In the period from January to February 2022, from the inception of the “Advancing English for Media Literacy” project in 4 citiesof Kazakhstan, namely in Taraz, Turkestan, Kyzylorda and Shymkent, facilitated sessions were held.
During the 1st period (January - February) about 90 English language teachers in Kyzylorda, Taraz, Turkestan and Shymkent have passed the English Score (British Council) test and interview with the facilitators: Moldir Yessembayeva, Ainura Nurzhanova, Saltanat Kulayeva and Nuriya Nazipova.
The project was launched with the online meeting with John Silver – Director, Regional English Language Office for Central Asia, Caroline Savage - U.S. Consul General, U.S. Consulate General in Almaty. Since the project relates to the media literacy, Pavel Bannikov - the editor in chief of Factcheck.kz, Almaty, spread on the resources of fact checking. Participants were also greeted by Olga Sviridenko – FIRPO Director, local teachers’ association leaders: Marina Novozhilova – TATE (Taraz) and Timur Kenshinbay – TEK (Kyzylorda), and the M&E experts Olga Samofalova and Larisa Petrova. Project participants during this period have subscribed to the MOOCourse “English for Media Literacy” on the LMS “Coursera” and took active part in 2-3 facilitated sessions run by the facilitators on the basis of Korkyt Ata Kyzylorda University (Kyzylorda), M.Kh. Dulaty Taraz Regional University (Taraz), A. Yassawi International Kazakh-Turkish University (Turkestan) and M. Auezov University (Shymkent). At the facilitated sessions participants tried web applications to practice language (https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/), writing skills with polleverywhere.com, https://padlet.com/ to engage teachers into discussion on the topic within the course curriculum.
Training on the themes of Media Literacy was arranged by Danara Saranova - a trainer on behalf of the FIPRO to raise awareness of the project participants’ media literacy competences. We should give Danara credit for her vivid examples from local mass media to demonstrate various types of biased information.
Within the project teachers also attend webinars on American English for Educators Facebook page. This season they are enhancing their skills in e–reading teaching.
The facilitated sessions are going on and new topics will be discussed. All the events held are very positively received by the participants. Also, it is worth noting the fact that the number of participants is growing. This makes it clear that the interest in such projects is high.