The 9th National Conference–ELTAM Day 2023 – Activate – Make a Difference INTEGRATING GLOBAL ISSUES IN ENGLISH/FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING (Module 3) was traditionally held at the Faculty of Philology in Niksic. The event gathered 166 language teaching professionals from all levels and different institutions: 141 Montenegrin participants and speakers and 25 international participants, speakers or guests.
The participants of this year’s conference were greeted and welcomed by Ms. Milka Cerovic, the Vice President of the English Language Teachers’ Association of Montenegro who also addressed all those institutions and organizations which have been highly supportive and valuable for the conference.
Furthermore, the participants were welcomed by Mr. Micah Risher, the Regional English Language Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Mr. Igor Lakic, the Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Niksic, and Mr. Goran Drobnjak, director general of the Directorate for international cooperation, European integrations and EU Funds who wished all the attendees to have enjoyable and productive time, while also encouraging teachers to share practices and take valuable steps towards making the teaching profession more interesting, fun and effective
Conference participants enjoyed and learned from remarkable plenary speakers. Through a very informative plebary session, Mr. Hansley Cazeau, U.S. English Language Fellow in Montenegro, talked about the usage of the app called ChatGPT and he highlighted the importance of looking for inaccurate information, and explained how valuable it is to require our students to cite their sources and to submit the drafts. Ms. Billie Jago was the second plenary speaker and held a session called “What is mediation and how can we use it in our ELT classrooms?” Our dear presenter explained what mediation is, as well as what meditation descriptors are. She gave highly meaningful insights on how to identify the mediation skills our learners have already been improving in our classroom. The third plenary speaker was Ms. Marija Mijuskovic from the University of Montenegro. Ms. Mijuskovic reminded us, once again, that teaching skills are essential for all those teachers who want to be effective educators and, more importantly, who want to influence their learners, to make a difference in their lives, education and learning. During the plenary, teaching skills and their importance were observed with a particular focus on what the learners can get with the skills provided by the teacher.
Apart from three plenary sessions, teachers had the possibility to choose between numerous workshops, presentations and demo classes. There were 7 workshops, 4 demo classses and 8 presentations.
The U.S. Embassy in Podgorica, the Regional English Language Office, Publishing house ‘Pearson’ Belgrade, American Corner Podgorica, Bookstore ‘Strana knjiga’ Niksic, Bookstore ‘Educational Centre’ Podgorica, Bookstore ‘Tamigo’ Niksic, Private school ‘Waves’ Budva, Sharing One Language SOL, and bakery ‘Bread i Pita’ apart from being our valuable supporters for quite some time, were kind enough to give out some specially chosen gifts to our teachers.
