Bradley Horn, RELO
Brad Horn is the Regional English Language Officer (RELO) for the Southern Cone and is based at the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile. In the course of his career as a diplomator (a diplomat and educator), Brad has worked with teachers and students of English in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, the United States, and, most recently, South America. He holds an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language from Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Northern Arizona University. His main areas of professional interest and expertise are language policy, assessment, technology-enhanced language learning, and writing and literacy instruction.
Game-based Learning & Trace Effects
Who says games have to be a waste of time? This presentation gives a very brief overview of the emerging field of game-based language learning by discussing several positive aspects of video games that should inform effective language instruction. The presenter then provides an introduction to Trace Effects, the U.S. State Department’s new online immersive video game designed to support the learning of English as a foreign language.
Using the Corpus of American English to Teach (Real) Grammar and Lexis
This presentation introduces teachers to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), a free online corpus comprising over 400 million words of text. After demonstrating how to conduct basic searches with the corpus, the presenter will show some ways in which teachers of English might use COCA in the classroom to support student acquisition of real-world grammar and lexis.