TKT

With the new director of the British Council, Richard Weyers more attention is being given to English language in Sudan. The British Council is running a three weeks course in the Teaching Knowledge Test offered by Cambridge University for tertiary level EL teachers.The course was orgainzed by Gray Ben, the English language advisor, at the British Council. The course will be located into two different venues at the same time to facilitate attendance of teachers. At the end of the course the teachers will take the TKT test. At the same time some local staff are being trained by David Watkins to become a future TKT trainers. As a member of the local staff being trained I feel really excited for an opportunity to learn something new. For two days we have been trained by David Watkins and we will continue to attend the course itself to observe professional trainers doing the training.
We are all hoping to see the TKT working well and we are hoping to have CELTA very soon in Sudan

The Time for Change conference

Time for Change: Developing English Language Teaching in Tertiary Level in Sudan' was the title of the conference held from the 1-3 of March by the British Council and the University of Khartoum. The conference was co-chaired by Mark Krzanowski from Westminster University and me from the University of Khartoum. The main themes of the conference were teacher training, assessment and use of technology in the classroom. In the first day of the conference I presented the plenary speech entitled 'Time for Change: Developing English Language Teaching in Tertiary Level in Sudan'. In the second day the plenary speech was presented by Mark Krzanowski entitled ' Current International Developments in English Language Teaching (ELT) and Implications for Tertiary Institutions in Sudan". We had presenters from different Sudanese universities and from Africa and UK. Also some publishers participated in the conference and we had presentations from Cambridge University Press, Macmillan and Garnet. On the third day of the conference the participants were divided into different groups as to open discussion so as to be able by the end of the day to draw the final recommendations of the conference to be presented to policy makers at universities and the Ministry oh Higher Educations. The conference was a success in the quality of the final recommendations. The conference was the first step in the road for change in the teaching of English Language at tertiary level in Sudan.