Главная страница «Первого сентября»Главная страница журнала «Английский язык»Содержание №32/2002

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Young Learners’ Seminar in Samara

We’d like to share with you our impressions of the seminars on Young Learners Teaching held in Samara on May 15, and June 13–15, 2002. Actually these were two of the four seminars on teaching YL in Samara arranged in a sequence. We were exposed to some updated theory and lots of practice, all done interactively. Having thoroughly chosen the presenters across a vast region, Samara’s team of organisers and facilitators led by Yulia Markushina provided us with a view of what is happening in terms of effective YL teaching in Ufa, Izhevsk, Tolgiatti, Krasnoyarsk, Saratov and, of course, Samara.

The seminar organisers have made the dissemination, which we all are going to carry out in our respective professional communities, a lot easier by way of handouts and a videotape covering all the activities held within the seminar, including visits to educational sites. So we came back to our communities both with the ideas, which promote creative teaching, and materials ready for use in class right away. The main issues for discussion at the next seminar have been defined, with the focus on teaching reading, which is a major methodological problem with YL. We can’t find enough words to praise our good Samarians for the outstanding effectiveness of their work, professional competence and remarkable hospitality. They’ve succeeded in transforming us, teachers with different backgrounds and working experience, into a team of like-minded enthusiasts ready to network and share our knowledge with everyone who is involved in teaching YL.

Training and developing teachers for YL has become a great social task, since English is included in the curricula of actually all state and private schools and many kindergartens. But teachers outside Moscow, St.-Petersburg and a few other big cities, don’t have enough opportunities for updating their professional skills and gaining acquaintance with the recent course-books. After discussing this issue with Yulia Markushina, we think that Saratov might host the next seminar, or one of the next seminars. There is great interest among Saratov school teachers and university lecturers in the problem. On the one hand, the Saratov professional community has accumulated certain experience and can demonstrate it at the seminar and educational sites; on the other hand, training sessions and master-classes by experts in the field (and Samara’s seminars highlighted real gems!) will gather big, interested and grateful audiences here.

By Irina Sipakova
(on behalf of the Saratov participants of the seminar and the “Smart Kid” members)