ATES ST LOUIS WORKSHOPS

Association des Professeurs d’Anglais du Sénégal / Branche de St-Louis. Siege : ATES ROOM, PRF de St-Louis (CEM Guillabert)

 Tel: 77 551 47 55/ 77 651 81 02/ email: malsylla@yahoo.fr / lazsow@yahoo.com

                             

VENUE: PRF St-Louis (CEM Guillabert)

TOPIC 1: Evaluation and Testing by Cheikh T. Diop,

                   Trainer at CRFPE, St-Louis

TOPIC 2: TEA program dissemination by Mrs Agne,             

                    Teacher at Ablaye Mar Middle School.

WE WILL BE THERE, MAKE SURE YOU ARE!

Call for Papers (reviewed)

 Ates      Association des Professeurs d’Anglais du Sénégal APAS / ATES Siege : Bureau Anglais, Ministère de l’Education, BP : 4035, Dakar
 Tel: 77 358 9764 // email: ates.apas@gmail.com
EVENT: the Annual National Conventionschedule of the event / DATES: December 5th and 6th 2014
VENUE: ASSANE SECK UNIVERSITY Dec 6th  / Preconvention Cultural Night and Dinner: Dec 5th hotel kadiandoubagne
keynote speaker :Mathiama  Thiam IGEN/ FAsTEF
TOPIC: Bridging the Gap between the National Syllabus, Classroom Practices, and National Exams.  
Call for Papers
The past three conventions have opened topical changes reflecting the resolute choice of our ELT professional community to stand firmly on the ground of practicalities, in support of efficiency in classroom practice. The above-mentioned topic aims at valuing, through material design, the national syllabus as an instructional document and a huge source of inspiration for practitioners. The purpose is here to strengthen the link between the national syllabus theory, classroom practices, and beyond, the language learners’ achievements in the ‘real world’, to borrow a phrase from David Nunan. Binding the national syllabus to classroom practice and industry is the key concern of the National Education Act.
Given that one major component of the teaching or testing process is material design and implementation, presenters are asked in their workshop proposals to operate in the following way:
1-Select any aspect or theme of the national syllabus according to the pattern of 6eme and 5eme;/4eme / 3eme / 2nde / 1ere /Terminale.
2-Theorize that aspect or theme to demonstrate its purport and benefit in classroom practice and in everyday life.
3-Consequently, design a material or set of activities that can be presented in 35 mns.
4-Send us your presentation abstract in 200 or 250 words, at latest on November 5th 2014.
5-Final Selection of proposals November 11th 2014.

ATES Chapter of Saint-Louis: Linguistic competence in the C L T context of Sene...

ATES Chapter of Saint-Louis: Linguistic competence in the C L T context of Sene...: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was materialized in the West in the  1960s and has extended to the Eastern countries over the last 20...

Linguistic competence in the C L T context of Senegal and issues

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was materialized in the West in the 1960s and has extended to the Eastern countries over the last 20 years. Since then, CLT principles have formed the foundation of English language syllabi for countries such as Senegal. In Senegal, CLT was adopted as early in the 1990s. Before CLT was introduced, the structural syllabus was the mainstream approach in most countries settings including Senegal. Yalden (1987:61) summarized the essence of CLT thus:

           It is based on the notion of the learners as communicators, naturally endowed with the ability to learn languages. It seeks to provide learners with the target language system. It is assumed that learners will have to prepare to use the target language (orally and in written form) in many predictable and unpredictable acts of communication which arise both in classroom interaction and in real-world situations, whether concurrent with language training or subsequent to it.

Unfortunately, in Senegal ,linguistic competence or its components is still being taught by using the old methods .teachers generally think that teaching grammar ,syntax or lexis is giving the students lists of rules and sentences with abstract terminologies for them to learn them by heart. That is why, Language exploitation may not offer a real reflection of the learner’s underlying knowledge of the language. What makes it more difficult or unrealistic is, also that in most case, teachers teach grammar as explicit as possible and treat it in separate course when it should have been embedded into a general language course and especially into meaningful context. Language is context dependant. Without the context language would simply be spoken in a vacuum.

There are many problems in developing language proficiency as we just saw ,as we know most English teachers had not been trained up to this method of CLT or they found it very difficult to implement and in our national   syllabus(enseignement moyen et secondaire ,programmes de L.V. ANGLAIS,3em edition revue et corrigée b.a ,fevrier 2003https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzoEemyoa6HCV01BdEk3OVFfeE0/edit?usp=sharing) it is mentioned that :the English secondary school curriculum subscribes to the communicative language teaching approach .

The communicative method is not very easy to implement because it demands lot of sacrifices in terms of time consuming and lack of material for both teachers and learners, but language is not easy to teach and being in an E .F. L context does not make it easy because teachers must be very skillful and show abnegation.

ATES Celebration

Today, ATES Saint-Louis members gathered outside of Rao to have a retreat and celebrate the departure of Erin St. Peter, our Fulbright ETA colleague.  She was a great help to us this year in many ways and we wish her safe travels and good luck with the future.  We had a relaxing day visiting a farm school, eating good food, and chatting between friends.  All ATES members were sad and happy. thanks to you Erin ,you have done a great job.

Review of Pete and Aere Lao Seminars

Last weekend marked the final seminars from the RELO grant received by ATES Saint-Louis this year.  Members of ATES Saint-Louis and Ibrahima Diba (Podor) traveled to Aere Lao and Pete on May 9th and 10th of last week.  Both seminars were well-attended and we received an incredibly warm welcome from our colleagues in Fouta.  A total of 39 teachers attended the seminar in Aere and 21 took part in Pete.  The presentations for the weekend included the following topics:

Testing and Evaluation: Formative Assessment in the Classroom – Erin St. Peter

Teaching Communicative Grammar – Ibrahima Diba (Podor)

Developing Students' Writing Skills – Amine Sall (ATES SL)

After these presentations our ATES Vice President, Assane Sow, gave a talk on ATES Saint-Louis activities and how to set up ATES sub-chapters. The dynamic teachers in both locations decided to set up their own ATES sub-chapters during the meeting.  This was wonderful news!

In Pete, we also were able to join in on Pete High School's regional English Language Day. Mr. Yatma Diop (of Pete High School) was in charge of the ELD and he and his students did a truly wonderful job.

ATES SL members were very impressed with the teachers, students and organizers that we met at both locations. Thank you again to all of our colleagues for hosting us and for making these events possible!

Copies of Erin and Amine's presentations can be found in the "Presentations" page of the blog and pictures of the events can be found below and on the "Photos" page.

  

                                                                         

Call for Presentations

Dear colleagues,

After the success of the Mpal and Dagana seminars, ATES branch of Saint Louis will be running two seminars in early May, respectively in Aere Lao (May 9)and in Pete (May 10). 

To this end, we are launching a call for presentations on the following topics:

1. Developing Students' Writing Skills.

2. Teaching Grammar Communicatively.

3.Testing & Evaluation: Summative and Formative Assessment. The American Fulbright Assistant at UGB, Erin Saint-Peter, has volunteered to deal with the "Testing"  presentation.

Interested candidates should send the abstract  or the powerpoint file of their presentation to the ATES pedagogical board no later than May 3rd. Please, send your proposal to our blog moderator:atessaintlouisofficial@gmail.com

We look forward to receiving many proposals.