We are excited to announce that we will be bringing Gianfranco Conti to Perth for a LTWA professional learning event on Saturday 3 May. Gianfranco Conti is the author of many best-selling books for language teachers  and is internationally renowned for his popular award-winning blog ‘The Language Gym’ whose mission is the dissemination of current research in a language that is accessible to classroom practitioners. 

LTWA is proud to host Dr Gianfranco Conti for a day of professional learning on Saturday 3 May 2025. Dr Conti is the author of many best-selling books for language teachers ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’ and is internationally renowned for his popular award-winning blog ‘The Language Gym’ whose mission is the dissemination of current research in a language that is accessible to classroom practitioners.

Dr. Conti has been teaching Languages for about 30 years. He has taught French, English, German, Italian and Spanish at primary, secondary, further education and university level. He has been Head of languages at various secondary schools in Britain and overseas. You can read his full biography HERE. His books can be found HERE.

He will present two practical and motivating workshops suitable for all Languages teachers. You can join us for one or both of the sessions. This evidence-based course will provide delegates with thorough evidence-informed training in the design and implementation of Extensive Processing Instruction and of the MARS EARS framework for the teaching of languages.

MARS EARS pedagogical cycle:

MARS - Modelling, Awareness-raising, Receptive processing and Structured production
EARS - Expansion, Autonomy, Routinisation and Spontaneity

The pedagogical rationale for each activity and tasks sequence will be provided throughout the course.

Workshop 1: 9:00am – 10:00am (Registration at 8:30am)

In this workshop Dr Conti will focus on the evidence-based pedagogical rationale for the approach drawing on research into Cognitive Load Theory, Syntactic Priming, Comprehensible Input, Memory Decay, Phonological Memory, etc.

Workshop 2: 10:15am – 11:15am 

This workshop will lay out the principles of process-based listening instruction, drawing on research from Professor John Field and Conti and Smith (2019) and will include a hands-on demonstration of interactive-listening games in the Malay language.

Workshop 3: 11:30am – 1:00pm (Registration at 11:15am)

Workshop 4: 1:30pm – 2:30pm

Workshop 5: 2:45pm – 4:00pm

These workshops will focus on pushed output structured production and fluency building tasks, based on research into Phonological Memory, Retrieval practice, Deep processing and Fluency training. A demonstration of speaking activities will be included.   

Dr Conti will outline an instructional sequence based on skill-acquisition theory and research designed to convert input into fluent output through a principled framework which has been adopted by language educators in many classrooms around the world, i.e. Gianfranco's MARS EARS pedagogical cycle.

Limited places available

The title: From Modelling to Spontaneity through Extensive Processing Instruction. 

The timings: 

8:30 – 9:00       Registration

9.00 – 10.00      Session 1

10:00 – 10:15    break

10.15 – 11.15    Session 2

11:15 – 11:30    break

11.30 – 1:00      Session 3

1:00 – 1:30        lunch break

1.30 – 2:30       Session 4

2:30 – 2:45        break

2.45 – 4:00        Session 5