Title: Devising learning strategies to motivate students to produce in the target language and fostering spontaneity in the language classroom
Presenter: Enrico Cecconi
Location: Zoom, Password: iwl

Abstract: 
When learning a foreign language, one of the most difficult skills to acquire is spontaneity. How can we engage students in the classroom and move them from a guided oral production to a more natural and intuitive, unplanned and spontaneous discourse? I will present a series of activities that can be effectively used to boost students’ confidence and proficiency in integrated skills and improve their speaking skills. Attention will be paid especially to the cognitive aspects activated during the students’ learning process, stimulated by oriented tasks aimed at “doing with the language” and collaborating with peers. The presentation will demonstrate how the students, in their acquisition process, will be strategically guided to “notice” and recognize language elements and to produce language from “modelling” to spontaneity. They will be asked first to reconstruct missing information together, through pair/-activities or group activities by following specific patterns. In this way they will improve self-esteem and individual accountability and will increase their imagination and creativity using the target language. I will then provide some advice on how to use narrative, storytelling and theatre techniques to pave the way to more authentic communicative tasks for real life use. Language is now not completely pre-packaged and pre-planned: it becomes transformative, unpredictable, dynamic and fun!

Bio: 
Enrico Cecconi is Language Co-ordinator in Italian in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies (PoLIS) at the University of Bath (UK). He has a major role in the design, coordination and delivery of Italian language programmes and he is responsible for the management and development of the Italian team within PoLIS for Year 1 and Year 2. He also leads a focus group for ab initio languages in the department. He has taught international students for over fifteen years. He has worked at the University of Cardiff and New York University and on the programmes of other American universities in Florence (AEF in association with Elon University, ISI Florence International Studies Institute). He also works as a teacher trainer and is involved in workshops in Italy and abroad, contributing to sharing and disseminating knowledge of language pedagogy.  He collaborates with Laboratorio Interculturale di Venezia, serving as a resource for LabCom (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice). His research interests are in language education, language learning and teacher reflection, methodology and didactics of foreign language teaching and language and intercultural communication in educational contexts.