On 15 April 2010 in Astana Orken School the British Council presented new programmes and products developed for students and teachers of English worldwide. The English language launch was organised with active support of the Ministry of Education and Science, Astana Department of Education, and Orken School. Teachers and partners from MoES, RIPKSO, National Academy of Education, NATEK, Departments of Education, In-Service Teacher Training Institutes from Astana, Almaty, Karaganda, Semei, Petropavlovsk, Taldykorgan came to the event to get familiar with what the British Council has to offer teachers and learners in Kazakhstan in terms of the English language (ELT).

The British Council Director in Kazakhstan Lena Milosevic opened the event with a welcome speech.  ELT Consultant Brian Maguire and ETTE Project Manager Ardak Bekturova went on BC overview, aims and objectives in English and demonstrated the portfolio of products (current and in-development).

BC on line offer – LearnEnglish and Teaching English websites and some new innovations such as Teaching English Radio, Learn English Newspapers and English by Mobile were well accepted by the participants. They had a chance to listen to a Radio programme and see printed materials. Presentation ended with Questions & Answers followed by a Reception hosted by Lena Milosevic.

There is a huge interest in on-line learning in Kazakhstan and the BC LearnEnglish portal caters for students and Teaching English for teachers. The Teaching English website has everything that busy teachers need from classroom materials and lesson plans to ideas for professional development. The site includes interactive and multimedia material such as podcasts, discussion forums and polls as well guest contributions from UK ELT specialists and a guest teacher blog: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk

On the LearnEnglish website there is a wealth of material for:

•Children: LearnEnglish Kids with games songs stories and activities.  

•Adults: LearnEnglish Central

•Parents: LearnEnglish Parents

•Professionals: LearnEnglish Professionals  - a special site to help learners develop professional work and study skills: https://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish

Teaching English Radio aimed at state school teachers with low levels of English to help them develop learner centred strategies and make learning more effective.

There will be 12 x 15 minute programmes which will be offered to local commercial or state radio stations, together with broadcaster notes and extra materials. These programmes may also be available on CD.  A radio series for learners – LearnEnglish Radio - is currently being developed

LearnEnglish Newspaper is in the form of a single page insert for national and regional newspapers and magazines with interesting and contemporary articles and activities on a range of topics including UK Culture, General English and English Premier League Football.  The articles come with language tasks, a fun corner, word of the day and a cartoon.

English by Mobile is currently being developed for Kazakhstan where for a small subscription fee learners can download English language content provided by the British Council and updated on a daily basis.

Classroom Language is currently being delivered as part of the ETTE project. It provides materials to develop teachers’ confidence and skills in using English in their lessons as well as opportunities to reflect on their ELT methodology.

TKT Essentials is a course in modern interactive methodology and terminology based on the syllabus of the internationally recognised Cambridge ESOL TKT exam: http://www.cambridgeesol.org/exams/teaching-awards/tkt.html

There is also a teacher training course in learning technologies and how to best exploit these in the classroom. It will raise teachers’ confidence and skill in using:

•Computer aided language learning (CALL) software

•Office applications (Word, PowerPoint etc)

•The Internet

•CD-ROMs that come with course books

•Interactive whiteboards

•DVD players

•Mobile phones

•Basically, anything electronic that can help someone learn

Video on DVD is a series of training videos on DVD focusing on skills development e.g. how to teach speaking. The approach taken in these training sessions is to encourage participants to reflect on their own practice in different aspects of teaching speaking skills, to view the video programmes as examples of practice, and then reflect on how they might incorporate aspects of what they have viewed in their own practice. The teaching in the video is not a model, but an example of real teachers in real classrooms.