Highlights from the Future of English Language Teaching Conference 2023

Each year, Trinity College London and Regent’s University London collaborate to put on the popular online Future of English Language Teaching Conference (FOELT).

Described by delegates as an annual ‘CPD highlight’, the event is open to English language professionals around the world at all stages in their careers. In 2023, over 3000 professionals from 124 countries reserved a spot to attend the 8th FOELT on Saturday, 10 June 2023. The conference included 25 breakout sessions, 2 pop-up sessions and 2 plenaries.

The breakout sessions during the conference were delivered by presenters from around the world, who discussed an array of topics on the following key themes:

• Young Learners
• Teacher Education
• English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
• Innovation and Technology

Notably, in 2023, the sessions covering the hot topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) proved to be very popular, including: ‘ChatGPT, Other Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Implications of GenAI for Teacher Education’ by Peter Bannister, Dr Alexandra Santamaría Urbieta and Dr Elena Alcalde Peñalver and ‘Artificial Intelligence in ELT: Utopia or Dystopia? Exploration of AI in ELT and Future Implications’ by Mark Osbourne.

English Language Teaching professionals were also able to join two thought-provoking and inspiring plenaries during the event:

‘Deconstruct Your Own Teaching!’, Chris Roland
Practical guidance for teachers on tweaking, tuning and recalibrating their instruction to give better language classes.

‘Developing Mediation Skills with Creative Texts’, Claudia Ferradas
Exploring the potential of short narratives, poems and video-poems as spaces to enlarge learners’ linguistic repertoire and develop mediation strategies

If you missed some or any of the sessions, you can view the recordings, the full programme, and information about the speakers here: https://resources.trinitycollege.com/foelt/events/2023