This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
We may have become slightly conditioned by a lot of published course book material, which can often be bland - understandably, as it needs to appeal to a world market. Course book contributors can be told not to include 'PARSNIP's (politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, -isms and pork) (Flood, 2015), but, if we know our learners and their backgrounds, these topics can be the perfect wake-up call to help them confront stereotypes, find solutions to cultural or community difficulties or simply to engage more in learning.


Encouraged by the interest and response of learners, I have integrated materials from the wiki into CELTA training courses and presented at NATECLA and IATEFL conferences, to encourage other teachers to use global justice topics. This has really improved my confidence at presenting in public and making links with many other like-minded teachers. I used this Prezi: https://prezi.com/5dmozoesstjf/around-the-world-in-90- minutes/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy – you can see that these stories are helping to redress the imbalance in world news. Instead of learning about the developed, successful North, these stories are mainly from the “Global South”.


Finally, and maybe most importantly of all, we need to look after ourselves as teachers and find ways to maintain our energy and enthusiasm for teaching. Using these global justice topics and the wiki material has really helped me feel that I am constantly learning and working with materials that actually mean something, are up to date, and make me feel part of the real world. In developing my own confidence to be myself and bring issues that I think are really important into the classroom, I feel I have also developed the confidence of learners in my classes and been able to empower them to feel they have more of a place in the world.


References Davis, P. and Rinvolucri M. 1988. Dictation: New Methods, New Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press


Flood, A. 2015. Pigs won't fly in textbooks: OUP tells authors not to mention pork. The Guardian [online] [accessed 15/4/15] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/14/pigs-textbooks-oup-authors-pork-guidelines


Freire Institute 2015 [online] [accessed 15/4/15] Available from: http://www.freire.org/paulo-freire


Krashen, S. 2008. The Comprehension Hypothesis Extended. In T. Piske and M. Young-Scholten (Eds.) Input Matters in SLA. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Reflect. 2009. [online] [accessed 15/4/15] Available from: http://www.reflect-action.org/ Widdowson, H. G. 1979. Explorations in Applied Linguistics. Chapter 6, pp.75-85. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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