Warren Warsaw Norfolk Academy Workshop Title: "Skills-Centric Teaching" Workshop Description: Verb conjugations. Vocabulary lists. Memorized dialogues. Throw them all out! Teaching a language is all about giving students skills for today's world. Whether accessing materials online or traveling internationally, students expect to know how to navigate in the language. They want to be able to read newspaper articles, understand radio programs, write coherent e-mails, and engage in authentic conversations. To that end, teachers need to rethink how they teach. A skills-centric approach helps students quickly and confidently decode what they hear and read, and to write and speak in real-life situations. The workshop will move quickly from the theoretical to the practical. Handouts will be given. Read excerpts in different languages, listen to podcasts in French, and invent stories spawned by a photograph. Workshop Leader Bio: With an M.A. in French from Middlebury College, Warren has been teaching French for 24 years, 18 of which at Norfolk Academy where he teaches levels 3,4 and 5. In addition to his Norfolk Academy work, he is an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University and Tidewater Community College. For the last 13 years he has been a Table Leader for the Advanced Placement Examination in French Language and Culture. In 2002 he started an exchange program with a school in Neuilly, France where, each year, 20 students spend two weeks with French families. In addition, each fall a few juniors are afforded the chance to spend 3 months as an exchange student at that school.