COMPTE RENDU - EPI workshop with Gianfranco Conti

Posted 10 Feb


On Monday 25 May, 80 French teachers participated in the EPI workshop led by EPI'S high-octane founder Gianfranco Conti.

If the participants wish to remember one single word from the dense, fun and highly informative day, it must be the one heralded in the title: PROCESSING. As Conti demonstrated and repeated, the EPI approach is based on learners recognising, processing then internalising patterns.


We certainly did a lot of processing ourselves, be it during or post-session, learning a lot about our practice as teachers. Informal conversations following the workshop showed how clearly some points from Gianfranco's presentation had stuck with participants. A few examples, in no particular order, from the foundational to the more anecdotic:

  • Be aware of cognitive load to manage it
  • Model, model, model
  • Chunk, chunk, chunk
  • French pronunciation is all about the lips
  • French has 36 phonemes
  • In our mother language, we are able to read on average 200 words/mn. In a new language?
  • Listening and reading must be done together
  • Voice it in your head
  • The basic goal of being 95% to 98% comprehensible
  • We chunk everything according to probability
  • Develop SELF-EFFICACY by developing curriculum on the strongest prediction of success
  • High frequency words are: ARTICLES, CONJUNCTIONS, and PREPOSITIONS (the most frequent word in French is LE)
  • LISTENING and READING: MODEL! Make it a modelling experience
  • Test only when kids are going to WIN.

And finally, a sentence Gianfranco said he heard early in his career and sent him on his EPI :

WORD AND GRAMMAR MEMORY IS ALWAYS ENABLED BY SOUND.

 

Some participant feedback

  • Outstanding. Working with brain compatible learning as well as deep learning theory was invaluable. The rich and generous exchange of activities is very much appreciated.
  • Thank you for organising this valuable PL, I had an enjoyable day, I'd say the best professional learning event I've ever attended in over 10 years of teaching.


The AFTV committee wishes to thank Gianfranco Conti, one of the most engaging presenters of deep content; Jillian Taylor from Intext, whose stall presence allow us to browse resources; and, as ever, all participants for their engagement and constructive feedback.

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