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)
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