Looking for a speaker for your conference?

Looking for teacher training for your staff or yourself?

Looking to network with the fastest growing PLN+ in EFL?

Looking to join with other Independent Authors & Publishers?

Get in touch. I'm available.

AT A GLANCE

International Plenary, Keynote, Presentation and Workshop Speaker with over 100 appearances throughout the world such as: Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Ecuador, England, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kuwait, Malta, Netherlands, Romania, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Scotland, Serbia.
IATEFL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE SPEAKER 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
IATEFL BUSINESS ENGLISH SIG Joint Web & Online Coordinator
EFLtalks Founder and Host
VISUAL ARTS CIRCLE Online and Video Coordinator
INDEPENDENT AUTHORS & PUBLISHERS Cofounder with Dorothy Zemach
2016 British Council ELTon Award for Innovation in Teacher Development Finalist
BRAZ-TESOL BUSINESS ENGLISH SIG Founder and President
Author and Coauthor of 11 ELT Specialty eBooks
Contributor to Humanising Language Teaching Magazine, IATEFL BESIG Business Issues, EFL Magazine, The Teacher Magazine, ELTAF Newsletter, IATEFL Hungary Newsletter, TESOL Macedonia Thrace Northern Greece Newsletter, BRAZ-TESOL Newsletter, Teach-In Education blog, Teacherpreneur blog, Clark & Miller blog, Teaching English Online blog, Weekly English Workout blog, BrELT blog.
Multiple British Council Blog of the Month short listings
Teacher training workshops for IATEFL Poland, International House Bydgoszcz, International House Torun, University of Gdansk School of Economics, e-TEE Conference for Engineering, Brazil Binational Conference
British Council Selection for IELTS Champion Program for Rio de Janeiro
Proctor and examiner for LSAT, CAMLA, Michigan ECCE and ECPE exams
NeuroLanguage Coach
TALKS
BUSINESS ENGLISH:
You Have no Business teaching Business English - or do you?
Today’s Business English clients are much more demanding than in the past. Many are making more and more demands on the profile of their teachers. Must they be native speakers? Must they have a business background? Should they have business experience? Is being a good English teacher enough? The presentation will present ideas based upon years of experience dealing with this dilemma and the answers just might surprise you. It will be covering some uncommon and often overlooked aspects of Business English teaching that are should be reevaluated before ever offering to teach a business client.
Classroom to Boardroom: How to Secure your Status as a BE Professional
As the market has been challenging, many talented and devoted teachers have decided to enter the world of Business English without any background, training or plan on how to make a successful go of it. Those of us who have business backgrounds, or experience teaching BE (Business English) shutter at the thought that teachers think they can just enter the market blindly. This influx of “new professionals” is extremely dangerous to those of us whom have taught, trained, coached and made a living at providing quality classes to meet the needs of today’s business professional.
That’s What I Said, but Not What I Meant
Competency in intercultural communication amongst international companies, groups and organizations has been challenging as more and more diverse teams form. This talk will look at some of the basic misunderstandings that have taken place within different groups of trained, expert educators, native and non-native alike, due to our own varying cultural backgrounds and offer up better methods to avoid potentially serious errors or miscommunications through examination of our own cultural voicing.
Customer Service with a Smile
One of the ways of impacting customer satisfaction and experience is customer service training. This presentation will demonstrate ways of teaching exemplary customer service through stories, facts and examples worldwide. Ideas will be discussed by showing sources and resources for finding and producing materials for the BE classroom and methods which you will find useful when training people for working in customer service through looking at aspects that matter in a global service industry.
Prepping Clients for Conference Calls
This presentation, based upon the 2017 short eBook by the speaker, is designed to help business English teachers, trainers and coaches help their clients prepare for and succeed in taking part in and making conference calls. The eBook link will be made available to all for free at the end of the session.
Get Off My Case (studies): Demystifying Case Studies
Those new to delivering Business English classes, and even many veterans, have doubts about using Case Studies and Frameworks in class. This presentation will help demystify and simplify these essential tools, so teachers feel comfortable and confident implementing these critical aspects in their own classrooms and offer take-aways for teachers to better prepare students with accuracy, fluency and confidence.
Intercultural Communication
This presentation will discuss many of the problems encountered today in communications due to differences in culture, context, base language and lack of confirmation in communications. Resources will be demonstrated along with ideas to correct these challenges.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
The False Prophets/Profits of ELT
A discussion about the latest trend in Social Media and Teacher Development; the self-acclaimed expert. Due to lack of students their own students and taking advantage of teachers trying to improve, a new breed of prophets has emerged with expensive courses which are nothing short of selling snake-oil. Not only is some of this advice wrong, but much of it is actually harmful to you, your business and your reputation.
The True Track to Teacherpreneurship (part 1)
With all these “teacher trainers” in the marketplace it has become difficult to see through all the hype and to really learn credible, business-oriented ideas to grow and thrive as a teaching professional. Real techniques and best practices for your business will be discussed shedding light on how professionals can stay professional in their own businesses.
Steps to Keeping the Business Alive (part 2)
A continuation of the discussion on how to maintain a successful freelance or small business without resorting to high pressure sales tactics and false promises.
Online Student Retention
We all know it’s hard to keep students. Working online brings new challenges to retention. The average dropout rate remains steadily at 60 % despite the best efforts of many. This discussion will demonstrate proven techniques for maintaining a higher retention rate online by focusing more on the customer experience.
Teaching Online
There is no mystery to teaching online, but there are some changes that need to be made in order to better facilitate learning. This discussion will help to make for a successful transition to the online world for classroom teachers starting out on the web.
Teaching 1-2-1
One-on-one teaching, whether face-2-face or online calls for different skills that bring all new aspects to personalized teaching. Some tips, tricks and ideas for being successful at it will be discussed.
Webiquette and Webinots
Now that most of us have built an online presence, it’s time to hone the impression that your demeanor is giving off. Simple but important aspects such as sound, lighting, background and connection will be discussed.
But You’re a Teacher: How to deal with learners who want it for free
With many of us now showing our presence online in social media, a new challenge has arisen. Students insist that we should help them for free because we are teachers. Steps to avoid the awkward “I do this for a living” argument will be discussed.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
IMAGES & FILMS:
Present Perfect(ly): Reworking Presentation Skills
Using imagery is an effective tool towards engagement, as well as to elicit production and interest. The mistakes we make though are causing our students and audience to lose focus and miss the point(s). Congesting the screen, making color, layout and content mistakes are not only failing the objective, but hindering the outcome. We are overusing technology to the point of Sensory Overload. This talk will show more effective methods for simplification and how to produce quality presentations.
Lights, Camera, Production: Student-made video projects to enhance speaking skills
Since 2007, I have been using student-made video projects to stimulate teenaged students to plan, script, film and present a variety of videos that have increased oral production, confidence and fluency through out-of-class assignments with varied subjects. This talk will outline the methodology, implementation and benefits. Examples will be shown.
ImageOUT: Rethinking the Image on the Screen
Screen Gemming: Rethinking the Image on the Screen
We all know that using imagery in the classroom is an effective tool towards learner engagement and production. Most of us use images daily to elicit production. The question is: are we using and presenting the image properly? Most teachers have been overloading the screen for years and not only are we not achieving the objective, we may actually be hindering the outcome that we are seeking. This talk will show simple and more effective methods for using images in the classroom by rethinking how we are producing our classroom materials.
Editing your Film Clips for Effectiveness
We are all guilty of showing video clips in the classroom that are too long. We must remember that the average learner tunes out after 30 -50 seconds. So why are we continuing to show long and drawn out, 5-minute videos and losing the attention when we could have easily cut out the useless scenes that don’t support the subject? Once we have lost the attention, we have lost the opportunity for engagement. This talk will show how and why to edit your videos into more productive and effective tools in the classroom while better delivering your point.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
GENERAL:
EFLtalks - teachers teaching teachers
For three years, EFLtalks has maintained its maxim of providing free teacher development to all existing, new and future ELT teachers worldwide regardless of country, affiliations or income. We have reached over a half-million viewers with our 10-minute “teachers teaching teachers” videos in over 200 countries and with our 200 speakers, 300 videos and over 50 hours of recordings have been viewed over one million times. We hope to inspire others to join in and get involved to continue building this innovative delivery of top-quality training to the world to those in need and not able to attend conferences.
Why aren’t they Speaking: Giving a New Voice to Adolescents
Irrelevant, outdated, unusable. These are words often voiced by teens when talking about their coursebook materials used today in the classroom. How can we help adolescents thrive in English while trying to engage them with materials that don’t touch their lives? This talk will show best practices in engagement strategies specifically designed for the adolescent to keep them interested, engaged, producing and learning language skills.
How to Survive as an Independent Author
“If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there, does it make a sound?” is an age-old question. Today, if an author writes a book and no one reads it, is it a success? With so many authors and publishers out there, these days it’s hard to stand out as an independent author. While many have the impression that they can just take a good idea and put it to pen, upload it to the internet and sit back and reap the riches, becoming a successful independent author is hard work. Writing the book is the easiest part. This talk will discuss the ups and downs to becoming an independent author and demonstrate the steps it takes to survive and hopefully thrive. We will look at: The idea, Developing, Writing, Editing, Cover design, Formatting, Where to sell it, Pricing, Marketing, Networking, Surviving and Is it for you?
Has Technology TECHen Over your Class?
Just because we have technology, why must we use it? This presentation will open a discussion on the overuse, misuse and abuse of technology in the classroom which sadly, seems to be the new trend. Many are turning to tech as a learning solution but are in fact turning off their learners through distractions and busy work and are actually making it more difficult for students to focus and learn.
Repurposing the Tech Tools We Already Have: Low-tech - High-value vs. Hi-tech - No-value
How to make the most out of tools we already have yet don’t think to use for building learner autonomy. Recording the 1st day, Videos, Podcasting for listening skills, YouTube for training.
The Good in 10-tions of Reading
This presentation will demonstrate 10 reasons that make reading so important for your students.
The Adult Voice
A discussion on the differences needed to be addressed with adult learners.
Put a Ring on It: Student Engagement
Better methods for increasing student engagement in the classroom or online.
Awakening Teens Autonomy: Why aren’t they Speaking?
A look at why teens aren’t engaged in class due to the lack of relevant subject matter, lack of intrinsic motivation and insistence on a one-size-fits-all approach.
ELF, Soft Skills and other Fake News
With everyone jumping on the bandwagon of what is “new” in teaching strategies, this discussion will visit some of the falsehoods that have been too quickly adopted, and too long supported.
How to Make Study a Habit
Ideas from the author’s book on how to help students become autonomous learners.
Teacher, Trainer, Mentor, Coach
A discussion about the different techniques of helping learners and why, when, where and how to use them effectively.
CLIL vs. ELT Unmasked
A discussion of the concept of CLIL with the mixed reality of why it isn’t working in most applications. Ideas for improving and supporting CLIL in use.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

WORKSHOPS
Designing Image Clusters to Trigger and Motivate Creative “Storybuilding”
This hands-on workshop will illustrate how to utilize collections of images to incite students to creatively produce their own stories using target vocabulary, grammar or structures. By using images to stimulate and unlock their imagination, students together will build their own verbal script in a captivating, entertaining and cooperative process.
Effective Practices for 1-2-1 Teaching
One-on-one teaching, whether face-2-face or online calls for different skills that bring all new aspects to personalized teaching. Some tips, tricks and ideas for being successful at it will be discussed.
PARSNIPit 1: Tastefully Discussing Religion in the Classroom
PARSNIPit 2: Tastefully Discussing Suicide in the Classroom

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EFLtalks LIVE
Let us provide the entertainment with
EFLtalks LIVE, an exciting live show produced on your stage by EFLtalkers with 5 in 5 LIVE.

SHARE THIS PAGE

Drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, suggestions or just to say hello.