In July, we held our annual Better Learning Conference at Robinson College, Cambridge. Herbert Puchta spoke about how developing executive brain functions in ELT can help prepare young learners and teenagers for tomorrow’s world.
Herbert holds a PhD in ELT Pedagogy, was Professor of English at the Teacher Training University in Graz, Austria and is a well-known plenary speaker at numerous international conferences. He was also President of IATEFL, the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.
For more than three decades, Herbert has done research into the practical application of findings from cognitive psychology and brain research to the teaching of English as a foreign language. Herbert has also co-authored numerous course books as well as articles and resource books.
In order to be able to succeed in a fast-changing world, we need a fundamental set of mental skills or ‘executive functions’ that enable us to plan, focus and juggle multiple tasks successfully. These skills have been defined as flexible attention, working memory and inhibitory control.
The bad news is that (as far as we can tell from current knowledge), nobody is born with those skills. The good news is that they can be developed in the course of a child’s education.
In his talk, Herbert discusses what educational managers can do to help language teachers contribute to the development of the child and teenager’s executive functions so they can utilise their cognitive potentials more effectively, have fun learning and therefore become better language learners.
Watch the full recording of his talk here:
For other blogs topics from Herbert, check out Motivating teenage ELT students while teaching abroad.