A Seminar on Contemporary Strategies in ELT

On April 01, 2021, the English Language Center at UTAS-Ibri, invited teachers from across the world to join a seminar on Contemporary Strategies in ELT. The speakers of the event Ms. Hanaa Khamis from Egypt and Dr. Luciana Kinoshita Barros from Brazil, shared their views on interesting topics, which shed light on various dimensions of ELT.

Ms Hanaa Khamis demonstrated the benefits of e-portfolios to both students and teachers in her presentation titled Collect, Reflect and Assess with E-portfolios.The presentation highlighted the strengths and functionalities of e-portfolios and shared some user-friendly online tools to create them.

She defined an e-portfolio as a collection of student/teacher artifacts in the form of documents, images, audio and video. It functions as a digital repository that can record all student/teacher products or showcase their works. E-portfolios act as self-reminders and assessment tools. She also suggested that it can well be used for formative or summative assessment purposes.

Hanaa Khamis is an ESOL practitioner and TESOL trainer who has experimented with instructional technology since 1999. Currently, she is part of TESOL Gulf Board of Directors. She earned an MA in TESOL from the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt in 2007. Her thesis focused on communication strategies among EFL university learners in online interactions. Her research and training interests mainly include pedagogy, technology and assessment.

Another speaker who graced the event was Dr.Luciana Kinoshita Barros, who spoke on one of the major components of higher education: Initial Teacher Education. Sheintroduced the audience to Initial Teacher Education in Brazil as a Higher Education component practiced at UNIFESSPA through her presentation titled Multimodal Narratives to Motivate Student-Teachers. She puts it as an experience of a public university in the Brazilian Amazon.

Dr Luciana described “Initial Teacher Education in Brazil” as a component of higher education. She stated that at UNIFESSPA, some student-teachers learn to make multimodal narratives to share their beliefs about learning to become an English as a Foreign Language teacher. They have the opportunity to reflect on their role in the learning process and learn with each other's beliefs. According to them, free expression of their beliefs seems to contribute to the students' motivation and self-awareness in the teacher education process.

Dr Abdulsalam, the head of the English Language Centre, appreciated the efforts exerted by the Professional Development Committee, who strives hard to connect the ELC staff through webinars to the ELT dynamics across the world.