And so this is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over, a new one just begun…
Already? I think 2014 may have been the fastest year yet?!

The WordPress Monkeys recently sent me a round-up of my blogging year, and as usual it prompted reflection on the year as a whole, as well as what lies ahead.

In 2014 I:

– delivered my first webinar (for the British Council)
– delivered my first online conference presentations (for IH and for BELTA)
– spoke at IATEFL for the first time and also got proposal no. 2 accepted for Manchester this year
– spoke at MATSDA for the second time
– wrote a book chapter (for an edited book hopefully being published by IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG this year)
– taught EAP for the first time at Sheffield Uni
– completed the IH Certificate for Teaching YL and Teens
– finished year 1 and started year 2 in Palermo
– got some self study materials published by Richmond ELT (3 worksheets, CEFR A1 level, reading)
– won an ELTON (yes I remembered it at this stage of the list-making activity!
– won a British Council blog award for the posts I wrote at IATEFL  in Harrogate.
– graduated with a distinction from my MA in ELT
– started the IH certificate for training to be a tutor/trainer
– had my column appear in the 2014 IH journals
– became vegan (not work-related but perhaps my most significant non-work related step) and developed a passion for cooking in the process!
– learnt a heck of a lot of Italian (and a lot about language learning in the process!)

… And thought around November-time that I was slacking and not really achieving enough in 2014. Hmm! Actually it was quite a year, so if academic year 2014-2015 started quietly enough (‘only’ doing the tutoring course and learning how to teach IELTS in addition to the usual work stuff and Italian study) maybe that’s ok, actually! 😉

Here is an excerpt from the WordPress Monkeys’ round up of my blogging year:

Thank you to all who visited me here…

…whichever corner of the globe you hail from!

It is always interesting (for me) to see which are the top-viewed posts of the year. For 2014, I suppose they are fairly representative of what I got up to: I did indeed produce a well-received series of ‘Top 10 resources for…’ posts which have hopefully been helpful to some people, I enjoyed getting my teeth into discussing issues relating to language learning, I have been very busy working on my learner autonomy projects and I did lots of stuff in the classroom too!

Looking ahead

2015 should be certainly an interesting year, with a few things pencilled in already. E.g. IATEFL, another webinar, a journal article due in May, reapplying to Sheffield Uni for the summer. It’s also a year of uncertainty, in that for the second year running I need to decide whether to do another year at IHPA or not. I think I really got lucky in getting my job there from Oct 2013, it’s been a great place to work with a lot of opportunity for development and I was delighted to return in October. However, I don’t know that a third year is for me. I think I want to return to the UK and settle down. Why? Quite simply because I’m not old but I’m not getting any younger and I find it quite an upheaval living between two places – just as you get used to being in one, then it’s time for a stint in the other. It’s the best of both worlds and yet the whole of neither of them. Not conducive to relationships or family building, either, in my opinion. (Teaching is awesome but I want a life outside of it too!) However, because of how it all works, the application timings involved, I would have to relinquish one job with no guarantee of another, which is scary! Fortunately I have supportive family and friends, and an ok CV so even if plan A didn’t work out, I will find a plan B or C (G? K? We’ll see!) somehow or another… Necessity is the mother of and all that. Meanwhile, I have another couple of months to think about it before crunch time!

One thing I do know is that I will continue to seize opportunities as they arise and see where that takes me – it seems to be working ok so far! This year I also want to extend the seizing to opportunities for having fun, and opportunities within my personal/social life, rather than only in the sphere of work: life is short (as my mum’s untimely death in 2009 taught me) and there *is* more to it than ELT (even though ELT is a fantastic part of it!). So, the blog may have been a bit quiet lately but rest assured the time has not been wasted. I’d like to blog more this year, as I do enjoy it and find it a great developmental tool, but I also have to balance all my other commitments AND have a life, so everything in moderation, I suppose… (Otherwise put, it may or may not be a little quiet until after I’ve finished the IH tutor training course!)

Finally, happy new year to you all and thank you for being part of this blog: sharing my posts with you is a real privilege. 🙂

Happy 2015!! Image taken from a Google search, licensed for commercial reuse with modification.

It has been a little quiet here of late, I’ll admit. Conversely, life has been anything but! In the last 11 weeks and 4 days, as well as steadily trying to learn some Italian (most apt phrase I’ve learnt vis-a-vis this summer is “il da fare non manca mai” – there’s never any shortage of things to do!) and experiment with my own learner autonomy, I have:

• been inducted into and worked on a 10-week pre-sessional programme at Sheffield University
• presented at an online conference (The BELTA-TESL Toronto joint effort, themed Teaching Reading and Writing)
• graduated
• attended a wedding (not my own, I hasten to add!)
• written a 4500 word first draft book chapter
• given detailed feedback and then subsequently graded 26,000 words of student projects (so 52,000 words of marking altogether, there!)
• done USEPT (proficiency test for university entrance) examining (speaking) and marking (writing, reading)

and, as of Friday 5th September at 12.45, finally had a break from the world of ELT!!!! It was mainly the project marking and book chapter that put a halt to any blog updating I might have had in mind (there are only 24hrs in a day, and I do need to sleep [and study Italian!] for some of them!)… As they mainly account for the 3 weekends prior to this one just gone, other than the one during which I attended the wedding!

Lack of inspiration to blog, however, is not a problem. So, there will be plenty more posts appearing when I feel ready to return to the world of ELT; amongst others, a post about teaching academic listening and the 4/9/14 update on my Italian learning, as well as an update of my Delta page, to incorporate information about the new module 1 exam format. Of course once I return to IH Palermo, there will be plenty to say on that front too!

So stay tuned and see you soon!  (Just give me a few more days holiday first, please… 🙂 )

Dear everybody who received an email saying I’ve written a new post this evening (all 574 of you lovely people!),

Fear not: the final version of that post, unlike the draft that just accidentally got published – and, swiftly after, deleted! – will actually be readable and coherent! I’ve been experimenting a lot with dictations recently [mostly on myself, as a language learner – who knew doing dictations in Italian could be so fun and informative!] and it’s been an interesting process of discovery. I look forward to sharing what I’ve learnt and some ideas with you all and whoever else stumbles upon the post.

Meanwhile, forgive WordPress and its user’s clumsiness: normal service shall now resume…!

And a happy weekend to you all!  🙂

I’ve just made a Tagsxedo word cloud of all the searches that people have ever done in order to reach my blog! It’s quite interesting actually, seeing what words come up big… Apparently Jim Scrivener is the most popular starting point: that must be the summary of his IATEFL Glasgow talk that I wrote, or perhaps the summary of the #ELT Chat summary on Demand High teaching. There are worse things to be associated with! 😉  I wonder if anyone else will follow suit and make a word cloud of the searches that have led to their blog too? 🙂

The International House Journal of Education and Development was founded in 1996, by Charles Lowe (director of IH London at the time) and Matthew Barnard. 17 years later (if my maths hasn’t deserted me, which it may well have…), in issue 35, Autumn 2013, I’ve found my way into it!

Click here to see the contents page and here to go straight to my column. (I have to say, I recommend the former though – there’s lots of interesting stuff to see! 🙂 )

My column is based on my “30 things…” blog post and in it I revisit my list and expand on the various items. This first one focuses on a combination of spoken grammar and storytelling.

I’m honoured to have been given the opportunity of writing a column for the journal and look forward to contributing to future editions.

Finally, apologies for the lack of posts recently – between full-time work and doing the IH teaching young learners course, I seem to have precious little time for much else! However, watch this space: there will be more posts, I promise…

Meanwhile, enjoy the journal! 🙂

 I used my blog as a reflective tool while doing my dissertation project – the final component of my M.A. in ELT –  hypothesising that this would make it an even more effective learning experience for me, by mapping it, enabling me to look back on my thought processes and decisions and see what effect these had on the project development. (Other posts in this series can be found here) Now it’s over, so the reflection begins…

“Over? But it’s only now the 13th,” I hear you say. Well, I haven’t got a strange time machine, but I did submit it a day early. Which means today I get to have lunch with my CELTA tutors and visit a friend (and my goddaughter) instead of frantically finishing, printing and binding as was the case yesterday. Happy days! 🙂

It came together in the end (on about Wednesday lunchtime actually – that was when I knew everything would be ok, finally).  I was/am happy with what I submitted.  Be a while till I know what H thinks though! I expect she’ll find plenty to pull apart – she’s clever like that. But at least when I get the feedback it will be another final bit of learning that I can get out of the course. And meanwhile, nearly 4 months since the first tutorial and longer since I wrote the dissertation proposal,  here I am looking back over it all.

Of course, the big question is, did the blogging help?

The answer – yes. Particularly in the planning stages. Reflecting on the literature and my ideas, the tutorial content – it all helped the picture of what I wanted to do emerge. And in those early days, H also found it useful – she was able to see the thought processes behind the half-baked stuff I handed her!  And, the posts where I talked about the theories I was using and how they related helped me get my head around all that, which then fed nicely into the 5000 word rationale. Once the planning/early stages were over, it was most useful after tutorials, to synthesise the content and get my head around what needed doing.

Latterly, though, there was no time for it. The last couple of weeks have been 100% dissertationing. It was definitely point get on with it! And now it’s point get on with everything else that I haven’t been getting on with for the last couple of weeks…

As for this “Dissertation Diary” project, the next thing for me will be once a bit a of time has elapsed, reading back over this set of posts, reflecting on them and seeing what emerges from that…

So, bye bye little dissertation! I hope you enjoy eating someone else’s hours now!! 😉

I’m very excited to have been shortlisted for this award (again!), this time for my post entitled “30 things to enhance your teaching?” 

If you enjoyed this post and want to vote for me, please follow this link (it will open in a new window) and click “like”!

Meanwhile, and either which way, thank to everybody who has visited and followed my blog to date. 🙂