For the last
four months, the training course “LEARNING AND TEACHING ENGLISH CELEBRATIONS" has been running at the Teacher Training
Center of Córdoba.
This training activity is aimed at primary and secondary school English teachers in Córdoba as well as at teachers of other subjects with a B1 level of English (see the six levels established by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages)
The course,
beginning in February and ending in June, has enjoyed a high level of demand
and participation. The participating teachers have found it to be a
wonderful opportunity to develop their teaching practice. Getting to know
different cultural aspects of English speaking countries through the English
language has been a very positive experience.
At the same time the course entails the updated use of new technologies and, in particular, of one of the most important resources of the web 2.0: BLOGS.
The speakers,
participants and myself, as the responsible teacher trainer of this course,
were asked to write entries in the course´s blog and to upload the
materials and presentations created during the course, as well as to
comment on good classroom practices. This
blog will be
made public as soon as the course finishes.
To share these
didactic resources we have used online documents in Google docs, Slideshare
presentations, Youtube videos, Picassa web albums, etc...
As the main goal of this training activity has been to promote linguistic competence in English through the knowledge of popular customs, traditions and celebrations of the English-speaking world, the course has been taught entirely in English by native speakers.
As the main goal of this training activity has been to promote linguistic competence in English through the knowledge of popular customs, traditions and celebrations of the English-speaking world, the course has been taught entirely in English by native speakers.
The speakers were Neda Milenova, a translator and teacher trainer, and Thomas Walter Steele, a language assistant. While Neda is a native British speaker, Thomas is American. So, not only have we enjoyed the chance of listening to both accents, but we have also shared one common objective: to be trained in dealing with activities and methodological resources with the aim of bringing these celebrations to our students, as well as designing assessment strategies for them.
As part of every session of the course, attendees have given talks in English, presenting the materials and resources that they have prepared to teach these topics to their students.
This is the list
of topics we have dealt with so far: