TESOL France has seen enormous growth over the last few years. We’ve greatly increased the number of workshops, opened and mentored regional branches around country, doubled the size of our annual conference, and reached out to the world by boosting our online presence on various social networking sites.

Annual Conferences

Our annual TESOL France Colloquium has doubled in size in the last 4 years. This we have managed in a number of ways. First, we sponsor committee members to attend other ELT conferences to scout out talented speakers who we then encourage to submit proposals for our own events. Second, we decided to do away with a specific theme and open up the conference to all areas of ELT. This was a particularly good idea because it tripled the number of abstracts we received. We now get around 150 proposals for roughly 60 speaking slots. And finally, our conference committee is extremely good at choosing talks that appeal to TESOL France audiences.

Teacher Workshops

Through our monthly (sometimes bimonthly) workshops, TESOL France emphasizes the importance of the more practical side of teaching. These events attract not only our current membership but also potential new members. We have the honor of receiving workshop presenters from other European countries as well as from our own membership here in France.

We have fun exchanging lesson plans at our Swap Shops, putting punch into classroom activities through drama, and learning about English for special purposes (legal, scientific, medical) from experts in the field. We aim to hold workshops that generally help professionals either personally or in their teaching, whether it be in the classroom or in a business context, learning about intercultural or management issues, or integrating materials and technology, as well as a variety of other topics.

We continually assess our members’ needs, while keeping up to date with what is happening in the field, in order to best serve the interests of the professionals around us. Our workshops enable us to maintain consistent contact with our membership over the year.

Teaching Times

Appearing three times a year, the Teaching Times magazine is sometimes the first point of contact for potential new members. Itdifferentiates itself from other ELT magazines by offering not only associative news but also articles and personal commentary, as well as book reviews and interviews with both local ELT celebrities and big industry names, the likes of Professor David Crystal and Michael Swan, to name but two. The Teaching Times hosts a resident poet and even has its very own agony aunt to help resolve readers’ ELT concerns. Financial support comes in the form of advertising from major publishers. This has enabled us in more recent years to increase our print run and therefore also distribute our magazine during other teaching events in France, thus increasing our visibility and helping in turn to raise membership numbers.

Our Online Community

Social networking made its way into the TESOL France vocabulary only recently, but we now maintain active Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles. This has greatly improved the association’s online presence and visibility. Our president currently runs the Twitter posts, which are also automatically posted onto our website and blog. Our Facebook page includes photographs from past events and welcomes posts from its many followers. Not only do our Facebook page and tweets include announcements for events, conferences, and magazine mailings, but they are also used to publically thank our volunteers.

TESOL France also publishes a blog, which includes announcements, detailed information about registration, as well as tons of photos and videos from previous events. This is where we share additional content from the Teaching Times, which enables readers to get even more out of the magazine and provides others with a taste of what it and TESOL France has to offer. Many of our article writers have already submitted complete lesson plans, and we hope to continue this feature in the future.

Merci à Tous!

Of course, none of this would be possible without our dedicated volunteers. The Executive Committee and other helpers have shown tremendous dedication at our events and online. Recruiting people is one of the major challenges of any association, but we’ve discovered that the more we accomplish and grow, the more people want to pitch in and lend a hand. For this, we are and always will be eternally grateful. It is thanks to these teachers who are committed to both their profession and the association that makes TESOL France so very special.

Bethany Cagnol has an MA in teaching second and foreign languages from the University of London Institute in Paris. She has been president of TESOL France for 3 years, served on the board of IATEFL BESIG, spoken at several international conferences, and blogs about being a freelance teacher in France. She owns two companies in Paris for language training, consultancy, and project management.

Phil Wade is a freelance teacher, teacher trainer, and writer with an interest in developing new ways to teach and foster teacher development.

Debbie West is an independent teacher who works with all ages in France and in immersion in the United States. Trained in language, education, and cross-cultural communication, she loves to see people learn and try to give them the tools so that they can do it. Presently she is vice president of TESOL France, where she organizes workshops for members and other interested parties.

Twice president of TESOL France, Ros Wright is coursebook writer specialized in English for medical purposes. She is currently the editor of the TESOL France magazine, Teaching Times.