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Conferences
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4th AzETA Annual ELT Conference: Managing the Challenge
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AzETA held its 4th Annual ELT Conference on 10-11 November 2007 at Baku Slavic University. The Conference plaid an importance role in AzETA's life to empower as a professional organisation and develop further.
As in previous conferences, our partners were the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan, US Embassy in Baku, British Council, Peace Corps Baku offices where the British Council and the US Embassy entered as the sponsors of the Conference, too.
The purpose of this conference was to bring together English teaching professionals from different countries to address the perspectives and challenges of teaching English as a foreign or a second language, to seek the ways of managing the challenge created by the change in ELT. The Conference also focused on the increasing roles of English Teachers' Associations in ELT.
The Conference started its work with the opening ceremony where AzETA Enjoy Egnlish Club members and EAMP students welcomed the participants with their poems. Then the representatives of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan, US Embassy in Baku and British Council made opening remarks stressing AzETA's role in improving ELT in Azerbaijan, as well as, the achievements the organisation has made so far.
As AzETA initiated a new nomination to reward its members for their volunteer work and encourage others. 3 AzETA members were awarded with the title Member of the Year. These are: Janna Aliyeva (Baku Branch), Humay Musayeva (Ganja Branch) and Arzu Huseynova (Sheki Branch). They had been nominated by their peers and it was a great surprise for them, as well as great happiness to be rewarded like this and get their certificates in such an important event in front of the representatives of the partner organisations. (for more information on this nomination, please, visit the below link:
http://www.az-eta.org/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1173091404&archive=&start_from=&ucat=3&)
The opening ceremony was followed by the plenary talk of Dr Tony Wright, Head of Postgraduate Programmes, School of International Education, College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, UK. The title of his talk was: Classroom Management. . The participants enjoyed the talk very much as classroom management is one of the challenges of ELT in Azerbaijan.
After the plenary session, the Conference continued its work through concurrent sessions. 36 presentations were made in 2 days. The presenters included AzETA members from different regions of Azerbaijan, as well as, ELT professionals from the US, Turkey, Iran and Georgia.
All together 180 participants attended the Conference. It was AzETA’s ever highly-attended Conference which demonstrates increasing interest in AzETA. All ELT providers in Azerbaijan sent their representatives to the Conference.
The Conference also created an opportunity for SIGs to report to their members on their work in the past 1 year and presented their Action Plans for the next 1 year period.
On Day 1 AzETA also held its Annual Grand meeting where AzETA President made a report of the Executive Board for 2006-2007 and presented Action Plan for 2007-2008.
Day 1 finished with a Conference Reception in Aqua Park restaurant hosted by the British Council. After a long day of the Conference the participants enjoyed the food and live music.
Day 2 started with the plenary talk of Prof. Dr Birsen Tutunis, Istanbul, Turkey. The title of her talk was: Learner Autonomy. She actively involved the participants in the talk and everybody enjoyed the talk very much.
The Conference continued its work on Day 2 through interesting presentations. The Conferences ended up with the closing remarks of the Executive Board followed by a raffle, an exciting part of the Conference.
The Conference demonstrated AzETA’s growth as a professional organisation. Learning from the mistakes of its past events, Executive Board had established a Conference Organising Committee, which worked before and throughout the Conference very hard to include the Conference in AzETA’s success stories. AzETA Executive Board acknowledges the Committee members and is proud of its dedicated, selfless members.
We also acknowledge our partners-donors British Council and the US Embassy for their unbending support to and great co-operation with AzETA. Thanks to this co-operation and support AzETA goes from strength to strength.
Impressions of colleagues from abroad:
Dear Ragsana Mammadova,
I would like to congratulate you for organizing such a successful conference. I would also like to extend my acknowledgements to the AzETA board members for their support and my special thanks to Gulshan Samadova who hosted me and took care of me during my stay in Baku.
I am grateful to you as the President of AzETA for inviting me to your conference as a plenary speaker.
I will be pleased to be in contact with AzETA forever and give my service when needed.
Yours Sincerely,
Prof. Dr. Birsen Tutunis
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Dear Ragsana and AzETA members!
Thank you very much for organizing such a great conference, for giving us the opportunity to present our views, share ideas on different topics and see
our friends and peers.
I am sure we will have many more conferences which will contribute to our effective teaching.
With best regards,
Neli Kukhaleishvili
Teacher trainer
Head of ETAG Batumi Branch, Georgia
 Conf Programme
 Conf Programme
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