12.00-12.30

Welcome (greetings and things), Anna Kashcheeva

12.30-14.00

The workshop is focused on basic punctuation conventions in American writing culture. Unlike Russian punctuation, there are no rules carved in stone in English. The punctuation usage largely depends on the writer’s intention, language variant, and style guidelines. It is important that we explore this very complicated issue to get the message across clearly. Punctuation matters as it may change the meaning of the text completely. Participants will learn basic rules and do a lot of exercises. Come to have fun while playing with punctuation marks. 

14.00-14.15

coffee break, networking

14.15-15.45

Soft skills are an essential part of communication. Unfortunately, they are not always well presented in language coursebooks, so we often have to supplement them or even create materials of our own. Join this session if you are interested in getting examples of important skills of handling problematic questions (e.g. during a Q&A session after a presentation, job interview, seminar). We will explore the causes of the difficulties and single out sub-skills that enable us to deal with those problems. 

We will discuss communicative strategies for overcoming difficulties in Q&A and the appropriate functional expressions. We will analyse a range of language means that can help us to be respectful to the questioner, not to lose face in the stressful situation, and to seem knowledgeable even when we don’t have the answer. This session will be useful for those who want to teach these skills to students and those who want to understand the principles of designing successful soft skills materials that can be applied to a variety of skills and language teaching contexts.

15.45-16.00

coffee break, networking

16.00-17.30

Writing well is no mean feat. If you want to write impressively not only for exams but also creatively, you are supposed to consciously use some rhetorical resources and syntactic means which will help you effectively express complex ideas and by doing so, achieve a profound effect on your reader. In the workshop, we will practice three organisational patterns that will help you organise your ideas elegantly and, once mastered, will add flair to your writing style.

17.30-18.00

closing words and thank yous, Anna Kashcheeva

Our speakers:

Svetlana Suchkova, Ph.D. is an associate professor, teacher trainer, and materials developer. Currently, she directs the Academic Writing Center at the HSE. She authored a number of course books for university students and researchers. Her areas of expertise are writing for research and publication purposes, public speaking, and teacher training.

Tatiana Golechkova, PhD in Cognitive Linguistics, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Languages at the New Economic School, a Cambridge Delta qualified EFL teacher and teacher-trainer with broad experience in course design, materials development and teaching General English, Exams, English for Academic and Specific purposes, and Soft Skills

Alena Nikitina, an EFL teacher with more than 20 years of experience (with 13 years at RUDN University, Moscow), a freelance teacher for the last 2 years, a TKT 1-3, CLIL, CELTA, CPE holder, an author and co-author of 3 textbooks, a course designer, a conference speaker and an expert on running CPE writing marathons

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