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FEELTA : News
This time we witnessed a 6-hour English marathon with over 100 participants from all over the region! And once again we had a chance to be happy - personally and professionally, - to shed some tears, to laugh heartily and to sing along to our favorite tunes! The Talent Show has always been a source of great emotions for everybody; that is why it attracts so many people from so many places. Emotion is a key word for the audience, for the children on stage and ? for the jury as well: if they cry or laugh during the performance, they will never leave it without a prize. As a member of the TS jury for several years, I'd like to suggest some guidelines. We are English teachers of different ages, backgrounds and preferences, coming from various institutions. But there are things that we all unanimously appreciate: + fluent English (esp. pronunciation) And there is also a so-called black list of the things spoiling the impression, which includes: - poor stage organization (children stay too far from the audience
where nobody can see or hear them) In spite of the criticism above we are all absolutely happy with
the 12th Talent Show and extremely grateful to you for participating
and for supporting this unique English event.
As usual, we tried to make the presentations useful, up-to-date and to cover a diverse range of issues, so that they could meet the needs of all our participants, working in school or university, teaching young learners or adults, dealing with ESP or EFL. The seminar started with a plenary by our distinguished scholar Zoya Proshina. It was devoted to a very topical issue nowadays - World Englishes. Our true friend and a very experienced English Language Fellow Judith Elliott told us about various teaching lifestyles in her <Shaping the way we teach> presentation and then gave a follow-up computer-based workshop <Planning your dream trip>, a fine example of using the Internet in the classroom. Natalia Proshjants in her presentation brought up a very tricky question - teaching grammar to non-English majors; in it she shared her own experience of teaching naval students. Maxim Zhuk's talk on a novel by one of the most outstanding Irish writers James Joyce was admirably presented and highly informative. It has already become a tradition in the Winter School to give teachers an opportunity to tell about their achievements in professional activities, so this year Elena Prihod'ko, a Presidential grantee, made a presentation called <My success story>. A group of teachers involved in city and krai olympiads made an overview of tasks given at olympiads and commented on the most common mistakes made in these tasks by pupils. Marina Rassoha's presentation helped us to uncover many aspects of contemporary Anglo culture by watching a British comedy show. A new form of presentation, the FEELTA jam session, proved to be a rather exciting way of exchanging favourite class activities, and is sure to become one more traditional item in the Winter School. Of course one more event without which we now can't imagine the Winter School is the raffle. The prizes were kindly donated to us by Judith Elliott, our present ELF, Kevin McCaughey, our former ELF, and the US General Consulate. Thank you for supporting the raffle! We really appreciate it as the money we raise from the raffle is used for buying prizes for Talent Show contestants. In conclusion, we want to share with you some extracts from the evaluation forms filled out by the participants. For us, these comments are essential feed-back which helps us to improve our seminar and to make them even more useful and helpful for you! - Why did you decide to attend the Winter School? - What did you like most about Winter School-2008? And we do hope that you'll come again and bring your colleagues!
M. Krauss's lectures and workshops were devoted to computer assisted language learning. They were really overwhelming for us. Many of us came to the conclusion that the opportunities of Internet technologies are really huge. There's no denying that testing is a burning issue at the moment, primarily because we have got a new format of school-leaving examinations: the Unified State Examination. Naturally we should be fully armed with a new form of testing to avoid heavy losses concerning the requirements, the format and the technique of performing different exam tasks. J. D. Brown covered the topics of the purposes of language tests, the effects of language testing and the constraints on language testing. He also drew our attention to different points of view on testing taken by administrators, teachers and students. Maria Verbitskaya added some helpful ideas to this issue at our round-table talk. Her plenary and workshops were very interesting, especially for school teachers. I managed to clarify all the questions I had in face-to-face talks. I also liked Ludmila Kozhevnikova's workshop dealing with building students' learning styles and strategies. Maria and Lyudmila turned out to be not only splendid specialists but also very charming ladies. But what was even more exciting for us, teachers, was a seminar in <Stroitel>, where we had a unique chance to talk to all these great experts face to face from morning to night, as well as discuss in small groups problems that are important for us. It was really great! We are very grateful to Bridget Gersten for financial support for the seminar. As you see, the seminar was full of beneficial and exciting events. The weather contributed to our pleasure, too. It was sunny and warm. I think I will remember the seminar for a long time, using all the information I got there. Vera Sazhina
Five days that changed the color of our skin Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Did you know that the full name of Bangkok consists of 147 (!) letters and is translated as The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated God, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn? In the Guiness Book the capital of Thailand is registered as the longest geographical name. From January 24-29, 2007 Bangkok hosted the 5th Asian Youth Forum which is traditionally held in the framework of PAC conferences. The Pac 6 Conference and Asian Youth Forum (AYF) were hosted by the national organization Thailand Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (Thailand TESOL) with the participation of language education associations such as the Japan Association for Language Teaching and Korea TESOL. The Far Eastern English Language Teachers' Association (FEELTA) played a crucial role in bringing Russian students to AYF. Russia was represented by 4 FENU students - Anastasia Onoprienko, Ekaterina Lebedeva, Irina Labuz, Victoria Talantseva. The 4th AYF was held in Vladivostok, Russia, in June, 2004. This year Russia passed the baton to the <The Land of Smiles>, i.e. Thailand. This time the Forum gathered 75 young people from 17 countries (Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Russia, New Zealand, Laos, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand). During the 5 days young leaders aged 13-25 engaged in different kinds of activities, including global issues discussions, cultural performances, and academic sessions aimed to promote intercultural understanding and cross-cultural communication, overcoming the most common stereotypes through role plays, case studies, group discussions and culture stereotypes explanation sessions. Thus, the Russian team showed that Russia is not all about vodka and constant cold, and, besides, bears don't walk down the streets here. The participants got acquainted with Thai culture, visited the most famous sights of Bangkok, like the Ancient City and the Grand Palace. There was a separate session devoted to Thai culture and customs, where young people learnt Thai songs and a national dance. The atmosphere of AYF was really warm and friendly. The fact that most participants were hosted by Thai families played an important part in our getting acquainted with Thai culture and cuisine. Many young people came back home inspired and full of impressions of what AYF is all about. They are ready to share them with you and besides, to motivate all youngsters to join the AYF family:
Irina Labuz: Most of all I liked the academic sessions on the last day. It is not because of us who had become so close and friendly to each other due to the discussion we had in a small group of people who represented different countries. I had talked to foreigners before but this time I heard the <real storyc about the Philippines education system problems, environmental problems and the ways of solving them in Japan from people who really know what they are talking about and are not afraid to share with people of other nations. My small suggestion to make AYF perfect might be to prolong it just enough to discuss the topics more deeply. I did not expect it to be so amazing and educational at the same time. Ekaterina Lebedeva: It is like the <unbelievable sights, indescribable feelingsc from the Walt Disney cartoon song. And now I can perform Indian and Thai dances, I know how to drink tea during the Japanese tea ceremony, and I am aware that women should not touch Buddhist monks. They are not even allowed to come up to them to speak. Academic sessions and lots of discussions on global issues helped me to get rid of the language barrier and feel free talking to people and communicating in English. The AYF5 has just ended but we are e-mailing to each other, receiving calls and discussing when to hold on-line conference via Yahoo messenger. Having once filled me up, the AYF spirit stays with me and makes me passionate, active, eager to be interested and involved in the things happening in the world, in neighboring Asia. There are global issues, stress problems in the world around us, and we are the generation who have energy and strength, who are motivated to change the world for the better and we are ready to do it. Actually, with AYF we have already started doing it. Anastasia Onoprienko: I can write many paragraphs
about what AYF is and what it gives us, but if to compress many-many
good words into one sentence, I would say that for me AYF is first
of all PEOPLE, people we meet, new friends we make. I really believe
that not words but people and close relationships one makes can motivate
us to do something good in this world! So, what I really value is
the relationships I made at AYF! After AYF we have a lot of ideas
to implement (like running joint international projects, participating
in youth conferences, publishing newsletter, sharing information,
etc.). Thus, we would like to make AYF something more than a 5-day
forum bringing young people of different nationalities together, to
make AYF a series of projects promoting long-lasting cooperation among
its participants. After coming back from Bangkok we are full of energy
and desire to promote the AYF spirit in Vladivostok as well as in
other parts of Russia. FEELTA will be sending a delegation of 5 students to the next Asian Youth Forum in October/November, 2008, in Tokyo. For details click here..
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