English Teachers' Forum - 26 June 2010

Warm-ups, Fillers, and Wrap-ups:

Maximizing Their Value in English Language Classes

• Date: Saturday, 26th June, 2010
• Time: 10:00 am to 12:00 noon
• Venue: The Academy of Graduate Studies - Janzour, Libya

Synopsis:

Very often a small amount of dead time occurs during a class. This can happen at the beginning of a class when students are arriving, when a class that is underway is interrupted for some reason, or at the end of a class when students begin to think about leaving. When dead time occurs, often the best option is to present a short, interesting activity that lasts for only a few minutes, but allows that time to be used productively. This session will consider how to derive maximum benefit from the use of warm-ups, fillers, and wrap-ups, and will provide teachers with an extensive array of short exercises they can use in their classes.

Presented by:

John Harrington has a Master of Arts degree in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language from the University of Colorado and a Doctor's degree that was awarded by Baker University. He also possesses a Master of Arts degree in the field of Community Development and a Bachelor of Arts degree in the fields of Political Science and Sociology, both from Southern Illinois University.

Since 1992, Mr. Harrington has taught at the university and secondary school levels and at private language schools in Russia (six years), Slovenia (five years), Hungary (two years), Bosnia-Herzegovina (one year, Estonia (one year), and Armenia (one year). He has also conducted workshops in Turkey, Austria, and Ukraine. He worked for ten years under the auspices of the Soros Foundation and is currently nearing the completion of his sixth year of work with the English Language Fellow Program funded by the U. S. Department of State. At present he is teaching courses in Second Language Acquisition, English Language Teaching Methods, and Academic Writing at the Academy of Graduate Studies in Tripoli. His teacher training experience dates back to 1998. He is particularly interested in Medical English, Civics Education, and Environmental Education at the community level, but has also had extensive involvement in Business English. While with the Soros Foundation he authored a guide to business simulation games that was used in over 30 countries.

He is in the process of writing two books, one of which will be a teacher's resource book tentatively titled "Tapping into Teen Interests: Classroom Activities with Special Appeal for Teenagers."