011).

Applied research has proved that learners differ markedly in the way they are engaged and motivated, have different patterns of comprehension, and need appropriate ways of action and expression. So teachers should employ techniques to screen their students’ needs. Screening assists teachers to opt for inclusive strategies to meet the learning goals. Practically, the audience will learn how to implement Universal Design for Learning as a pedagogic inclusive education framework.

The purpose of this presentation is to shed light on the significance of public speaking as a 21st century soft skill. A theoretical background in public speaking will be provided, as well as discussion of its importance and suggestions on how to increase confidence and overcome stage fright. The practical section will be centered on certain tasks that teachers may assign to their students in order to help them develop their public speaking skills.

For various reasons, reading fluency has been called “the forgotten dimension of reading success” (Samuels and Farstrup, 2006). In this vein, this activity share aims to fill this gap and introduce various activities to develop reading fluency. The activities target almost all students’ levels. Teachers can use the activities to develop both students’ lower-thinking skills and higher-thinking skills. In this activity share, teachers will be exposed to a number of activities to adapt and use in their classes.

In my presentation, I’ll be sharing activities that require little or no preparation and can also be used as classroom management tools. I’ll be presenting a game called “Pirate Ship” and showing how teachers can customize this game according to their needs. I’ll also introduce a simplified version of the famous role-playing game, “Dungeons and Dragons” and demonstrate how it can be used to practice the four skills and manage classes at the same time. Finally, I’ll run a percussion activity that can be used to show students the importance of simple rules in the classroom. Teachers will learn new approaches will be of how ton making make classes lessons fun while maintaining a healthy classroom environment.

Grammar can be a real challenge for students, and the problem is generally due to how lessons are presented. By using Guided Discoveries (GD), Students generally learn the target language indirectly without being under pressure! In this workshop, we are introducing new fun methods where teachers can gamify the GDs to make it more fun and engaging.

My years of teaching have enabled me to see how color coding could help simplify both my teaching and my students’ learning, which explains why colors have become an essential part of my teaching methodology. I would like to invite you to join me in this hands-on workshop, where we will explore some great ways of using colors, from writing on the board, to using colored paper, cards or rods, in order to teach our students both attractively and effectively.

As any teacher has experienced, students generally hate grammar. They hate grammar as they hate taking a cold shower in the winter. This hatred hinders them from speaking or writing freely to allow ideas to flow and frequently make their productions slow and unsuccessful. This workshop will raise the teachers’ consciousness to the difficulty of teaching grammar and suggest some activities that make writing fun with more focus on ideas than form.

Are you tired of having to use your remote to change sources from presentations to audio or video? Why not save time in class and make an all-inclusive presentation instead? In this workshop, attendees will learn how to include everything they need for an effective lesson into a google slides presentation. They will see examples of a children and/or junior lesson plan as well as an adult lesson plan from a teacher experienced in Google Suite products.

It is a fallacy to think that because teacher talk time is low that student talk time is high. This presentation will explore basic concepts of teaching modes and how they relate to each individual students’ opportunity to practice speaking. I will share some basic known ways to each individuals maximize student talk time such as Think-Pair-Share and small groups to maximize total student involvement. I will model the techniques throughout this interactive presentation.

When interacting with another language, you are also interacting with the culture and subcultures that speak the language. Many language learners come across challenges in intercultural communication, such as anxiety and stress, adjustment, and the lack of cultural awareness. In order to address these issues, this presentation aims to help teachers to have a better understanding of how intricately language teaching and culture are intertwined. It will inspire them to adopt more intercultural activities in their classrooms and to better enhance students’ cultural competence while reinforcing the target language. As teachers of the American Language Center, it is vital that all American cultures are taken into consideration when teaching English, not just the dominant ones. Therefore, this presentation will be conducted through an interactive intercultural simulation activity that illustrates how impactful differences in communication styles can be and how this relates to language learning.

Culture has a major impact on our students. To a great extent, it defines such important aspects of their lives as values, attitudes, customs, and language use. Hence, it is imperative to target raising students’ cultural awareness to inspire generations of global citizens and foster appreciation of the differences around us. During this workshop a number of Monday-morning-ready, and low prep class activities and projects are to be shared. Attendees will participate in a range of hands-on, practical learning tasks.

In this presentation, the participants will learn about 10 tips they can use to help their students give effective presentations. All tips have been developed from experience and have been tried in the classroom. More importantly, participants will learn about the problems they may encounter in trying to implement these tips and how they should go about solving them.

Are you bored of your textbook? Want something that makes learning a sure fire-way to have fun with your students. Then use visual media materials in your class. In this workshop, participants will experience some activities for integrating memes and movie input materials in the classroom. In addition, the workshop will offer the participants a chance to discuss and share their best practices of using such materials.

The main aim of this hands-on workshop is to raise awareness towards how feedback is given in instructional environments and build effective practices. It seeks to enable participants to reflect on their own ways of giving feedback and draw on the Situation-Behavior Impact (SBI) feedback model to improve performance, build stronger relationships, and increase engagement and commitment. This workshop is meant to be interactive and practical as it involves the participants in classroom-based tasks and scenarios that explore the types of feedback including teacher to student, student to student, and student-to-teacher-initiated interactions.

The main aim of this hands-on workshop is to raise awareness towards how feedback is given in instructional environments and build effective practices. It seeks to enable participants to reflect on their own ways of giving feedback and draw on the Situation-Behavior Impact (SBI) feedback model to improve performance, build stronger relationships, and increase engagement and commitment. This workshop is meant to be interactive and practical as it involves the participants in classroom-based tasks and scenarios that explore the types of feedback including teacher to student, student to student, and student-to-teacher-initiated interactions.

This workshop aims to introduce/reinforce ALC learners’ media literacy skills to be able to critically analyze and create media messages creatively and responsibly. Incorporating media studies within curriculum is a prerequisite for learners as they are bombarded with a huge amount of information. Teachers move around, read some news, evaluate them and discuss their impact on society. They work in groups and shape media, recognize facts, biases, misinformation, and create media messages using a check-list for reliability, credibility and appreciation.

Throughout history, stories have been a fundamental means of transmitting knowledge, morals, language, culture and other important information crucial to the continuity of humankind; they may even have been the reason why we have survived so far. Their ability to join people together and demand their attention and interest has the potential to bring lessons to life. Therefore, using stories, orally or through literary texts, is a powerful tool which every classroom should experiment with. This workshop will show teachers some methods and activities on how to integrate short stories into the teaching of the four skills while also transmitting vital soft skills as the same time. It will be a hands-on experience for teachers to have some fun with stories themselves while also learning how to use them in their classrooms as well.

Listening comprehension is at the heart of the teaching/learning enterprise. Using a process-oriented approach (as opposed to product-oriented) promotes autonomy and prepares learners to decipher input and identify challenges that impede comprehension. Shifting the focus onto process enables learners to design listening strategies for success when listening to English language outside the classroom. The facilitator, in this workshop, will demonstrate how to adopt pedagogical strategies to help learners process listening input, thereby developing their listening and communicative abilities. If you are interested in discussing the topic, please come to the workshop.

Understanding students’ personalities is of paramount importance in the learning process. It is vital that educators familiarize themselves with introverted students’ learning needs. This paves the way for establishing an emotionally supportive atmosphere as introverts’ foremost concern is emotional comfort. Only once that concern is addressed can they be engaged in the learning process. Being equipped with techniques to engage quiet or introverted students is essential to nurturing their confidence. In this workshop, participants will take part in hands-on activities that will enhance introverts’ classroom engagement.

Teambuilding is regarded, either in the workplace or in school, as an ongoing process that is meant to help a group of workmates or classmates evolve as one cohesive unit. As it has been used in the workspace with the objective is to make teams more homogeneous, it has also been implemented into the classroom where it has been used to enhance group dynamics in order to make the experience of learning more efficient and productive.

Not many teachers know about Google Skillshop/Teacher Center, which offers free courses on how to use Google Apps in Education. The affordable (optional) certification which proves the educator’s skill level opens up a whole world of networking and access to even more tips, tricks, and free trainings by 21st century teacher-leaders in the Ed-Tech arena. The objective of this poster presentation is to motivate the teachers to become Google Certified Educators and provide support on their journey.

Establishing a self-care practice is believed to be just as important as the work we do for students. In this workshop, the participants will first discuss the WHAT and the WHY of self-care. This will be followed with a personal assessment activity, where each participant will find out where they stand on the spectrum of self-care. The ultimate activity will be creating a practical personalized action plan. Focus will be put on individualized strategies that teachers can implement inside and outside the classroom.

The lack of fluency or conversational skills that students often complain about is, to a considerable extent, due to the underdevelopment of strategic competence. This workshop will introduce English teachers to this often-neglected construct and present them with practical ideas and activities to enhance some aspects of message adjustment and resource expansion skills.

Formative assessment is an integral part of effective instruction. However, the way this assessment is applied in our classrooms is often monotonous. The purpose of this workshop is to shed light on two of the best free web-based tools to create fun and engaging games that can be used for formative assessment, namely Quizizz and Baamboozle. During this workshop, we will learn together how to create and use these two online tools to make formative assessment appealing to learners. For seasoned users, we will also cover lesser-known tricks and tips to enhance your assessment.

The objective of the presentation is to describe theoretical reasons for using humor in the classroom, implementing fun activities which depend on language play like narratives, puns, riddles, and tongue twisters. The action plan defines humor, reasons to use it, its types (activities), and its challenges in the classroom. Most of the presentation is based on interacting with audience who will also participate in fun activities to spice up the session.

The workshop aims at shedding light on the importance of integrating critical thinking skills and activities in ELT classes. The purpose for doing so is to foster students’ autonomy and engagement in class since language learning achievement depends primarily on this. Furthermore, critical thinking skills help students take responsibility for their learning by giving them opportunities to think and act as global citizens able to think critically. Along with a brief theoretical framework, the audience will be invited to actively practice some critical thinking activities.

TBD

• How to Create Effective Tasks for Communication in the Classroom by Yassine BOUSSAGUI, ALC Mohammedia
• Let’s Meditate by Mounia NGOTE, ALC Rabat
• Incorporating Professional English Concepts into General English Courses by Oussama LAMAANKACHE, ALC Mohammedia

• 5Es of Nearpod: Digital Interactivity for Increased Engagement by Martina MATEJAS, ALC Kenitra
• Exploring the Effects of Personal Writing Tasks on Moroccan Learners’ Accuracy and Fluency in the English Language Classroom by Mohcine JEBBOUR, ALC Meknes
• Using Warm-up Activities In The Classroom by Mustapha EL BARHOUMI, ALC Casablanca

Many teachers try to vary the types of activities they do with their juniors and teenage students, but worry about how to make it practical and keep their interest. The aim of this presentation is to offer great options of fun, practical English games -for technophiles and technophobes alike- that will contribute to our teaching task. It will illustrate how these games are fruitful when it comes to acquiring new vocabulary, challenging students’ logic in English, and much more. The presentation will also offer a few handles on how to keep the classroom in check without interrupting the flow.

This is an interactive workshop that aims at refreshing teachers’ minds about important techniques and strategies to develop their students’ writing skills. The workshop is based on findings from empirical research in the field of EFL/ESL writing pedagogy and will feature hands-on activities offering valuable takeaways for teachers. The main tenet of the workshop is to invite teachers to be eclectic in adapting key features from different approaches to the teaching of writing to better address the needs of their students.

Learn some engaging activities that encourage students to start speaking and interacting in their second language. From scaffolded activities, to games, to thought-provoking topics, there are lots of ways to motivate students to practice speaking. Let’s get up, let’s get moving, and let’s get talking!

Children’s literature can serve several purposes and can be used in a variety of engaging and attractive activities with teenagers and adults of different levels. In this workshop, you will see examples of popular American children’s books and how they can be used to teach grammar, pronunciation, writing and speaking skills. It will also touch upon the importance of linking ones prior experiences (by awakening their inner child) for more effective and memorable learning experiences.

How do we prepare our students to enter our global, fast-moving, and multilingual world? In the session, we will explore ways to embed cultural learning and self-awareness into our language teaching, in a way that promotes learner curiosity, empathy, and criticality.