Tuesday 1 May 2012, 1800 - 2030 | Liverpool | The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX

The essay and beyond: writing for different purposes in British universities

With Hilary Nesi and Sheena Gardner

Identifying and working with Dyslexic students

With Sally Farley

The essay and beyond: writing for different purposes in British universities

This presentation will discuss the written genres university students are required to produce in different disciplines and at different levels of study. We will draw on findings from the 6.5 million word British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus of student writing, explaining the way we have assigned texts in the corpus to thirteen ’genre families’, each of which  plays a distinctive pedagogical role. Seminar participants will be invited to comment on our categorisation system  and relate it to their own experiences of setting and assessing university-level writing tasks. 

Identifying and working with Dyslexic students

In this seminar participants will be given an insight into the nature of Dyslexia and the impact it has on language learning.  Through a series of participatory activities participants will discover ways of identifying dyslexic learners and strategies to help them learn.  Sally Farley will debunk several myths about Dyslexia and show how, through the right teaching strategies, dyslexics can become successful language learners.   Over the course of the seminar it will become clear that dyslexia-friendly teaching will benefit the whole class

The presenters

Hilary Nesi is a Professor in English language at Coventry University. She worked for many years as an EAP teacher and now supervises and conducts research into academic discourse, EAP learner needs, and EAP learners’ use of reference tools. She was principal investigator for the projects to develop the BASE corpus of British Academic Spoken English and the BAWE corpus of British Academic Written English.

Sheena Gardner is Head of the Department of English and Languages at Coventry University. She has taught academic English internationally and has worked on various ELT projects in Malaysia, Botswana, China, Libya, Pakistan and Mexico. Sheena’s research takes a broadly systemic functional perspective and focuses on two main areas of educational linguistics  – genres in academic writing and research on young learners in multilingual classrooms.

Sally Farley is a Teacher Trainer, Counsellor and Dyslexia specialist.  She has worked as a teacher trainer both at home and abroad for the last 15 years.  She currently works as a Support Tutor for students with Dyslexia and other Specific Learning Difficulties at the University of Kent and the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury.  

Who is this for?

All EFL/ESOL teachers (newly qualified to experienced).

Programme (approx.)

1800 – 1815 Welcome and refreshments

1815 – 1900 Presentation A

1900 – 1915 Comfort break and refreshments

1915 – 2000 Presentation B

2000 – 2030 Networking reception

Please note that there is no charge for attending seminars, but places are limited.

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For further information please contact bcseminars1@britishcouncil.org