Carolina Rodriguez-Buitrago is a full time professor at Institución Universitaria Colombo Americana, ÚNICA. She has worked as a teacher for 20 years and has held different positions in the academic field. Recognized for her work in flipped learning by Flipped Learning Global Initiative (FLGI) and currently a member of the board of the Flipped Learning Network. She has also been recognized as one of the 150 Leaders, at an international level, for her implementation of Flipped Learning in Higher Education. She also participated in the revision of the international Standards for Flipped Learning and led the FlipTech Latam in 2019 held in Bogotá.

English Language  Teaching: Back to the Basics, a Post-pandemic Lesson

Today we are talking about what the post-pandemic world of ELT would look like and what we learned from the pandemic. What if what the pandemic taught was to go back to the basics?   And I don’t mean only to our basic shopping needs, or the basic relationships we have and held dear during confinement, but also about the basics in our teaching profession. A conversation with a respected colleague and friend made me realize that in ELT we might be suffering from the “shiny object syndrome” chasing anything that seems luminous and appealing. However, the basic principles of language learning can not be forgotten. In this talk, I attempt to guide a reflection on what made us become language teachers in the first place, and how not to let the “flavor of the month” obscure our mission as language educators.