Tell me a story, show me the world - 13 and 14 September 2013
Tell me a story, show me the world
The Department of English at the Zurich University of Teacher Education is organising a conference to celebrate story-telling and reading as a window on the world and as a key stimulus for learning a foreign language.
The two-day conference aims to provide insights into the state of the art of children's and young adults' literature and into new developments in story-related methodology at primary and secondary level. With input from authors, illustrators, storytellers, teachers, researchers and teacher educators, we hope to make our conference as authentic and lively as possible.
The conference will present a unique blend of paper presentations, readings and discussions as well as workshops, and will be open to students, teachers, teacher educators and anyone interested in story-telling in education.
Venue and time
The conference will take place on Friday, 13 September and Saturday, 14 September 2013 at the new campus of Zurich University of Teacher Education next to the main train station.
Keynote speakers and story tellers
- Jean Brewster, teacher trainer (co-author of The Primary English Teacher's Guide and Tell it again!)
- Babette Cole, children's book author and illustrator (Princess Smartypants)
- Daniela Elsner, professor at the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Frankfurt
Conference topics
The organising committee invites papers and workshops for the following strands structuring the conference:
1. Text and image: story books, illustrated nursery rhymes, graphic novels, narrative games in electronic media, film adaptations of children's and young adults' books
2. Extensive reading and language learning
3. The story-based approach to language teaching and learning
However, related topics will also be considered. Individual paper sessions are 45 minutes long, with 30 minutes for presentation and 10 - 15 minutes for discussion. Workshops are 90 minutes long and are ex-pected to involve the participants in activities. The conference language is English.
If you are interested in making a contribution, we kindly ask you to submit an abstract (up to 300 words, in a Word document) to the following email address by 31 January 2013: stories.conference@phzh.ch
Organising committee: Regula Fuchs, Kathleen Gallagher, Nikola Mayer, Daniel Stotz
Head of department: Ruth Keller-Bolliger