hello everybody

hi everybody.Now ,it's time for hard work. I wish you good luck and see you all in the day of the conference .I hope that we will share different ideas and experiences.

Good Luck Guys

hey up there, you must be having hard times preparing for the conference. Don't worry, everything will be alright inchallah. I know you are able to do it. please, prepare for that with a good intention and leave the rest for God.
Best of luck

Using music to teach the four skills.

Using music to each the four skills

This workshop, presented by Janet Louise, is about teaching the four skills using music. The majority of teachers believe that the use of music in their classrooms is only to teach listening comprehension. Throughout all the school year, students are exposed to a variety of selected songs by their own teachers. The aim of which is to improve students’ listening to English language. On the contrary, music can be used to teach all the four skills: listening comprehension ,reading comprehension, writing and reading. What a teacher has to bear in mind, though, is that not every song is ideal to use in the classroom. This means that teachers have to go through the following steps to select a specific song to teach:
- Intelligibility: may the students understand the language of the song? Keep in mind that with a certain amount of written explanation and vocabulary presentation on the blackboard can help the students understand more than expected.
- Appropriateness: many songs are morally inappropriate to young children. Thus, students and the community must be respected. In addition, teachers have to choose songs that actually have positive moral and ethical message or which challenge the students to think at a more mature level.
-Appeal: the song must be appealing and engaging to the students. If it is just because the teacher likes it, there is no reason then to use it.
- Language objectives: the songs must emphasize particular linguistic, curricular or thematic objectives.
- Length: the song must fit available class time.
By doing so, the selected song attracts students’ attention and teaches some natural and interesting language without offending anyone.

Summarised by:
Jamal LATRACHE

Summary of the workshop on:

Summary of the workshop on:
Communicative language teaching using Drama by Dr. Scott Stevens

Naima Leghtas and Halima Elhanani

Drama is used to develop communicative competence in language classes.

I- why do we use drama ?

We use it for the following reasons:
1- motivation: it inspires students to learn a foreign language in a funny way.
2- self esteem : it makes shy students more confident in using a second language and in developing their characters and personalities.
3- creativity: students become more creative and show their talents.
4- cultural proximity : students learn about the target culture through slang, idioms, non verbal communication ....... etc.

II- How to use drama in a classroom:

1- Group development: drama develops group unity through trust.
2- voice or stage speech: students improve their oral intelligibility because the voice used in drama is one of power, volume and enthusiasm.
3- observation : drama reflects life . So students get more aware of the world around them and so more able to improvise.
4- Energy : it refers to the inner power in voice and movement which is necessary to keep the audience attention all along the show.
5- Movement : it means body language which is associated to culture and language.
6- concentration : students learn how to bring an intensity of effort to their own performance.
7- Spontaneity : students don’t need to memorize their scripts.
8- Creativity : students should be given the chance to write and act out their own ideas.
9- Mechanics: such as transitions between scenes, acts entrances, exits, pausing dialogue, sensitivity to pops, signals for beginning songs ...... etc.

III - Steps of using drama:

1- Physical warm up activities : games like great shake, eye got you, mirror movement.
2- voice warm up activities : such as voice mirror, projection scales, projection variation, partner fluency fighting......
3- Rehearsal performance : statue making, mime practice, moral fables .........
4- cool down activities : in this stage students are asked to perform . Tasks are better assigned one day before the class meets so students can have time to get well prepared.

Teaching Listening

Listening and speaking are the language Skills that are used most frequently. It has been estimated that students spend almost half their communication time listening. In our classroom, students listen more than they read or write. But in real life, listening is used 40 %, speaking only 30%. (slide N 3)

why do we listen to others?. there are many purposes for listening, some of which are: listening for sounds, for meaning, for comprehension, for a specific idea, and for pleasure.

Listening involves a sender, a message, and a receiver (the listener). It also involves a canal and a code. When someone says something, it goes first to the ear, then to the brain to analyze it. then the brain sends another message to the mouth to answer. Listening to someone else and trying to make out what s/he says becomes difficult when s/he speaks a second or foreign language.

Listening strategies refer to the way the listener tries to understand the message. there are actually two strategies: Top-down strategies and Bottom-up strategies. Top-down strategies start from the generral to the specific. The listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include
* listening for the main idea
* predicting
* drawing inferences
* summarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include:
* listening for specific details
* recognizing cognates
* recognizing word-order patterns

Some exercises for top-down processing are the following: use key words to construct background ideas; understand roles in a situation; isolate details from important ideas and understand intention in conversation. For bottom-up processing, we can use the following exercises. recognize word boudries (where a word ends and the other begins); distinguish key words; recognize word order in a sentence and interpret stress and intonation.

The class was not only theory, Mrs Detzel Deborah introduced us to some exercises especiallythe ones on Indonesian vocabulary and the story. we aslo raised the question about whether teachers test the listening ability or the students memory.

people to people dinner

People to people
Very interesting people.

Today is the first of August .we consider ourselves very lucky to attend the people to people dinner meeting at delcastle country club
We arrived their at about 6:15 pm .there we had the pleasure to meet great people who are from different nationalities, colours, cultures. All mingle together with great variety of clothes from different countries; Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, Lebanon, Palestine, Argentina and of course the United States of America.
All those wonderful people met us with warm feelings and hospitality. We talked about many topics and discussed many issues from food to policy, we found out that we may have different prospective for things but we still share one belief that where ever you seek peace you can find .peoples are the same everywhere, they want to have life ,freedom and love.
The people to people organization are really caring people who are eager to break the misunderstanding and diversity among people as much as they can .they work for the sake of humanity .we also realized that this organization through their
cooperative attitudes they want to clarify that they have big heart that can welcome anybody ready to plant tree of love and peace.