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News
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AzETA teachers attended training in the UK
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By Nushaba Bakhshiyeva, SIGs Co-ordinator
We are English teachers – members of AzETA. We are proud that we have our own Association. We - teachers love AZERBAIJAN and we are proud of our motherland- Azerbaijan. We speak about Azerbaijan wherever we are. Thanks to AzETA we attend the courses of native speakers. We get many certificates and these certificates help us everywhere. We attend AzETA International and Regional conferences as participants and presenters. We take part in workshops and trainings. As we live in the 21st century we want to learn more and more in order to teach our students better.
Last year in our 5th International ELT Conference Jim Wright and Mario Rinvolucri of Pilgrims came to Baku and took part in our trainings for the first time and they admired our teachers' knowledge, hospitality. Mario spoke and gave a lot of information about Pilgrims courses in Canterbury. We were interested in this course and when Mario came for the second time to AzETA in May 2009 and gave workshop I asked him about Pilgrims courses. I decided to attend the course. I started promoting this course among AzETA teachers and shortly I gathered a group of seventeen teachers. The teachers were from various schools and universities, but only one thing- our aim gathered us together-to attend Pilgrims courses, to learn the best ways and methods of teaching English. And we did it!
On 18 July we travelled to the UK to attend the Pilgrims courses. At the Heathrow airport we were met by Jim Wright, Head of Teacher Training and Business Development and Mark Cutmore, one of the assistants of this programme. They organized a bus for us. The bus took us to Parkwood-to a very beautiful campus which is situated in the forest. Though it was 3 o clock in the morning Lizzie Wojtkowska - Centre manager was waiting for us with keys to our rooms.
The next day was Sunday. Mark Cutmore came at 10 o clock in the morning to give us a tour to the campus where each group had to go for their courses. He explained to us how to go to the centre of Canterbury, showed us the bus station.
At last our long expected Monday came. Everybody went to their course. After the lessons some of the groups went to see the historical places of ancient city. Canterbury is a city of gardens, parks and flowers, forests. When we saw its historical walls, they reminded us of our Ichery Sheher walls.
We were there for two weeks. We were divided into some groups in order to share our lessons in AzETA afterwards. Shahla Garayeva (school #129), Arzu Huseynova (School #26, Sumqayit), Zeynab Abdullayeva (school #245) attended "English for Secondary Teachers", Sevda Bagirova (School #7, Khachmaz region) was in the course of "Creative Methodology for the Classroom", Antiga Vezirova (school 167), Farida Safarova (Zengi Lyceum), and myself were in the course of "Methodology and Language for Secondary School", Gulnara Jabbarova (University of Economy), Janna Aliyeva (Baku Slavic University) and Irada Baylarova (University of Languages) were in the course of "Teaching English Through Multiple intelligences", Esmiralda Rahimli (University of Languages), Natavan Babayeva (Baku Slavic University), Rena Rustamova (University of Economy) and Mehpara Aliyeva (College of Art and Culture) were in the course of "What s New in Language Teaching, Vefa Abdullayeva (school#15) and Tamilla Abdullayeva (University of Languages) were in the course of "Humanising Testing" and Ulker Bayramli (University Languages) in the course of Teaching English to Business People".
There were English teachers Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Romania, Austria, Slovakia etc. They had no ideas about Azerbaijan. Some of our teachers gave presentations about Azerbaijan. We also gave a lot of information during the breaks as there was much interest in Azerbaijan and AzETA. Even Director of Studies Chaz Pugliese asked us many questions and said that he was going to come to AzETA 6th International Conference with Jim Wright. Some of the teachers were interested in our conferences and we gave them AzETA web address to get more information about our activities.
We are very pleased that we invested in our own education and got more knowledge, learned many activities, new interactive methods and skills.
Now our task is to share the knowledge with our peers at AzETA through workshops, conferences and training courses.
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