AEXALEVI FIRST CONVENTION 2011

Claudia Ferradas, PhD.
Intercultural, interactive, intermedial: implications of reading literature on screen
Literature is today in dialogue with animation, film, video-clips, webpages, blogs and v-logs. "Hyperfiction" pieces invite readers to "navigate" interactive texts which can only be read on a computer screen. Opening questions derived from preceding presentations, this session will explore ways in which printed text interacts with other media, reflecting on the implications of "intermediality" for the teaching of language and literature and the development of intercultural awareness and critical technological literacy.

Veríssimo Toste, M.A.
The Thrill of Reading: Engaging your Students from the Page into Creative Writing
Veríssimo Toste has been an EFL teacher and teacher trainer for over 25 years. He has completed a Master?s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University of Edinburgh and is a certified teacher trainer for the Portuguese Ministry of Education. He is an author and materials writer and is currently working as a teacher trainer for Oxford University Press in Oxford, UK.

Martha De Cunto, M.A.
Teaching Intercultural Awareness in the Intercultural Literature Class
The presentation will show how to create pragmatic intercultural awareness in the English Literature class as a Second Language. It will deal with theoretical issues related to the concept of Pragmatics especially in terms of Politeness Theory and Speech Acts. It will show some practices of how to make students aware of pragmatic differences between the second language and the mother tongue through the use of sitcoms.

Prof. Maria Teresa Manteo
Flow, Literature and the Arts
How can we create environments where learners flow? How can we build scenarios that activate our students? creative energy? How can the arts assist educators to make it happen? How can we combine the arts with Literature to help students connect to their inner artists and unleash hidden talent? This presentation will invite participants to explore possible connections between the Arts and Literature by visiting children?s authors and illustrators who have the gift to turn their books into places where imagination is sparked and cognition challenged. Participants will also be invited to flow and take a taste of experiential learning.

Lic. Maria Cristina Llorente
Working with Films in the ELT Class
Films, as audio-visual texts, may offer unique visceral experiences of sensing possible fictional worlds and getting acquainted with unknown worldviews. Films not only enrich audience?s views appealing to "the mind?s eye? but they also broaden their worldviews facilitating empathy with other people. This workshop aims to develop linguistic, textual and critical cultural awareness through the audio-viewing of both animation and live action films, The Name-sake by Mira Nair and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi in order to delve into how the exploration of culture-specific universes of meaning and of gaps of indeterminacy may challenge audience?s assumptions of alterity and broaden their understanding of alien worldviews.

Florencia Perduca, M.A.
Developing (Inter)cultural Awareness through Literatures in Englishes
The spread and acculturation of English has brought many changes with it: the decentring of "English" and re-centring of "Englishes". This has led English Language and Literature teachers to reflect on the new sociolinguistic reality of the language and to start revising the English canon, the teaching curricula, and traditional teaching methods, so as to ensure the exploration of the multiple identities of English, and their multilingualism and multiculturalism, by means of raising (inter)cultural awareness through literatures in Englishes.

Griselda Beacon, M.A.
Visual Arts and Literature in the Classroom
This interactive presentation intends to exploit the possibilities that the interplay between visual art and literature offers to enhance students? critical thinking and motivation in learning a foreign language. At the same time, this interplay helps students to develop their literary and language skills. Participants will engage in activities that highlight the joy that this combination brings to their teaching practice.

Gabriela Leighton, PhD.
English as Foreign Language Acquisition through Literature: the Active Student
Gabriela Leighton graduated from Universidad de Buenos Aires as Licenciada en Letras and as a Public Translator. She holds a doctorate in English Literature from Luton University, U.K. For many years, she has been a lecturer in English Literature and Didactics at Universidad de San Martin, Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad de Palermo. Since 2002, she has been Visiting Professor in Postcolonial Literature at Warwick University, U.K. She is the author of vast number of publications in the fields of Literature, Education and Research. She has participated in and directed numerous Research Projects mainly at Universidad de San Martín and Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is the Director of Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa at Universidad de San Martín.

Maria Cecilia Pena Koessler, M.A.
An Intercultural Approach to the Literariness of Newspapers
By means of theoretical and practical frameworks, we will decode how the UK and US press portray current events. We will discuss different strategies used in headlines, photos, captions and cutlines to catch the readers? attention. We will compare the discourse of broadsheets and tabloids, analyze the needs of the different "discourse communities? (Corbett 2003:71) they cater for and read between lines to resurface the hidden ideologies of these "mediated? texts (Ibid. 181). We will also compare and contrast broadsheets and tabloids? rhetoric with those of our own country. In addition, we will work with activities that trigger off discussion and creative writing and aim at turning our students into intercultural speakers.

Lic. Cecilia Sassone
Live Games and Online Activities for the Teaching of Literature
Let's help Literature come alive! Getting into the fascinating city of invention where Literature teachers stroll pleasurably is sometimes not so easy for our school students. It is my aim in this workshop to provide literature teachers with tools for making this world become more relevant to our students by packaging it into motivating fun games and internet activities. Each of the stories we?ll be presenting as models will serve as the springboard for the generation of enlightening activities to be carried out in class or in the computer lab. Join in the fun!

Prof. Maria Laura Galizia & Artist Hernán Flores
Stories without Words
This presentation will take the audience into the magic world of mythology, of symbols, of innermost feelings, of storytelling and language. It will also be a journey into the world of Art, where stories are told without words. Maria Laura and Hernán will attempt to blend Literature and Art through the interpretation of some literary pieces that are not usually explored in the English class, thus presenting a new perspective of analysis.

María Laura Galizia holds a degree as an English Teacher from Lenguas Vivas Teachers? Training College, where she also completed a post-graduate course in Contemporary English Literature. She has been working at Asociación Ex Alumnos del Lenguas Vivas for many years now where she currently trains students in the Multimedia Center, specializing in listening and speaking skills development. She works also in higher education at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes as a lecturer on Reading Comprehension in English for several courses of study. At present, she is writing a paper for her postgraduate degree in Virtual Education. She is an enthusiastic professional in English teaching in general, and literature in particular, this occasion being a special tribute to her many teachers, colleagues and friends.

Hernán Flores studied Art and Drama at Escuela Municipal de Bellas Artes Carlos Morel and Photography at Escuela Municipal León F. Rigolleau. He has been an illustrator for several books, plays, television programmes and films, for which he has also done the storyboards. He has carried out Live Art by creating pictures on the spot in various scenarios, including television. He has won several prizes for his photographs and caricatures. He has held numerous exhibitions of his work. He is an Art teacher in his own studio and a free-lance illustrator.