Workshops onIntroducing anInterculturalDimension intoTeaching English in China

Hosted by the School of English for Specific Purposes

The purpose in these five workshops is to enable those who teach English as the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening to enrich their teaching methods by developing learners’ intercultural competences as well as linguistic and communicative competences. The workshop sessions will respect the four language skills as the starting point and basis, and use a combination of lecture, discussion and pair or group work. Professor Byram will start from existing teaching materials and expect participants to contribute from their experience. There are no ready-made answers to how to enrich and complement existing approaches. So the emphasis will be on participants and Professor Byram himself to produce answers together, which can be the basis for future teaching as well as being useful for the immediate materials that participants use. The workshops will take place in the lecture hall on the 4th floor in the library from March 21 to 26 except March 25 in Room 1147 in BFSU Int’l Building on West Campus.

Guest Speaker’s Bio

Michael Byram ‘read’ languages at King’s College Cambridge, earned a PhD in Danish Literature, and then taught French and German in secondary and adult education. At Durham University since 1980, now Professor Emeritus, he is also Guest Professor at the University of Luxembourg. He has trained teachers and researched linguistic minorities and foreign language education. His most recent monograph isFrom Foreign Language Education to Education for Intercultural Citizenship(2008). In the 2000s he was Adviser to the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe and, with Lynne Parmenter, editedThe Common European Framework of Reference. The globalisation of language education policy(2012). He is now involved in the CoE’s work on Competence for Democratic Culture. He is the editor ofRoutledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning,the second edition being produced with Adelheid Hu (2013) and currently being translated into Chinese.