Teaching teachers in the Resourse Centre.

Teaching teachers in the Resourse Centre.

Natalia Somova

Сомова Наталья Владимировна,

преподаватель иностранных языков

МОАУ СОШ №5

Благовещенск

Статья предназначена учителям английского языка для повышения самообразования и организации  самообразования. Даны практические советы для учителей, руководителей МО.

  The world is growing smaller.Goods move around the world in a single day.An individual product may contain parts manufactured in 5 different countries and be assembled in a sixth.New markets and opportunities emerge almost overnight. In this competitive and rapidly changing environment, success belins to those who can anticipate, adapt, and respond quikly.And one of the ways to do it is the knowlege of English language.

  Teaching English as a foreign language has chahged tremendously over the past 2 decades.Curricular, teaching methods and teaching matirials have been developed to meet the changing needs.Due to changes in our social life we – techers suddenly find ourselves in the very centre of public attention. So we realised that we have to create the centre which can help us not to be lost in a great varity of them.

This  year local education Recource centre has ben established to help teachers.

    Our goal is to gain a better undersnanding of the human differences in learning and to assist teaches in selecting classrom teaching strategies.

   Research and in service teacher training cources are conducted. These cources cover almost every field of school education imaginable: carriculum development, teaching methods, student councelling etc..

   The goals of these courses are the following:

1. To strengthen English language skills and to provide intellectual stimulation outside the professional area of teching English.
2. To acquaint teachers with the most recent developments in  English teaching methodology, pedagogical skills, classroom resources and career development materials.

Most of the courses are given on afternoons each Wednesday.Intensive courses are held during vacations. There are different kinds of work in our centre.

1.We have language lab sessions. The aim of the lab is two-fold; to strenhthen the teachers’s language skills and to provide intellectual stimulation through language lab work. They are conducted by one or  2 native speaking instructors. Materials we use are original. Sometimes it’s a film or a book, published in the USA or in Great Britain. The use of authentic materials is very popular.It helps teachers limited English proficiency enjoy English. Then we discuss it , exchange our opinions.Much attention is paid to language practice.I’d like to show you one example.Here are the descriptions of some existed methods and the task is to read them then to read the texts under the pictures an deside which method will be the best for each person so that to gain the goal they have. Divide into groups  for 5 and work out the descion of the group.

2.Lecture- presentation sessions.

The purpose of these  lecture sessions is to bridge the gap between theoretical study/analysis by the university spesialists and the classroom teaching experiences presented by the high school teachers.

These sessions provide the participants with recent developments in teaching methodology, pedagogical skills and classroom resources.Different topics were discussed there.For example “how students’ reading skills could be improved”, “how communicative competence in English could be improved”, “how game activities as a vehicle for practising language targets, could be integrated into planned curriculum”, “socio-cultural aspect in teaching English” and others.

Each course puts stress upon systamatic analysis of actual practices in relationship to important theories in language learning and teaching.The lecturer is someone with profound theoretical knowledge on a particular theme or someone who had undertaken academic study and analysis and can discuss the recent approaches to language learning. Usually these lectures are from the Univrsity and schools. It’s not a difficult task to find highly qualified people.

  Some presenters are prominent teachers at local schools who had successfully puts theory into practice in the area of the theme chosen.Some of these people were at first hesitant to make a presentation, but when they complited their talk they expressed gratitude , because they had the opportunity to look back and analyze thier own classroom teaching in an affirmative manner.The result is that they become more confident and creative-important elements of quality taching.

  Listening to invited teachers from local schools, participants feel encouraged to look at their own teaching practices from a new perspective.as a result, they were given added impetus to become more effective.We do so because something may appear good in theory , but useless in practice. Both theory and practice are nesessary if one is to improve his professional expertise.At the end of the sesssion we sometimes gather together and have a cup of coffee or tea and carry on our discussion of teaching in an informal manner.We exchange ideas and opinions conduct a survey.And though teachers are very busy with dayly school work such as marking and grading papers, preparing handouts, test papers, announcements, attending staff and commitee meetings of one kind or another, dealing with students’ problems, they find the time to come to these seminars, prepare reports and work at them.

  We ralize that the quality of taching has the greatest effect upon the quility of education. It’s not a secret that it depends on teachers’ proffessional competence and performance level combined with the quility of support and resources teachers have access to in performing their duties.