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The The principal undertaking of our association is the organisation of our annual conference for teachers of English. This is held every year in the month of September in Granada. The conference lasts three days and attracts people from all over Andalusia and far beyond with speakers from all corners of the world. Apart from giving advice on and demonstrations of practical classroom activities, the talks represent the major tendencies in our profession and cover all the important aspects of ELT teaching.

The most prominent speakers are internationally renown in the world of English teaching. These are some of the ones you could have listened to in just the last four years:

Gwyneth Fox, Juliane House, Jennifer Jenkins, Alan Maley, John McRae, Peter Medgyes, David Nunan, Luke Prodromou, Herbert Puchta, Mario Rinvolucri, Barbara Seidlhofer, Paul Seligson (every year!), Scott Thornbury, Adrian Underhill, and Henry Widdowson

Our annual conference 2004 will be held from 2-4 September at the Campus Univeritario, Fuente Nueva, the same venue as in the last two years. Its motto is "Do It Whose Way?".

There's CLT, there's TPR, there's TBL, and there's CALL. There are humanistic approaches, suggestopaedia, the Silent Way, community language learning. There's also self-directed learning, data-driven learning, and discourse-based learning. There is or was the direct method, the grammar translation method, and the audiolingual method. What about the Callan method, the bilingual method, the reproductive-creative method? The Lexical Approach. As well as communicative, there are structural and cognitive methodologies. There are or should be culturally appropriate methodologies. And then, of course, there's eclecticism. There's even anti-method and post-method theories of teaching!

None of these ways of teaching a foreign language have actually prevented the learner learning them. All of them are doubtless valid for some learners in some situation at some stage of their learning process.

It's a commonplace to say that teachers have to find their own way. But doing it our own way is no great virtue if it means doing it arbitrarily, without taking into account the knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and insight accumulated over the years by colleagues and fellow professionals in our own and related fields. That is what the GRETA conference is about and why, after twenty years, it is still going strong, capable of surprising, stimulating, and inspiring its attendees, many of whom have been coming back for more year after year. Sharing their ideas, always open to constructive suggestions, and ready to try out new techniques and approaches if they seem plausible.

Armed with the enriching experience of the annual GRETA conference, we'll return to the classroom to carry on doing it our own way. But surer of ourselves now that our teaching has been infused with the best ideas of our professional community.

The Conference will be opened by Professor Michael Hoey, Baines Professor of English Language and Director of Applied English Language Studies Unit, University of Liverpool, who is probably best known for his work as chief advisor to the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners and to the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advancd Learners of American English. He is also chief advisor to Macmillan and Bloomsbury Publishers for other dictionary publications as well as co-editor of a series of corpus linguistics monographs for Routledge. Before coming to GRETA, he has lectured at well over 100 universities in at least 32 different countries.

The closing session will be given by the ever-popular Paul Seligson who has spoken every year at GRETA for the last five years during which time he has given over a dozen different talks, most of them specially prepared for our conference. This year he will offer us the results of his 25 years' of observations of and reflections on the practice of classroom teaching.

The conference will start this year on Thursday afternoon. The opening session is at 5p.m. Registration starts at 4p.m. It ends on Saturday evening at 9.15 when the (imaginary) curtain goes down on Interacting's interactive drama "Around the World". Burlington Books are bringing us their popular cultural Pub Quiz again but this time at an exciting and glamorous new venue!

The traditional GRETA conference programme will be interrupted on Saturday morning, when attendees will be offered a choice between a Cine Forum and the Great Debate. The Cine Forum, presented by GRETA President Mª Mercedes García Guerrero, centres on the film The Truman Show, while the Great Debate, chaired by Anthony Bruton, poses the question: Is Earlier Better? when it comes to starting to learn a foreign language. As well as conference attendees, representatives from the education authorities, the trade unions, the political parties, and the local press and TV will be invited to take part in the debate and express their opinions.

It is still - as of 6th June - possible to submit a proposal for a workshop of 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon at 5.15p.m. or for a 60-minute presentation at 1p.m. or 4p.m. on Saturday. Interested? Contact infogreta@yahoo.es as soon as possible.

If you would like to attend our conference or if you would like to make a contribution of any kind, we will be pleased to hear from you.


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GRETA
C/Natalio Rivas nº 1, 1º izq Oficina 2
18001 GRANADA
Spain

Teléfono: 958 20 20 11
Fax: 958 28 32 46

infogreta@yahoo.es

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