Rabat, Morocco– L’ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) of Rabat held a MATE afternoon under the theme “Essential Skills for Better Quality Teaching.” The event was organized by The English department of the ENS in collaboration with The Moroccan Association of Teachers of English and Calliope Library on Friday, February 13th 2015.
The Conference kicked off with a presentation given by Mrs. Rachida Guelzim, a teacher trainer at the British Council, and Mrs. Imane Nejjar, the head of the English department at the ENS, who presented the program, the guest speakers, before welcoming the audience which was composed of English-language Teacher trainees from the ENS and the FSE, university professors, high school students and English-language teachers.
The first presentation was given by Mr. Noureddine Bendouqui, president of the Moroccan Association of Teachers of English and an English-language teaching supervisor. Mr. Bendouqui brought forth the ELT basics in the new millennium, followed thereafter by another presentation by Mr. Rahal Ajbilou, who is also an ELT supervisor, and whose presentation revolved around “the best ways to teach English vocabulary.” The last presentation was given by MATE member and English-language teacher Abdellatif Zaki and touched some issues of education at large in Morocco.
The second part of the MATE afternoon was devoted to workshops moderated by teacher trainers and high school teachers, who presented to the audience some activities that the trainees can do in their classrooms after graduation.
One of the most interesting workshops was given by high school teacher Khalid Said and his students. The workshop was a demonstration of a real classroom situation, whereby he gave a grammar lesson to his students in an entertaining and funny way. He ended the lesson playing guitar while singing and his students, in the meantime, had to pick up the words that were missing from the song’s script, words that are relevant to the grammar lesson that taught few minutes earlier.
“A good English-language teacher is someone who knows how to make his/her students interested in learning grammar,” Said Prof. Khalid Said. “As a teacher, you should be funny all the time. For me, I’m like an actor inside the classroom, I play different roles and I’m ready to do whatever it takes to keep my students interested in what I teach them,” Prof. Khalid noted further.
Amine Cholay for The Moroccan Times.
