About Gary Anderson

Gary Anderson

Gary Anderson was Pedagogical Director of the language program of the former American Center in Paris, and President-elect of TESOL France when he joined Cambridge ELT as International Teacher Trainer based in Paris.

He has given talks in over 50 countries on five continents, including at TESOL International and IATEFL UK. In this blog, Gary writes about the events he attends and shares some of the ideas and tips that he gives in his talks.

Blog posts

Gary's upcoming travels

  • Romania: Cambridge Day, Bucharest; February 27
  • Poland: Workshops in Katowice, Krakow, Szczecin, Gdansk; March 10–17
  • Bosnia: Workshops in Mostar and Bijeljina; March 25–26
  • Croatia: Workshops in Slavonski Brod and Osijek; March 29–30
  • UK: IATEFL, Harrogate; April 7–11
  • Russia: Workshops in Moscow, Nizhni, Saratov; April 11–15
  • Belgium: Cambridge Day, Brussels; April 24
  • Netherlands: English for Schools Day, Utrecht; April 28

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On the Road with Gary in …Serbia

In Central and Eastern Europe, teachers are often invited to a 'summer school'
Usually held in a small resort or spa, near a lake, someplace cool
To mingle and exchange ideas in a relaxing residential retreat
Where all may share many a pedagogical and personal treat
Even sometimes an evening of wining, dining and dance
Before returning home and back-to-school after saying good-bye and thanks!

Teachers at the summer school

A big thank you to Branko Stojanovic, Cambridge ELT Sales and Marketing Representative for Serbia based in Belgrade, from me, my co-presenter Lynne Rushton, Cambridge ELT Young Learners Product Champion, and the 84 primary and secondary school teachers from around Serbia who attended the 'summer school' he organised over the pre- back-to-school August 21–23 weekend in the Elitte Hotel complex overlooking lake Palic in northern Serbia near Hungary.

Let's see, there was a welcoming reception on Friday evening, a gala dinner at a traditional Serbian farm in the country on Saturday night, a going-away champagne cocktail on Sunday—and, oh yes, there were a total of twelve talks and workshops.

So back to pedagogical matters. I gave six different talks including the opening plenary on 'What’s the buzz? Let's talk about what's happening in course books and stuff!' in which I aimed to provide an overview of pedagogical trends in ELT—buzzwords, if you will—including:

  • Multiple Intelligences
  • Inductive 'guided discovery' vs. deductive teaching
  • Common European Framework and Language Portfolios
  • A/Effective teaching
  • Corpus-informed materials
  • Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
  • Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Gary presents

Then throughout the rest of the weekend, Lynne and I showed how these pedagogical principles have been put into practice in Cambridge ELT materials: Kid's Box for Young Learners, MORE! for pre-adolescent 'tween-agers' (in 'upper primary' in Serbia) and English in Mind for teenagers in secondary school.

The teachers at this year's summer school in Serbia seemed to be most keen on ICT (or 'ELT into the Digital Age', the title of my other plenary during which we looked at the student and teacher resources available on the Cambridge ELT website) and on materials informed by the Cambridge International Corpus.

What about you? What would you add or delete from my shortlist of buzzwords in ELT?

Gary Anderson, Cambridge ELT International Teacher Trainer

P.S. Look forward to perhaps meeting some of you at a 'summer school' in your country next year. For now, good luck to all going back-to-school!