5 Key takeaways from IATEFL 2024

This year’s IATEFL Conference and Exhibition brought over 2000 English language teaching professionals from all around the world to Brighton for a week of professional development, networking and innovations.

Here are our top takeaways from the conference.

1. AI is on everyone’s mind

There were a number of sessions on AI across the week, including The AI interviewer: spoken dialog systems in computer-based language assessment by Dr Yasin Karatay, Senior Research Manager at Cambridge. Yasin discussed the potential for Spoken Dialogue Systems to move beyond their current usage in fields such as customer services, to provide innovative possibilities for assessing second-language oral communication skills. He suggested that these technologies have the potential to overcome some of the limitations of traditional assessment methods and underlined the need for continuous research and improvements in the systems.

2. Opposing viewpoints can be reconciled or combined to support effective English language teaching

In ELT-related controversies: from conflict to complement, Cambridge author Penny Ur discussed some of the current areas of controversy in English language teaching. Tackling each issue in turn, Penny set out the different positions, viewpoints and models along with relevant research. She suggested ways in which we can move from conflict to complementing and reconciling, and emphasised the importance of doing so in order to achieve optimal learning outcomes.

3. Sustainability is a key focus for ELT professionals

In his session, How can we make teacher education programmes more sustainable, Cambridge Professional Learning and Development Manager Matthew Ellman examined how we can make teacher education more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. He discussed the need to get sustainability into classroom content and highlighted the Cambridge Sustainability Framework for ELT and accompanying activities cards as a key resource to help teachers with this. He also highlighted opportunities for making teacher education more sustainable by moving it online and involving trainers from the local context in planning and delivering training.

4. Language teaching should be driven by the need to communicate

In Teaching EFL and teaching modern languages: same or different? Cambridge author Scott Thornbury looked at whether the teaching of modern languages has adopted the communicative approach. He highlighted the need for language teaching to be driven by communication rather than focusing too heavily on the systems of the language and suggested teachers could reduce the learning load by using corpus tools to select and encourage their learners to memorise high-frequency items that are therefore of high usefulness.

5. Attaching a teacher to digital learning can make a positive difference to outcomes

In her session Digital learning: with or without a teacher? Dr Brigita Seguis, Head of Impact Research at Cambridge, presented the findings of a study that evaluated the impact of having a teacher attached to delivering the Evolve Digital course. The study showed that digital learning can be implemented in a variety of ways and still deliver good results, but that having a teacher attached to the course can have a positive impact on learner motivation and engagement, and their overall satisfaction with the course.

IATEFL also saw the launch of 100 Great Activities: The best of the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers. Edited by Penny Ur and Scott Thornbury, this new book brings together some of the best-loved activities from the award-winning series and includes new commentary and support for teachers to adapt the activities for use in a range of contexts. Find out more