Communication Skills Workshop celebrates its 20th Anniversary

Pajulahti, May 14 - 16, 2004

"Bridging Theory and Practice" was the theme of this landmark date in the CSW's history. Who better to bridge the gap than Professor Michael Hoey, Liverpool University, UK, known to many of us from PILC days? His excellent plenaries on grammar vs the lexicon, learner dictionaries (in particular the new Macmillan dictionary, the sponsor), and strategies for improving learner English were lively, stimulating and highly entertaining as one might expect. Of particular interest was his theory of priming:

"As a word is acquired through encounters with it in speech and writing, it becomes cumulatively loaded with the contexts and co-texts in which it is encountered, and our knowledge of it includes the fact that it co-occurs with certain other words in certain kinds of context. The same applies to phrases built out of these words; these too become loaded with the contexts and co-texts in which they occur."

In Hoey’s theory, every word is primed with its collocates, semantic associations, pragmatic functions, colligations, hyponyms and synonyms, to participate in, or avoid, cohesive relation and to occur in semantic relations in discourse. How to put such ideas into practice in teaching? This daunting task might challenge the most able of practitioners. For a plenary speaker as versatile, humorous and creative as Mike Hoey, a master of bridging theory and practice, this was no problem. In addition to physically throwing himself (and water) into his performance, his examples really excelled. Texts varied from the mountains of Switzerland with its mountain bikers and off-road skaters in their pursuit of bumpy thrills, to the amputation of the "hideous" limb, the world’s first transplanted hand.

Presentations from many of the sixty participants, from Estonia, Britain and Finland, universities and polytechnics, added to the success of the workshop. Topics ranged from a "hands-on" approach using "play-doh" to replicate the writing process, music as a tool (resulting in an excellent rap performance) to university regulations on testing rights, reliability and validity. Lines with parallel presentations to choose from were on writing, intercultural communication, testing and assessing, learners and identity, e-learning, and curriculum. The range, depth and versatility of these presentations were a worthy product of the many years behind the anniversary of this grassroots event, a process that has affected (and reflects the professional life history of) so many of us in so many ways. Long may it continue to do so!

Look out for the publication commemorating the past decade of workshops… hopefully to be launched at Kielikeskuspäivät, Joensuu, May 2005.