Remarkable Participation of YALS at 14th ELTA Conference 2016

YALS representatives at 14th ELTA Conference 2016

Reported by Marija Pejatović

 ‘One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world’ by Malala Yousafzai was the moto of this year’s ELTA Conference. The Conference was held in the modern Singidunum University in Belgrade on 20 and 21 May, 2016.

Since YALS and ELTA have been partners for years, ELTA again generously gave us one free attendence for the conference.

YALS decided to be as visible as possible and thus we had our info desk once again this year. The info desk was our base and the meeting point for all YALS teachers and YALS friends. Also, it gave us a great opportunity to share information about our work with the interested professionals. We had a number of visitors, among whom, representatives of the Singidunum university who are interested in partnering with YALS within their new English language department. We met colleagues from Croatia who shared their experience in the process of accreditation. Our team had fantastic time talking to YALS sponsors who traditionally support our literary competition every year, Pearson and the English Book. Thanks to these friends of YALS, our annual competition has been growing each year and now it has a new, multimedia part in accordance with the 21 century children and their skills, and we are grateful for their support.

However, the most important part of ELTA Conference is the professional development and we can proudly say that this year, five teachers and teacher trainers from YALS had materials to share with their colleagues. Sofija Ljiljak Vukajlovic, teacher trainer from Tom & Emma school, had an interesting workshop on storytelling entitled A Story to Tell …. Using Narrative in ELT. Jovana Popovic, teacher trainer, also from Tom & Emma school, had another great workshop on Using Video in Classes – Fun for Both Students and Teachers. Lora Petronic Petrovic from Lingva, supported by her colleague Ivana Damjanović from the Faculty of Business, had a successful presentation on Self and Peer Assessment with Young Learners. One more YALS teacher, Jelena Spasic from Oxford School, who successfully finished ELTA’s seminar on Creative Writing, publicly read the story she had written on the course, and which was included in the resulting book published under the title Small Town Stories. In this publication, there is also a story from another YALS teachers, Katarina Andric from Lingva School.

All in all this was yet another successful ELTA Conference and we want to congratulate the organizers and also to use this opportunity to invite all interested professionals to the next big ELT event organized by YALS and supported by EAQUALS and the British Council in Belgrade, in October this year.