Speakers – Michael Carrier
Michael Carrier
Michael Carrier is managing director of Highdale Consulting and consults for educational organisations and lectures worldwide. He has worked in language education for 40 years as a teacher, trainer, author, and director. He has an MA in Applied Linguistics and an MBA, engaging in both the academic and management aspects of ELT. He was formerly Director, English Language Innovation at the British Council in London, CEO of the International House World schools network and Executive Director of Eurocentres USA. His focus is teacher development, intercultural awareness, and digital technology in education. He has published many articles and textbooks, & recently co-edited ‘Digital Language Learning’ (Routledge 2017). He is on the boards of TIRF, ICC, International Students House, mEducation Alliance, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also Chair of the UK Government’s ELT Working Group and a member of the British Council’s ELT Advisory Group (ELAG).
Workshop: Training teachers how to incorporate Cultural Awareness into ELT
We are living in a globalised world and we talk constantly about the need for globalised language tools, and point to English as a global lingua franca, or Spanish and Mandarin or Arabic as world languages that globalised people need at their fingertips. But a lingua franca (whether English or others) does not necessarily improve global communication if cultural misunderstandings impede open and clear communication and positive relationship building. In his BBC Reith Lecture Jeffrey Sachs, former Director of the UN Millennium Project, claims: “Our generation’s greatest challenge… is learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society”.BBC Reith Lectures, 2007. Learning or teaching a language always entails some aspects, even if unspoken, of cultural awareness and understanding of cultural beliefs, assumptions, knowledge. In providing language education, then, we need to ensure that the development of the language proficiency that is a pre-requisite of effective communication with speakers of other languages, is matched by a development of the cultural competence that underpins the real-world use of that language. Many teachers try to incorporate this intercultural dimension into their teaching, drawing upon research and literature from across cultural studies and especially culture in the workplace. How can we help teachers to analyse, select and include the kind of intercultural skills that learners need for real-world application of their English skills? This talk looks at how we can help teachers develop the skill of incorporating intercultural competence into the English class.
