Watching myself present (1): waving my hands about

At the end of last week, I was sent the video recording of my presentation at IATEFL in Glasgow back in March. The nice folks at Collins (who the talk was for) wanted me to okay it before they put it up on digital media. It’s always odd watching yourself on video and although I’ve got a bit used to it lately (what with doing webinars), the process was still accompanied by various dismayed exclamations and covering of my face with my hands at the worst points! Everyone has their own personal cringe points – overly repeated phrases, silly facial expressions – for me it’s hand-waving. 

 

Way back when I did my very first conference presentation (at IATEFL in Dublin in 2000), I went on a two-day presentation skills course first. At the start of the course, we were each videoed doing a mini presentation, then we watched it back to see what we wanted to improve. For me, I decided I had to stop waving my hands around like a maniac – a habit, no doubt, picked up through years of EFL teaching and living in countries where I didn’t speak the language very well! So with the course tutor, we worked on tactics that would keep my hands a bit under control. We finally settled on clasping my hands in front of me while I spoke. When it got to the end-of-course video presentation though, the results were absolutely hilarious … yes, I kept my hands clasped in front of me, but it didn’t stop me waving them about like some kind of demented rumba routine! I decided at that point that maybe it was better to just be myself, to stop worrying about the hands and just do my own thing.

In the intervening years though, I fear the hand-waving’s become more exaggerated without me noticing. Watching back my presentation, it looked like I was conducting the whole thing in sign language! Eva, my contact at Collins, very kindly said in response to my emailed reaction; “I think your hands just show that you’re passionate about what you’re talking about”. Personally though, I think it’s something I need to get under control and I’m going to be making a concerted effort to cut it down. I’ll let you know how I get on …

Watch the video and judge for yourself here: Breaking down the AWL - IATEFL 2012
 

Glasgow 2012

I'm just settling back at my desk, and ploughing through my inbox, after an absolutely exhausting, but incredibly useful time at the IATEFL conference in Glasgow last week. There's so much I could say about what was a very intense week, but I have a big backlog of work to get on with, so here's just a summary.

Getting out there:

As a freelancer working away at my desk, my days generally follow a fairly low-key sort of routine, so to suddenly find myself out all day (Tues started at 9am and finished around midnight!), surrounded by people; chatting, having meetings, going to sessions and socialising in the evenings was a radical change of pace and absolutely shattering! It also made a really nice change though and it was lovely to be so sociable. I caught up with lots of people I know, collected over 20 years in ELT. A surprisingly large number of old teaching colleagues from my early days in Athens and Prague now seem to work for ELT publishers, then there were folks from my time in Cambridge (working in-house at CUP) and a myriad of other people who I've worked with and for in 12+ years of freelancing. It's lovely to catch up with old friends, but it's also incredibly good for business too; renewing old contacts, chatting about what I'm doing and what they're doing and crucially, about what what we might be able to work together on in the future.

Stirring the grey matter:

In amongst all the schmoozing, I did also get to a few sessions. After many years of IATEFL conferences, I tend to be quite selective, but I managed 3 or 4 sessions a day. I'm not going to run through a review of each thing I went to, but I think each one succeeded in sparking at least one new idea to take away with me. And oddly, it was some of the sessions that had the least impact at the time that have lingered and been pondered on the most since.

The talk:

I think my talk on Thursday morning went okay - after I'd worked out what to do with a radio mic when you're wearing a dress with no waistband!! It was a fairly straightforward, academic sort of presentation, describing how we went about selecting and grading vocabulary for the COBUILD Key Words For IELTS series. I talked through my slides without missing out anything major, I waved my hands about as usual, but remembered not to wander around too much for the cameraman filming the session.

I noticed a few members of the audience smiling and nodding in recognition at various points, but when I got to the end, I wasn't altogether sure how it'd gone down. I finished in good time, so I rather nervously invited questions. I say 'nervously' because at several of the sessions I'd been to, especially the larger ones, invitations for questions had just been met by a general shuffling and people starting to leave. So I was relieved when a good sprinkling of hands went up and we had a good 10 minutes of really interesting questions. Afterwards, a couple of people commented that I dealt well with some tricky questions, but actually, I think it was the part I enjoyed most. It's quite difficult to prepare a talk at something like IATEFL where your audience is likely to be a mix of fellow (and rival!) publishers and writers, along with some 'real' teachers from a huge range of backgrounds. So it's really nice to get a bit of proper interaction and a chance to talk about the things that are really of interest to the people there.

Thank you to everyone who came along and to the lovely folks from Collins ELT who helped it all run smoothly. If you're interested, my PowerPoint slides and the handout to go with my talk are now available on the Glasgow online website. I understand the video of the talk will be edited over the next couple of weeks and may well end up on a website - I'll post the link if and when.

IATEFL tea

I'm just getting myself packed to head up to Glasgow this afternoon for the annual IATEFL conference. It's at least my 10th time at the conference and over the years, I've developed a few strategies to make what can be a bit of a hectic week run more smoothly. As a bit of a tea addict, my top tip is to take a small flask so you can have a decent cup of tea to slurp on through the morning rather than relying on dodgy conference centre coffee!

Once again this year, I've booked an apartment for the week rather than a hotel. It's meant to have a 'kitchenette' which I'm hoping at least means a kettle for morning tea-making. And although it's a bright sunny morning here in Bristol, I'm packing plenty of warm layers, scarf, hat and gloves ... it is Glasgow after all!

I'm really looking forward to catching up with lots of people through the week, hopefully going to some interesting talks and of course, speaking myself on Thursday morning - Breaking down the AWL: selecting and grading academic vocabulary - 10.25am, room Alsh 2. See you there?