New conference, new blog

The 2012 conference now has its own blog which you can find here.

March 6th 2012

The next emagazine English Language conference is approaching. Bookings will open this week on December 1st and we have an excellent line-up for you.

More details on Thursday...

Coming soon...

...well, not that soon, but next year, we'll be organising another emagazine English Language conference. The date will be Tuesday 6th March 2012 and it will again be at Logan Hall, Institute of Education, London.

More details will appear on here as they are confirmed.

Deborah Cameron research update

One of our speakers, Deborah Cameron, has followed up her talk at the conference (and a specific question raised by a teacher on the day) with a document for teachers. It's designed to point teachers towards some of the most recent research into gender and communication.

You can download it from here on the emagazine website. Deborah Cameron has also written an article for students in the September 2011 edition of emagazine, so keep an eye out for that!

Survey results

As promised, we will keep this blog running for a short while after the conference so we can share some of the resources from the day with you.

Here's a quick breakdown of the results from the survey that we carried out before the conference and which Jonnie Robinson referred to in his session on the day. Thanks very much to the nearly 300 students and teachers who contributed to the survey and thanks to Jonnie for analysing the results and doing so much with them.

Question 1
Male 29%
Female 71%

Question 2
77% of respondents were 16-18
13% were between 26 and 50

Question 3

Question 5
The question on different words used for a range of things (playing truant, soft shoes for PE, the most formal room at home, female parent and the most formal room at home) threw up some very interesting results, including a few joke entries.

In his talk Jonnie Robinson chose to focus on one of these (see below):

more to follow soon...

Peace and love!

Thanks so much to everyone who came to our conference - speakers, students, teachers, all of you - and for making it such a great success. Here's a picture of the mighty David Crystal and adoring fans at the end of the conference, sending out peace and love to everyone.

While the conference itself may be over, we'll be keeping this blog running to provide post-conference resources, including links to some of the presentations, follow-up reading and survey results, as well as a link to an evaluation of the conference itself.

Countdown to the conference...

We're really excited about tomorrow's conference and hope you are too.

If you want to check on any last minute arrangements then have a look here. We'd like to remind you that it all starts at 10.15 and we need everyone in their seats by then. We are going to need to stick very closely to timings on the day so that everyone gets the most out of it, so please try and have a quick look at the programme and if possible bring some lunch with you to avoid having to queue too long during the lunch break.

We're really looking forward to seeing you there tomorrow.