Matt Vesty, teacher trainer, IELTS expert (Birmingham, UK)

1. Going Global:
21st Century
Skills in the
ELT Classroom

3. What is important to our
students?
The following skills and competencies have been articulated within my
organization as priorities for employee development, talent management, and
succession planning in the next one to three years.
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly
Agree
Critical thinking 2.2% 8.6% 17.3% 36.4% 35.5%
Communication skills 2.0% 6.5% 15.9% 35.7% 39.9%
Collaboration / team building 2.1% 6.8% 18.5% 38.8% 33.8%
Creativity and innovation 2.9% 10.5% 22.8% 36.1% 27.7%

4. My organization makes an effort to assess these skills and competencies when
hiring new employees
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly
Agree
Critical thinking 1.9% 9.0% 20.0% 38.0% 31.1%
Communication skills 1.4% 5.8% 17.4% 43.0% 32.4%
Collaboration / team building 2.7% 10.0% 27.1% 39.4% 20.8%
Creativity and innovation 3.6% 10.7% 32.4% 34.5% 18.8%
What is important to our
students?

5. • Critical thinking and problem solving
• creativity and innovation
• collaboration, teamwork, and leadership
• cross-cultural understanding
• communication and media literacy
• computing and ICT literacy
• career and learning self-reliance
But what does this mean for language teaching?
What skills? And how do they fit
into ELT?

6. What skills? And how do they fit
into ELT?
Critical thinking
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity

7. 4Cs and digital tools
• BYOD (Bring you own device)?
• Rich or discrete content?
• Push content or pull content?
• Strategic use or discrete use?
• Consumption or production?

8. SAMR

9. Creative thinking in a nutshell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sahSAMj8OIY&t=68s

11. Remembering and
understanding

12. Applying and analyzing

13. Evaluating and creating

15. Perspectives
Situation: A company is deciding whether to move
its manufacturing base from the UK to India.
We are unlikely to locate to India as it’s too far away from our
main markets.
We might move to India because the labour costs are lower.
We might need to work in a different way to be successful in
India
It’d be a good idea because manufacturing methods are very
advanced in India.
Economic geographical technological cultural
Underline the words that gave you your answer

16. De Bono’s thinking hats
The Red Hat – Intuition,
feeling, emotions,
hunches
The White Hat – Information
available and needed. Facts.
Data.
The Black Hat – Caution,
difficulties, risks and
weaknesses
The Yellow Hat – Benefits,
value, positive aspects
The Blue Hat –
Managing the thinking,
summary
The Green Hat – Creativity,
alternatives, possibilities

17. Thinking Hat Activities
Essay Writing
Assign students a coloured hat each. Ask them to research arguments
that their coloured hats can make in relation to a particular topic using
Quora.com, Wikipedia, or Youtube.
Before the next class, all ss with one hat collaborate to produce a
paragraph according to a particular coloured hat on Google docs.
In the next class, lead a discussion about the structure of the essay.
Give language feedback
Students collaborate in groups (each student with a different colour) to
produce a first draft on Google docs. Send by email to T.
Redefinition Modification
Augmentation Substitution

18. Thinking Hat Activities
Pyramid discussions
Give students a hat for a particular discussion. Put
all the hats into the same group to brainstorm
ideas. Afterwards, form groups that contain each
hat colour. Students make notes during the
discussions.

20. Creativity & Digital tools
86% of all American teenagers have published
something online
Pull content
What?
– Youtube videos
– Blogs
– Instagram photos / photoshop

21. Planning for creativity
Use a mix of authentic and published
material
Meet student needs rather than lesson aims
Get out of the way!

22. Some ideas
Students create a survey about sport either on paper
or using a tool like survey monkey
Conduct the survey amongst classmates / people at
work / family and friends
Collect data into Excel, or Google Sheets
Discover which is the least popular. Create a poster /
advertisement to promote the sport and make it more
popular either on paper or using digital tools such as
Youtube, Instagram, Photoshop, Audacity
Redefinition Modification Augmentation Substitution

23. Some ideas
Cut lines of some tongue twisters and distribute them to
the students
Students mingle, repeating their lines, putting the strips in
order
Discuss which sounds are most difficult for them
Collect words with the same sounds either on paper, or
the board
Students work in pairs / groups to write as many
sentences as they can using the words.
Re-pair the groups to put their sentences together to
create a tongue twister
Vote on the most difficult

24. Some ideas
Create a tour guide of the city in a short video
Script and create a podcast on a topic
Design a new product and produce a sales pitch /
investment pitch

25. When it comes to technology,
let’s not…

26. Using digital tools – augmented
change
Vocaroo.com
Record yourself speaking for a short time on a particular topic. Once
recorded, send the link to the students. Individually, they write down
what they hear. Afterwards, they work together on Google Docs to
create a final version
Quizlet.com
Make the students do the work! Have students record the vocabulary
from lessons onto Quizlet flashcards and share with their classmates.
Edmodo.com
Share resources, invite students to take part in the syllabus, encourage
communication outside the class.

27. Using digital tools – augmented
change
Padlet
Create one huge document on a
particular topic. Can be done by
numerous users.
Socrative
Create tests and quizzes and deliver
them through a phone or tablet.

28. What does this all mean?

29. Thank you!
mattvesty@gmail.com
@mattvesty1
mattvestyefl.wordpress.com