EVENTS SO FAR IN 2015...
November 2015
Mexico: Cancún
Mark makes his first appearance at the 42nd International MEXTESOL Convention in Cancún. At this major Mexican teachers' conference, he will be giving a keynote talk on Effectiveness in Language Assessment, on Friday 6th November at 5pm.
On Saturday 7th November, Mark will give a talk in collaboration with Trinity College London and Empresser publishers on 21st century approaches to language testing. The talk kicks off at 4pm.
October 2015
Mexico: Guadalajara, Mexico City
Mark was invited to speak at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional & University of Guadalajara Proulex Language Centre's annual language teachers' conference in the National Polytechnic of Mexico in Guadalajara. Mark gave a talk on effectiveness in language assessment procedures.
Over in Mexico City, Mark delivered a plenary and a workshop at Trinity College London/Empresser's annual teachers' conference, themed around developing skills for communication in the 21st century. The plenary discussed Communicative Approaches to Language Assessment and the workshop gave teachers' practical tips on elicitation techniques and ways of keeping students talking in the classroom.
July-September, 2015
Spain: Madrid, Valencia, Castelló de la Plana,
As part of the ongoing training programme in collaboration with Trinity College London, the Ministerio de Educación Cultura y Deporte and the Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa (INEE), Mark provided training workshops in Assessment Literacy for teachers and teacher trainers in Madrid, Valencia and Castelló de la Plana.
These sessions continue to be highly popular and extremely well attended. As demand has been so high, there are plans to provide further training in other regions of Spain, continuing the work Trinity, the Education Ministry and the National Evalaution Institute.
May, 2015
Denmark: Copenhagen
Mark presented a paper on part of his latest academic research at the 12th annual EALTA (European Association for Language Testing and Assessment) conference, at the University of Copenhagen, 28-31 May 2015.
The research, jointly conducted with Dr Luke Harding of Lancaster Univeristy, focused on the ratings of speaking performances by international examiners from the UK, China and India. The title of the paper is: International and local raters: comparing ratings and rationales on a speaking test across international contexts
The programme for the event can be downloaded here.
April, 2015
United Kingdom: IATEFL, Manchester
In collaboration with Trinity College London, Mark gave a keynote talk at the Associates Day at the IATEFL conference.
Speaking alongside former IATEFL trustee George Pickering and IATEFL patron Professor David Crystal, Mark spoke to teachers and representatives from 80 IATEFL associate teaching associations from around the world on the subject of 21st century language testing and teaching.
Read more about this event here.
Thanks to Study Travel Magazine for covering the event.
March, 2015
Argentina: Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata
and Córdoba
In collaboration with Trinity College London, Mark delivered training on Trinity College London's revised ISE examinations to various schools around Argentina.
Mark talked about how the revised ISE exam has changed, and explained some of the theory behind the changes. He also gave teachers examples of how the new exam looks. For more information on Trinity College London's revised ISE exam, click here.
In Córdoba on March 28th, Mark delivered a plenary talk at the Teachers' Day. The title of the talk was 'Language Tests in the 21st Century' in which Mark discussed the need to reavaluate what we are looking to assess in our learners' English and widen the aperture of our tests to include a borader, more realistic and representative range of language competences.
February 14, 2015
Mexico: Mexico DF
Sponsored by the British Council, Mark gave the opening plenary on Day 2 of the Best of British English Language Teaching Conference (BBELT). The talk was titled: Teaching, testing and the need for real-world communication skills
The BBELT event in 2015 was attended by some 1200 teachers from across Mexico and was a great opportunity to discuss teaching and testing with a wide range of teachers of all levels of students.
For some photos of Mark's plenary are: click here, here, and here.
February 9-18, 2015
Spain: Zaragoza, Toledo, Valencia, Madrid and Valladolid
In collaboration with Trinity College London, the Ministerio de Educación Cultura y Deporte and the Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa (INEE), Mark delivered five sessions on Assessment Literacy for teachers and teacher trainers in the states of Aragón, Castilla–La Mancha, Comunitat Valenciana, Madrid and Castilla y León.
Many thanks to the @CFPIdiomas, Valladolid for the photo.
