Department of Language Pedagogy and Intercultural Studies, Faculty of Education UKF in Nitra hosted an ELT author, editor and teacher trainer Dorothy Zemach. On March 13th 2019 she visited the department within the partnership project with English teachers' associations Slovak Chamber of English Teachers, IATEFL Slovenia and IATEFL Hungary, the US Embassies in Bratislava, Ljubljana, and Budapest, and the Regional English Office of the US State Department (based in Belgrade). The project has Dorothy Zemach working with teachers and student teachers in the 3 countries over the course of 4 weeks.

Dorothy Zemach gave enlightening workshops on three topics. In the first workshop “Guilty Secrets: Some Unfashionable but Effective Teaching Techniques” she demonstrated the “nobody does that anymore” techniques which result in solid, efficient learning, and make an argument for focusing on results first when evaluating new approaches. The second workshop “T/F: Writing Tests is Easy and Fun” focused on some principles of test writing, and gave participants the chance to write their own sample items. The last workshop “Giving Effective Presentations” outlined some “best practices” for everything from organizing and outlining the talk to slide preparation to delivery to handling technology.

Dorothy Zemach taught English, French, and Japanese for over 20 years in Asia, Africa, and the US. Her MA in TESL is from the School for International Training in Vermont. She currently writes and edits English language teaching materials and textbooks, and conducts teacher training workshops in teaching writing, teaching reading, business English, academic English, testing, and humor.

Text: doc. PhDr. Božena Horváthová, PhD., PF – Department of Language Pedagogy and Intercultural Studies
Photos: doc. Mgr. Eva Reid, PhD., PF – Department of Language Pedagogy and Intercultural Studies