Málfríður - 15.05.1993, Blaðsíða 24

saving scheme for the teacher,
but it seems a principled app-
roach to getting students invol-
ved in being critical of their own
writing.
What discussion topics are
left once you’ve done the
meaning of life?
The other really worthwhile
talk I went to was aimed at the
teaching of very advanced stu-
dents. Katie Gray, who teaches
at Stirling University in Scotland,
was faced with the problem of
finding material for a general
English class which was sup-
posed to involve plenty of di-
scussion. As her students had all
talked the abortion, women’s
rights, politics type subjects to
death she decided to go for a
much narrower area of interest,
namely translation. The aim was
not to learn to translate —
indeed no translation as such
was ever done in class. Instead
she used a course on the general
theory of translation as a way of
creating discussion — and it
worked extremely well.
Is IATEFL really worth the
effort?
IATEFL conferences these
days are pretty ceaseless pu-
nishment — there is not even a
lunch break and you have to
miss a talk if you want to grab a
bite to eat. After trying the Lille
University food the first day I de-
cided that there was more nou-
rishment in the average talk and
missed lunch thereafter. I there-
fore attended at least ten other
talks. Indeed I have bits of paper
to prove it with a line or two of
enthusiastic scrawl before I gave
up in realization that this was
not going to be all it was cracked
up to be. But of course one of
the good things about IATEFL is
that it is a free market — anyone
can have a go and you make
your choice and vote with your
feet if it’s awful (and you are
smart enough to get a seat by
the door).
A criticism of IATEFL as an or-
ganization has always been that
the core of its members are nat-
ive speaker teachers of English
working in the private language
school business. This criticism
still holds true to a certain ex-
tent, but it was encouraging to
see much more representation
from national state school sys-
tems, particularly from Eastern
Europe and the Baltic states. At
its best IATEFL is a very useful
forum for meeting teachers of
English from all over the world
— as with all conferences some
of the most enlightening ideas
come out of informal chats at
the bar rather than from the of-
ficial talks and workshops.
Níck Héinnigan var stundakennari
við HÍ og KHÍ
Þýska bókasafnið
Goethe Institut
Tryggvagötu 26
101 Reykjavík
Sími 91-16061
Stærsta safn þýskra bóka á íslandi
Menningarmiðstöð Sambandslýðveldisins Þýskalands
Myndbönd, tónbönd, kennsluefni fyrir þýskukennslu
Dagblöð og tímarit
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Opið mánudaga til fimmtudaga frá 14.00-18.00
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