For those who were unable to attend, we are pleased to offer recordings of the conference, which took place on June 24, 2023.
By paying for a ticket and leaving contact information, you will get access to the conference materials, including the presentations from our esteemed speakers as well as video recordings of all the insightful sessions.
Minor Things that Make Major Changes
Punctuation matters
with Svetlana Suchkova
(Ph.D. is an associate professor, teacher trainer, and materials developer. Currently, she directs the Academic Writing Center at the HSE)
Teaching Soft Skills in English
with Tatiana Golechkova
(Department Coordinator at New Economic School, Moscow, Skolkovo, CELTA, DELTA, PhD in Cognitive Linguistics)
Organisational patterns that will take your writing up a notch
with Alena Nikitina
(TKT 1-3, CLIL, CELTA, CPE holder, EFL teacher, author and co-author of 3 textbooks, course designer)
About the Speakers
Svetlana Suchkova
Svetlana Suchkova is an associate professor, teacher trainer, and materials developer. Currently, she directs the Academic Writing Center at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. She holds a PhD degree in philology. She authored and co-authored a number of EFL course books for Russian university students and researchers, among them English for Academics series (CUP, 2014, 2015) and How to write a research article (Nauka, 2020). She has participated at numerous national and international conferences with presentations and workshops, used to edit Scopus-indexed The Journal of AsiaTEFL. Her areas of expertise are academic writing, writing for research and publication purposes, public speaking, and teacher training.
Tatiana Golechkova
Tatiana Golechkova
Tatiana Golechkova is an EFL teacher and teacher trainer. She is Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Languages, New Economic School, Moscow. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Linguistics and full Cambridge Delta. She has broad experience in teaching English for Academic Purposes, Business English, Soft Skills in English to a range of students and academics. Her areas of special interest are strategies for effective communication, genre features of English texts, emailing, lecturing in English, and developing learner autonomy. She has presented and run workshops at several national and international conferences, including NATE, BKC TT, IATEFL and BALEAP.
Tatiana Golechkova is an EFL teacher and teacher trainer. She is Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Languages, New Economic School, Moscow. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Linguistics and full Cambridge Delta. She has broad experience in teaching English for Academic Purposes, Business English, Soft Skills in English to a range of students and academics. Her areas of special interest are strategies for effective communication, genre features of English texts, emailing, lecturing in English, and developing learner autonomy. She has presented and run workshops at several national and international conferences, including NATE, BKC TT, IATEFL and BALEAP.
Alena Nikitina
Alena Nikitina is an EFL teacher with more than 20 years of experience (with 13 years at RUDN University, Moscow). She has been working as a freelance teacher for the last 2 years.
Alena is a TKT 1-3, CLIL, CELTA, CPE holder, an author and co-author of 3 textbooks, a course designer, and a conference speaker (Meaningful Weekend 2021, #YarConf22).
She has conducted 8 online marathons on CPE writing.
Alena is a TKT 1-3, CLIL, CELTA, CPE holder, an author and co-author of 3 textbooks, a course designer, and a conference speaker (Meaningful Weekend 2021, #YarConf22).
She has conducted 8 online marathons on CPE writing.
About the Workshops
Punctuation matters
The workshop is focused on basic punctuation conventions in American writing culture. Unlike Russian punctuation, there are no rules carved in stone in English. The punctuation usage largely depends on the writer’s intention, language variant, and style guidelines. It is important that we explore this very complicated issue to get the message across clearly. Punctuation matters as it may change the meaning of the text completely. Participants will learn basic rules and do a lot of exercises. Come to have fun while playing with punctuation marks.
Does that answer your question, or teaching soft skills in English
Soft skills are an essential part of communication. Unfortunately, they are not always well presented in language coursebooks, so we often have to supplement them or even create materials of our own.
In this session, we will speak about designing materials using the example of important skills of handling problematic questions (e.g. during a Q&A session after a presentation, job interview, seminar). We will explore the causes of the difficulties and single out sub-skills that enable us to deal with those problems.
We will discuss communicative strategies for overcoming difficulties in Q&A and the appropriate functional expressions. We will analyse a range of language means that can help us to be respectful to the questioner, not to lose face in the stressful situation, and to seem knowledgeable even when we don’t have the answer.
Then, we will look at ways to teach these skills to our students.
Finally, we will summarise the principles of designing successful soft skills materials that can be applied to a variety of skills and language teaching contexts
Organisational patterns that will take your writing up a notch
Writing well is no mean feat. If you want to write impressively not only for exams but also creatively, you are supposed to consciously use some rhetorical resources and syntactic means which will help you effectively express complex ideas and by doing so, achieve a profound effect on your reader. In the workshop, we will practice three organisational patterns that will help you organise your ideas elegantly and, once mastered, will add flair to your writing style.
The workshop is focused on basic punctuation conventions in American writing culture. Unlike Russian punctuation, there are no rules carved in stone in English. The punctuation usage largely depends on the writer’s intention, language variant, and style guidelines. It is important that we explore this very complicated issue to get the message across clearly. Punctuation matters as it may change the meaning of the text completely. Participants will learn basic rules and do a lot of exercises. Come to have fun while playing with punctuation marks.
Does that answer your question, or teaching soft skills in English
Soft skills are an essential part of communication. Unfortunately, they are not always well presented in language coursebooks, so we often have to supplement them or even create materials of our own.
In this session, we will speak about designing materials using the example of important skills of handling problematic questions (e.g. during a Q&A session after a presentation, job interview, seminar). We will explore the causes of the difficulties and single out sub-skills that enable us to deal with those problems.
We will discuss communicative strategies for overcoming difficulties in Q&A and the appropriate functional expressions. We will analyse a range of language means that can help us to be respectful to the questioner, not to lose face in the stressful situation, and to seem knowledgeable even when we don’t have the answer.
Then, we will look at ways to teach these skills to our students.
Finally, we will summarise the principles of designing successful soft skills materials that can be applied to a variety of skills and language teaching contexts
Organisational patterns that will take your writing up a notch
Writing well is no mean feat. If you want to write impressively not only for exams but also creatively, you are supposed to consciously use some rhetorical resources and syntactic means which will help you effectively express complex ideas and by doing so, achieve a profound effect on your reader. In the workshop, we will practice three organisational patterns that will help you organise your ideas elegantly and, once mastered, will add flair to your writing style.
