David A. Hill has spent 43 years working in language and literature education, first in the UK, then since 1977 in Italy, ex-Yugoslavia and Hungary. He worked for the British Council for 18 years full time. Since becoming a free-lance consultant in 1998, he has spent his time travelling and lecturing on education, working in 39 countries, and writing more than 65 different sets of educational materials for contexts as varied as Hungarian primary schools, Singapore secondary schools, UK secondary literature classes and Indian technical universities, as well as methodology books for teachers. His novella How I Met Myself – a ghost story – is now a set book in Malaysian schools. He has published four collections of poetry, the last being Mothworld in 2010, and has translated poetry from Serbian, Italian and Hungarian. He has been involved in IATEFL since 1988, holding a variety of positions of responsibility, and is currently Coordinator of the Literature, Media & Cultural Studies Special Interest Group.
PLENARY TALK
Intercultural? Yes, but Whose Intercultural?
In the closing Plenary we will examine ways of dealing with the changes in the world which have forced English language teaching out of its earlier simplistic monocultural aspect into a more multicultural view of the world. As language is part of culture, these changes have brought us face to face with the need to deal with Englishes rather than English, and to find topics to deal with in lessons which are appropriate to all, reflecting the multicultural make-up of society. This talk will offer suggestions of how we might go forward in our classes, making our lessons interculturally appropriate for the world our learners will face.
WORKSHOP
Making the Monocultural Intercultural: the Case of Traditional Folksongs
In this practical workshop, we will work through a set of materials based on a traditional English folksong and see ways of broadening the content to make it appropriate across cultures, through a range of interesting activities. The workshop will contain live performance of a folksong by the speaker, who is also a semi-professional musician.
