Fiona Copland and Sue Garton: Factors influencing success in teaching English in state primary schools

Drawing on findings from a mixed methods research project investigating global practices in teaching English to young learners, this webinar identifies key factors affecting the implementation of primary school English.

About the webinar

The widespread introduction of English language teaching in primary schools is a worldwide phenomenon. Drawing on findings from a mixed methods research project investigating global practices in teaching English to young learners, this webinar identifies key factors affecting the implementation of primary school English. In particular, the webinar focuses on factors that have previously been identified in the research literature as well as a number of new issues identified by teachers in our study. The speakers illustrate their talk with a number of examples taken from data, which show how primary English can be successful.

About the speakers

Fiona Copland is Professor of TESOL at University of Stirling, Scotland.  She has taught English and worked with English language teachers in Nigeria, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK and has run teacher training courses and MA programmes in a number of British institutions. Fiona has a range of research interests from talk in post observation feedback conferences to teaching English to primary school children. She has published a number of articles and books including Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners with Sue Garton, and Linguistic Ethnography: Collecting, analysing and presenting data, with Angela Creese.

Sue Garton is Director of Postgraduate Programmes in English at Aston University, Birmingham UK. She has been an English language teacher and teacher educator for nearly 30 years. In her current role she works with teachers from all over the world, tutoring on masters programmes in TESOL and supervising PhDs in TESOL-related topics. Her research interests include language policy and planning, language teacher education and classroom discourse. She has published books and articles in the area of English language teaching, including From Experience to Knowledge in ELT with Julian Edge in the Oxford Handbooks for Teachers series. She is currently series editor, with Keith Richards, of a major new 15-volume series called International Perspectives on ELT published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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