Discussion Club activity

Discussion Club activity

I am Reinhard Hohl, Australian and have had the pleasure of providing English native speaker topics to the Discussion Group at the AEPE for Teachers of English Language at schools and universities.
As a short description of some of the discussions, I describe the following,
During my group attendances, I described my impressions on the inter-relationship of the Age of Discovery,  Explorers and Colonialism, and the historical inheritance in the modern world.
In a following discussion I described the aura of London, its history, life and place in the current world. I grew up in London and it was with great pleasure describing my growing up experiences in the city.
I spent several years working in Papua New Guinea, and I held a video and descriptive discussion on the country, describing the lifestyle, short history, and progress in this ancient isolated interesting country.
 The attendees during my discourses, appeared interested, then followed with significant in depth questions with mirth and enjoyment – hopefully reasonably answered and clarified by myself. 
The role of native speaker in association with a language learning is to assist in the understanding of the language, expanding the aural appreciation of accents, dialects coupled with the phrasing, vocabulary and idioms in normal usage and  interaction.

Success story, Akmaral

English in my life

First of all, I want to express my willing of learning and teaching English. I will retell to you what role English plays in my life.

When I was in 8^th form I met Americans in Talas. They came there to see the celebration of Manas’ University, because I learnt English at school. I could speak with them on English. I was also introduced to Japanese and could speak with them also on English. I was very happy to understand them and could translate their speech into Kyrgyz for my mother and her friends. So, everyday we spent whole day together until their leave to America and Japan. On the last day they thanked me for helping in translation and payed for it some money. It was very unexpectedly for me to receive money, because I had never had experience to earn money by this way and one of Americans took promise from me to continue learning English since that day I have learnt English as I promised. That was my main reason why I chose English and teach it.

Day by day I was interested in English and decide to choose English at the University as I wanted to become an English teacher. I have been teaching English for about 7 years. During these 7 years I have been trying to participate in different courses, seminars, training, workshops to improve teaching skills. That’s why I chose AEPE long-term course with the aim to learn more in teaching, especially to find out new methods or methodologies. We should use new and modern methods with using high technologies as our world is getting progress and our educational system is also changing. I think, our long-term course is a very good chance to improve our teaching skills and get know more about teaching methodologies. Our teacher, Natalya Anatolyevna, has a very good experience in teaching. She taught us many useful things. I like that she assigned us to have  role playing, description of the situations, matching-up dialogues, use of PPT, teaching and listening to new phrases and I can’t count all of them. After finishing this course I will try to spread skills and knowledge about all methods what I learnt from this project to my students and I will help some of young colleagues to enhance new methods. Maybe, it will be very good if everyone try to write their teaching methods on their blogs, because everyone who wants to see or to learn it they can read about it everywhere no matter where they were.

Success story, Jypara

Success in the training

  It is very difficult to be a teacher, because teachers work with young learners, teenagers. All teachers must find their learning styles, work hardly in order to hold attention and interests from the students. If we participate at the seminars, training we can achieve a progress because I have learned many useful learning methods from training. It is very useful when we share own ideas, experiences, communicate clearly, easily, and effectively in English. From training I have learned how to work without school books. We can teach with songs, dialogues, short stories, games, dramas, pictures, listening of different short dialogues and I have learned how to organize enhancement activities, how to work in groups, how to prepare effectively, successfully for lessons. For our each lesson we must write clear aims. Also, I have learned to listen to other people’s ideas, work cooperatively, share own experience, help others and respect opinion of others. I got to be motivated and interested in learning and teaching through this program.

Succes story, Samara

Never late to learn

Study, study and study... To take a knowledge is endless. That’s why I wanted to attend this seminar. At the beginning of the seminar I had a lot of questions, such as:

1. How to write essay?
2. How to introduce new theme?
3. To use in a practice new methods
4. To use songs
5. To write projects and implement them

During attending this seminar I took a lot of new things and new methods. I could learn some idioms. I liked the phrases by “Murphy’s Law”. But with it we could learn a lot of rules in Grammar of English language.

I had some problems in using tenses, especially when we use conditional sentences. I liked the song “White Flag” of Dido. The song was easy to sing and the words were easy to remember. I could give this song to my students.

We worked and learnt how to write a project and implement it by project enhancement activity. It was my first achievement at the seminar, because after four and half months I am able to write projects by using a template.

I have learned some of new methods, games, songs and rules of English grammar. Thanks for managers who organized this seminar and of course the biggest thank to our teacher Natalya. She is not only the best teacher, she is a brilliant person. Thank you so much for this seminar.

This is a pilot program

AEPE program is a pilot program for teachers of English from schools and University of World Languages in Osh city. There are 6 students presently in the group who have classes in 90 min three times in a week.

This program potentially encourages teachers to reconsider their lesson plans, syllabus and strategies of teaching by student-centred approaches in activities. We discuss with students of my group a question “How to use Informational technologies at the classroom?” and practice ourselves by created e-mails, reflective blogs, and opened nicenet.org page for educational purposes. Also, I use my computer to present information, PPTs, songs, videos and others. A discussion Club on the topic of “Globalisation and the role of Internet” was very successful for this purpose.

 Teachers share their experience of participating at the course with their colleagues at schools and University. They can demonstrate to their colleagues the blog page if they access to Internet.

At the same time, teachers improve their knowledge and skills in English language. They review grammar rules and practice different activities with exercises which allow them to learn grammar well. As a trainer I use each time new strategies of work such as individual work, pair work, group work, and a team work. My students participate in discussions and debates at the training, write multiple-drafts essay, form project templates for presentations, read interesting articles, and work with Student and workbook “New English File”. This book is the main one at the course, but at the training we discuss grammar by using different topics, cards, posters, additional grammar Oxford books, information from Internet, video and audio files, podcasts with new phrases for each class, newspaper “Times”, and other supportive materials to achieve better result. They work with Quizes, Quicktests, Progress test, reflect on the blogs, work with a home task, and  participate in the class.

Monthly we organize and provide project enhancement activity for community including students, teachers, children from orphanage house and etc. AEPE students learn through the project to work together in a team, to share responsibilities, to reflect on the project work and evaluate each others work.

My students learn and teach others. The reaction on the student’s progress /challenges will be done and according to the success will be obviously if this program can have a “root” at this place.Will be this pilot program a usual program for teachers in our country? Will see, hope so!!!

Success story, Almaz

Success story

My name is Almaz. I am a teacher of English language. As far as I know languages, I never stop in learning and always develop my skills. For example: new words, phrases, new methods and approaches of teaching. Why I am telling it? Because we are teachers who have to be always in progress, so I decide to learn English deeply in order to conduct lessons effectively. Consequently, I have chosen AEPE course. I am glad that I am participant of this course. There are nine teachers, including me who always participates. Fortunately, we are active at the lessons. We always try to be flexible and fulfill all of our tasks, nevertheless teaching work has some problems. That’s why I would like to tell about our AEPE course. Firstly, I will tell what I did gain. In the first place this is grammar which we were deeply learning. Such kind of learning changed me completely. I improved my writing and speaking skills. So, it influenced one me, moreover I learnt about new methods of teaching and new approaches. It helped me to improve and develop computer literacy. Nevertheless, each work has some challenges. During the participation it was difficult to work with computers ourselves for our program, because it was new for us. Also, I wouldn’t say that it was easy to implement, there were several reasons, but we could do it with our group. Each participant was a leader to conduct project and we did it successfully.

Materials that we have used during the lessons helped me to be more experienced and motivated. Some of us have already used some games, new approaches and methods of teaching. In this way we could achieve not bad outcomes.

Success story, Kyzburak

How I became an English teacher

At school year I dispute with my friend. She said that being a teacher and work at school is bad. “You would be nervous. You would say the same word ten times every day. You would work for a little money”, but I couldn’t   answered that being a teacher is good. I promised myself- I will be a teacher in future life and one of the best teachers.

When I had left a University I became to work at school as an English teacher. I had worked 45 hours per a week. It was very hard for me to prepare my lessons in the best way and write lesson plans. I tried o work since the morning to the evening. I have taught pupils only by knowledge from University. Other methods I really didn’t know. After one year of teaching, I took 4 years of maternity leave and was at home. In those 4 years I didn’t practice English and partially forgot English. At this year I came back to school again and continued my school experience. By working at school, I understand that being a good teacher, I should work hardly, should know my work well, and love a profession. I afraid commissions before as I thought about methods of teaching and how to use them. I have to learn about new methods of teaching. Today I do not afraid of any commissions, because I participate in AEPE Program. Participating in this course I have known and learnt how to plan interesting lessons, not boring as they were before. Pupils are very interested and waited when the lessons begin. They began eager to learn English better. They demand to get knowledge from the lessons. The lessons are getting to be interesting and Like working in this way. Every evening I try to prepare for my lessons and use sentences /games from different books which will be interesting to my students. I am proud that I participate at this course. Fortunately, by this course I became a good teacher at school. Thanks to all coordinators, especially to our teacher Natalya Deryabkina. I like her teaching methods. I knew that teacher has to be patient, simple an kind, talented person. If I meet with my friend, I can confidently say that being a teacher is a best profession which I have chosen. This is a hard work, but very interesting.

Success story, Aizirek

Success story 

I am an English teacher at school #52. It is my first year at school. School life is very interesting for me, because I love children, but I decided to improve my knowledge.  I heard about AEP program and I took part in it. We are seven in this program. We are very friendly although we are from different schools and universities. Our lessons are conducted mostly at Aga Khan School and our teacher Natalya Anatolyevna is very bright and brilliant.

At the beginning of the program I had many weak points. I am so happy that I am in this program, because I didn’t know how to write the project and didn’t work with sites and blogs. I was confused about some grammar rules. I found answers to my questions at this program, our teacher explained to us these rules.

Now I have very good results and the program influenced my character too. This is my first step to develop my knowledge. I have a dream to go to USA and to develop my knowledge there. This program will help me to reach my dream.