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English Department Workshop

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shibli:
When we are learning English, it is important to use and practice our English as often as possible.
All we need to do is
                                1. Practice
                                2. Practice
                                3. Practice

Let us consider the 4 skills that we need to use a language well.
            1. Listening
            2. Speaking
            3. Reading
            4. Writing

The more we listen, speak, read and write in English;
The more we will be able to be comfortable in using this language.

Listening: We don’t need to try too hard to understand everything.
We just have to listen and we will soon understand.

There are cassettes and CDs available in the market.
We can listen to BBC, CNN and Voice of America.
On television, we have a big choice of programs: films, chat shows, documentaries, news.

Speaking: Speaking is one thing that we cannot do alone.
So we should practice as much as possible where there are people to speak to.

Nobody will create English speaking environment for us unless we do it for ourselves.
We should choose a partner or a friend with who we can practice speaking English everyday.

Reading: We can make a habit of reading English newspapers(like The Daily Star) and Magazines (like The Readers’ Digest) daily.
We need to read the right level of English. If it is too easy, we will make no progress. If it is too difficult, we may become discouraged.
Also, we can become a member of the library of the British Council.
There are short stories and classic texts in english.com English Reading with notes to help us.

Writing: The medium of instruction in our university is English.
All teachers of each course are giving a lot of assignments.
So there are lots of scope of developing written skills for students.
In effect, we can keep a diary and write at least one page everyday and students must do so and get it checked by respective teachers.

This is how we can improve our English.

ymislam:
Dear Shibli,

Your suggestions are very valuable. According to Krashen, without extensive reading and listening, speaking and writing cannot be developed.

So we are looking for ways in which our students can listen and read more so that they can speak and write better.

We are looking for implementation ideas across the university.

Would be delighted to hear your views.

-Yousuf

nusrat-diu:
Hello everybody!

This is Nusrat Jahan, Lecturer, Dept. of English, DIU. With all other faculty members, I attended the workshop on "Finding ways to help our students develop English Language Skills" on June 22 from 3pm to 6pm. It's always enjoyable attending such workshops. We were talking and sharing our classroom experiences and thus we were actually trying to find out some ways to give our best to the students. Our main concentration was the students of Level 1 term 1.   

We were divided into three groups and I was in Group 1. In this group, Ms. Fatema Begum and Ms. Shamsi Ara Huda were also with me. We, the trio, proposed the following points to be stressed for classroom management:

1. Knowing individual students,
2. Motivating them towards English,
3. Identifying the weaker students and arranging their seats,
4. Encourage them to participate in conversation,
5. Maintaining noise-free teaching environment with interesting teaching materials,
6. Introducing language inputs ( news paper, poster, story books, e-books, websites etc.)
7. Making students respond,
8. Introducing pre-reading activities,
9. Extended activities must be encouraged ( Home work, assignment etc.),
10. Presentation should be given importance,
11. At the end of the class, let them to sum up the topics covered,
12.Using technology in the classroom.

We focused on classroom management that can ensure a better learning environment and we think better environment in classroom can break the ice between new students and teachers and It will certainly create an opportunity for the students to improve their communication and expression skills. 

Nusrat Jahan
Lecturer,
Dept. of English

ymislam:
Nusrat,

Thank you for posting your group's presentation. It would be great if you could elaborate, i.e. explain each point in a bit more detail.

Also, can you bring your posters to the workshop tomorrow. Thanks.

-Yousuf

nusrat-diu:
Dear Sir,

U r welcome!

And thank u for your suggestion.

We'd started our points from the first class of language course. That's why we included knowing every students. The second task would be motivating them towards English through which we'd be able to identify some shy and comparatively weaker students in class. We should rearrange their seats i.e. the first row will be reserved for them. In question-answering session teacher may ask for opinion from them so that they can understand how much important  they are to their teachers and that feelings can encourage them to participate in conversation. Next, we said that interesting teaching materials should be introduced that at the one hand will meet students' needs and on the other hand help the teachers to make the environment cool and calm.  After that we stressed on introducing language inputs ( news paper, poster, story books, e-books, websites etc.) that will make students respond. We believe, pre-reading activities are the way that can also grow students interest. As we generally meet twice a week with our students, we need to focus on extended activities ( Home work, assignment etc.). To improve students' presentation capabilities, more presentations can be introduced in a course. At the last part of the class, students will be asked for summing up the topics covered and finally we said that teachers should use technology in classroom to make the class more effective.
 
nusrat

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