Warmers are a key ingredient to any successful English class. During a TEFL certificate course, you should be introduced to a range of warmers that you participate in but it's easy to forget to do them once you get out there into the teaching world.
English language practitioners earlier emphasized on developing four skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to develop learners’ proficiency in English. It had been thought that if learners developed proficiency in these four skills then they could use the language effectively. In addition to these four skills, they added vocabulary and grammar components. But they generally ignored another important aspect that has assumed importance in the process of language learning as well as language use. That component is culture. In recent years language experts have recognized its importance in language teaching. For this reason, it has been termed as the fifth skill for language learners that “enhances students’ over all learning experience”(Kramsch 1993 p. 1). The role of culture was over looked earlier by practitioners as language educators as language education was thought to be a process of mastering the linguistic codes. It was mostly confined to language skills plus vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.
The International Academic Forum in partnership with Waseda University (Japan), Birkbeck University of London (UK), The National Institute of Education (Singapore), The National University of Tainan (Taiwan), Lincoln University (UK), the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKSAR), Virginia Tech (USA), Auburn University (USA), and its global partners is proud to announce the Fifth Annual Asian Conference on Education, to be held from October 23-27 2013, in Osaka, Japan.