On Saturday April 25th the Belgian English Language Teaching Association (BELTA) hosted its third annual BELTA Day. The conference serves as an opportunity for English teachers and those interested in teaching English to share ideas, strategies, and network. As in years past, the event organizer, John Arnold, extended an invitation to the Fulbright Belgium ETAs to speak at the conference. Katherine and I proposed a talk that centered on comparative teaching strategies between Belgium and the United States with regard to social and cultural differences. Beyond being able to present our experience and opinions with an engaged audience, BELTA Day allowed us to informally meet other English language educators to share stories. With attendee demographics ranging from students training to become teachers to seasoned veterans of language instruction, BELTA Day engaged a diverse, excited group of educators.
The day began with a plenary session presented by Hugh Dellar, who spoke on the status and role of technology in the classroom. Mr. Dellar offered his interpretation of a question I believe teachers constantly face in our hyper-globalized, technologically-centered world: pen and paper or screen and keyboard? With endless opportunities for students to engage in the learning process through digital means, teachers must always maintain a focus on the ultimate learning goal. With this in mind, educators must weigh the benefits of projecting a textbook page on a SmartBoard versus having students blow the dust off their grammar portfolio. If technology advances the learning objectives within the classroom, it can be beneficial. Mr. Dellar provided an enthusiastic opening to BELTA Day as well as remarks that I believe stayed with participants as they continued throughout the program.
As breakout sessions began, Katherine and I got to present about our Fulbright experience. Although our grant duties have us working about 50 kilometers from one another, we have the unique benefit of experiencing two different sides of Belgian culture. We offered our observations from our time in Brussels and Ghent through a comparative lens, using previous teaching experiences in the United States as our point of departure. We wanted to discuss how social and cultural factors such as immigrant communities and the position of English as a global language effect English language pedagogy.
We gave significant attention to a particular observation we have both made while in Belgium: the perceived value judgment of different varieties of English. An American accent can be occasionally met uncertainty in the eyes of many students – will this ruin my practiced British accent? What if I lose points on the test because I write colour and not color? We got to engage our audience by leading a discussion that revolved around the question ‘why do European students value one ‘English’ over others?’ and in the end is there an actual difference? Most importantly, we discussed the idea that Americans practice foreign language in a theoretical bubble, whereas Europeans are pushed to high levels of English proficiency due to global circumstances. We both thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to present and lead a discussion that was interesting to us.
The day continued with plenary sessions on critical thinking skills in the classroom as well as other breakout sessions with topics ranging from English pronunciation in a global classroom to collaborative writing in the English classroom. The day ended with a swapshop, where participants got to share thoughts on various breakout sessions and recap some valuable teaching strategies we may have gleamed from our colleagues. Katherine and I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank John Arnold for the invitation to speak and BELTA for putting on such an engaging conference.