climate change in the english language classroom

Climate change is the biggest issue of our time - and the question is how it should be used in the English language classroom:

Jay Doubleyou: environmental issues - the best sites

Jay Doubleyou: story telling: creating narratives around climate change

And it's a growing issue.

Some schools have got a specific programme:

Doing the right thing by our planet | E L Gazette

And some students are thinking about how they should get to language schools in the UK:

Rethinking travel in a post-pandemic world

Climate change: Should you fly, drive or take the train? - BBC News

ELT consultant and co-founder of ELT footprint Christopher Graham presented on 'ELT and climate change, where next?' at the 6th annual Future of English Language Teaching Conference (FOELT) in June 2021:

ELT and climate change, where next?, Christopher Graham

Here he is writing in the latest E L Gazette:

Climate action in language education

It’s been estimated that the number of people studying English around the world at any time is 1.5 billion. That’s a lot. Equally, English is the language of much of the climate change debate and indeed of environmental protest. There’s a certain satisfaction in looking at the scale of the ELT professional community and seeing our potential to be global influencers and a force for good being realised, through both our ‘green’ workplace behaviours and what we teach in terms of climate change. ELT work being done on the climate emergency globally shows what we can achieve.

At the 2019 Innovate conference in Barcelona, Daniel Barber threw down the gauntlet by declaring a climate emergency in ELT and many people saw that as a call to action.

Since then, ELT Footprint has appeared, won an ELTons Innovation Award and gained over 3,500 Facebook followers. Additionally, ELT Footprint UK is making its mark on the private language school sector in the UK, and institutions and teachers internationally are beginning to develop the skills to integrate climate change education into ELT.

This year the UK is co-hosting the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, and the British Council has been pivotal in both supporting these initiatives and highlighting and documenting examples of best practice under the Climate Action in Language Education umbrella.

Climate Action in Language Education has four strands, each of which supports teachers wanting to integrate climate topics into their teaching...

Climate action in language education | E L Gazette

The British Council is promoting this programme - for free:

Climate Action in Language Education: Module 1 - Introducing climate change issues into language teaching classes | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

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