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Well, I'm back from the BESIG conference and very enjoyable it was too. It was the biggest one so far with just under 550 participants and it showed. It was difficult to choose from all the different sessions and I'm sure I missed some good ones. What was very impressive as well though, was the fact that all of the sessions I did attend were consistently good. I think there were various contributing factors, including the fact that teachers' attitudes towards technology have moved on a lot in recent years and that more teachers are now using technology creatively and confidently, meaning the technology-focused sessions were very interesting and full of new ideas.

A number of sessions I attended are worth mentioning specifically.

It was wonderful finally meeting Azra Ahmed from the Aga Khan University, Karachi in person. I found her talk very interesting on several levels. She was describing how she uses webquests with her students, and how she adapts American and British ones for her particular students' use. The webquest she highlighted was one on harassment in the workplace. What struck me was that she didn't seem to adapt the content itself. Instead, the localisation tended to be of a simpler nature, such as changing the names to Arabic ones, addresses to local ones and so on. Azra said that this little bit of personalisation suddenly made it much more meaningful to her students, and meant they could identify with the situation much more. Something to bear in mind then if you're ever using digital materials that are customisable – something as simple as changing names and addresses to local ones may get a better reaction from students.

Another fascinating and complex issue Azra raised is one we'll be looking at in depth in future on this website, namely that of What English do I teach? In the Pakistani context the English needed is quite different from that in a country in which English isn't spoken as a second language. As I say, we'll be looking at just this topic in more depth in a few weeks' time.

Vicki Hollett's talk on Learning to speak 'merican was great fun but also enlightening. This really also comes back to the question of what English we teach. We're all aware of surface-differences between British and American English (such as the spelling of 'color' vs. 'colour', ways of greeting each other), but I wasn't aware that the differences go much deeper than this. Vicki used terminology I hadn't encountered before in this context, namely 'positive' and 'negative' politeness. These terms aren't used as value judgements but to describe how the two different cultures and languages express politeness. Americans tend to employ more positive politeness while the British are more likely to use negative politeness. An example Vicki gave is the following. On asking an American how to play baseball, they're likely to answer with, “Oh, it's really very simple”. On asking a Brit how to play cricket meanwhile, they're likely to answer with, “Oh, it's rather complicated I'm afraid”. She gave some more convincing arguments as to how the British and Americans tend to use language differently, and it goes deeper than choice of words or sentence-level. Intriguing.

In terms of the use of technology, there were a number of interesting talks. Elke Beder's talk on the use of YouTube, GoogleVideo and how to use online video in the classroom was also very good and gave tips on how to use and exploit those sites and others containing video. In particular, her creative use of advertisements I found excellent. Many companies make their TV adverts freely available on their websites and these are easy-to-come-by resources I'd never thought of.

Pete Sharma gave a very good whirlwind tour of a number of different ways of exploiting the Web and other online technologies for language teaching – too much to mention here, but his materials are available on the BESIG website (see below).

The publishers' panel was interesting but left lots of questions open I found – notably the question What is the future of the coursebook? I don't think either teachers, students or publishers know the answer to this one yet. While we teachers like online resources because they're quick to find and use and are easy to slot into lessons, I think we also like the syllabus a coursebook offers us. What do you think – will you still be using a traditional print coursebook in, say, 10 years' time? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think!

If you're interested in viewing materials from quite a few of the speakers' talks (PowerPoint presentations, handouts and so on) including most of the ones I've written about, head on over to the BESIG website where you'll find lots of materials there to give you food for thought for a while. See below for the link. We'll also shortly be putting up presentations from Cambridge authors on this site, together with audio and video interviews we made with some of them.

That's it for now, but please do leave me any comments, especially on the 'future of the coursebook' question!

All the best

Eric

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