BELTA Day 2025 Plenary speaker
Plenary speaker
Grzegorz Śpiewak
Plenary topic
How learning happens – and why you should care
Biographical information
Teacher of English with nearly 30 years’ experience, academic consultant, ELT project manager, teacher trainer, international conference speaker, author. A former academic lecturer and deputy director for English Teaching & CLIL at the Department of English of Warsaw University. An on-line tutor on MA TESOL programme, The New School for Social Research, New York City.
Currently affiliated with Macmillan Education, as Head ELT Consultant for Central & Eastern Europe and a key teacher trainer, and with DOS-ELTea – an independent teacher development centre, as its co-founder & president. An Honorary President and advisory board member of IATEFL Poland.
Winner of EDU-Inspiracje 2013 award for ‘deDOMO – English for Parents’ project; winner of European Language Label award 2016 for ‘Youngster’ project; shortlisted for British Counsil ELTON – Innovation Award 2016 for ‘Teacher Trainer Academy‘ programme.
Abstract
My starting point in this talk will be a brief reflection on the numerous publications, both academic and popular, heralding the advent of ‘the new learner’ – a native inhabitant of the digital sphere, brought up on a diet of fast-flowing, often superficial information, and subjected to the ever-increasing pressures on his or her attention.
This, arguably, poses a rather urgent question for any educator: what sort of an overall, informed response should we take to these new learners, including the choice of pedagogical strategies and methods as well as key teaching and learning tools. Fortunately, our understanding of the realities of learning has seen a major boost in recent years, owing to fascinating discoveries, in cognitive science and related fields, regarding how learning actually happens and how it can be genuinely advanced. In the second part of the talk I’ll briefly review some of these key findings, particularly as they impact on short- and long-term retention, depth of information processing, and potential development of higher-order thinking skills.
The third part of the talk will focus on implications for and potential applications to a modern foreign language classroom. We’ll explore several ways in which great teachers can empower their new learners to learn meaningfully and effectively, and thus shape their futures, academic, professional and personal.