Association of English Language Teachers of Kazakhstan “KazTEA” in cooperation with PF “The Society Development Information Support Fund” (FIPRO) has launched the “Advancing English for Media Literacyin Kazakhstan” project funded by the Regional English Language Office, U.S. Embassy, Kazakhstan, in 16 cities within 4 cohorts in 2022.
The project goal is to strengthen Kazakhstan’s resilience to disinformation by increasing the media literacy capacity of 600 English language educators who will develop Kazakhstan’s next generation of responsible decision makers
Click the city to find more details:
Astana Almaty Aktobe Atyrau Karaganda Kokshetau Kostanay Kyzylorda Oral Pavlodar Petropavlovsk Shymkent Taraz Turkistan Oskemen Zhezkazgan
“Advancing English for Media Literacy in Kazakhstan” project: Cohort 4
In September recruiting campaign was launched in 7 cities: Almaty, Atyrau, Karaganda, Kyzylorda, Oral, Turkestan, Shymkent facilitated by KazTEA facilitators: Zulfiya Ainabayeva, Alfiya Bissengaliyeva, Zhansaya Budikova, NUrzharkyn Samigolla, Saltanat Kulayeva, Nuriya Nazipova. 200 EFL teachers of mainstream schools, universities, BA, MA and PhD students were enrolled into the project. The project followed the same structure:
1 week – Introduction to the project, Coursera platforms and e-learning strategies
2 week – training in media literacy and types of biased information conducted by the trainers from the Fund of Information Support for Community: Tatyana Khassanova (Karaganda), Danara Saranova (Shymkent, Kyzylorda, Turkestan), Aigul Takhitaliyeva (Atyrau), Gulbarshyn Mushtanova (Oral) , Aidos Amanbay (Almaty). This time the trainers included more interactive tasks to raise participants awareness of social media features. vivid examples from local mass media to demonstrate various types of biased information. Aidos supported his talk with a samples and talks from journalists and bloggers via zoom.
3-7 weeks – facilitated sessions on the content and language within the MOOC “English for Media Literacy”. More detailed reports of facilitators about their strategies, techniques and tools they employed during the sessions are on the section of the project.
8 week – participants created and discussed their posts demonstrating the skills they have taken up, such objectivity of information, features of advertisement to promote their service or product, diversity of their target audience. Posts and comments are uploaded on the Padlet
Final session was attended via zoom by the representatives of the U.S. Embassy: John Orak (Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer,) Assem Bekimova (English Programs Coordinator) and U.S. Consulate General: Chad Kinnear (Assistant Public Affairs Officer).
These are some comments of the project participants from Facebok group “MOOC Facilitators Kazakhstan”:
Zhibek Akhmentova (Oral) noted after the session (faci;itator – Nurzharkyn Samigolla) about diversity: the activity of choosing "one side" and giving reasons… helps to see what and how people might think differently and appreciate each others' opinions
Gulvira Nurgaliyeva (Oral) claimed it’s essential to ‘develop some applicable strategies for women in Kazakhstan to be open to raise their concerns’
Akkerke Kassymbay (Almaty) enjoyed the interactive way of the facilitated sessions run by Zulfiya Ainabayeva …” very informative and interesting especially during the game «Walkie- Talkie»”
Aizhan Aibolat (Kyzylorda) admitted “Before this training, I wasn't aware that I was prejudiced by a lot of information, but now I can claim with certainty that I can recognize the bias, … and ask the question before reading the information.”
Aigerim Tulegenova (Kyzylorda) stated “at each session (Moldri Yessenbayeva -facilittor) we have a chance to practice theoretical information by discussing
Gulzhauhar Yeshmurat (Turkestan) is grateful to their facilitator - Saltanat Kulayeva, for her interactive sessions where she “received … new practical skills that I plan to apply in my educational activities.”
“Advancing English for Media Literacy in Kazakhstan” project: Cohort 3
In summer time 2022 despite school vacation 70 EFL teachers started the “Advancing English for Media Literacy” project in 4 cities of Kazakhstan, namely in Kostanay, Pavlodar, Petropavlovsk and Koksheetau assisted by KazTEA facilitators: .Marina Kusritskaya, Yekaterian Rakhmanbergenova, Olessya Vodopyanova and Zhanat Aubakirova
Teachers from main stream schools, Nazarbayev Intellectual School (Pavlodar, Kokshetau, Petropvlovsk), Lyceums, university teaching faculty, training centers, and private schools as well as pre-service teachers took part in 8 facilitated sessions, during which facilitators arranged various tasks of interactive and engaging format to raise teachers’ awareness on social media features, advertising techniques and improve their English level. The participants noted as the main reasons of enrolling in the course the need of experience in e-learning. Furthermore, the “English for Media Literacy” MOOC gives them opportunity to advance their level of English, through listening and communication, involvement in the process of learning media literacy competences. To make the process of learning more engaging facilitators demonstrated their technical skills applying various web application to involve participants into discussion or active learning, such as debates, think-pair-share, interviewing, elicitation, concept-checking questioning as well as Visuword, COCA, Reddit apps to practice lexis related to media literacy, google forms for survey or brainstorming. Project participants highly assessed the role of facilittors to succeed with the course materials and online course. They have noted faacilitators' assistance in acquiring concepts within media literacy, such as, types of biases, elements of diversity or techniques for advertising.
These are some comments of the project participants:
Сауле Аймухамедова (Kostanay) We created news ourselves adding some details which were unreal, the others tried to define them, it was exciting process. The given seminar gave us a little experience and reveal concept of SM (social media). It happened due to Tatiana Khasanova
Yekaterina Kudritskaya (Kostanay) During the session the participants were firmly committed to discuss the different types and sides of advertising. They were keenly observant about the techniques used in creating advertisements.
Tatyana Zhukova (Pavlodar) Having studied the techniques of advertising and creating their own posts participants “have the full understanding of all details of the advertisements, how to motivate target audience to do something, how to avoid bias”.
Ирина Кофтанюк (Pavlodar) Bias “reflects how people organize, perceive and communicate reality”. Information could be presented in positive or negative way, which “depends on whose interests the author represents. We are human and we are all biased. Staying completely neutral is quite difficult. Therefore, we must be able to extract grains of truth from the flow of information”.
Bayan Rakhymzhanova (Kokshetau) it was a great idea to involve the US Embassy representatives in the discussion. That helped me gain a better understanding of the negative aspects of social media. For example, the impossibility of detecting online bullying among students.
Dinara Sarmoldina (Kokshetau) Most people are not aware to what extend the websites are reliable and trustworthy. There are loads of them: some of them are government websites (gov.)or educational ones which are tagged (edu.)at the end of the website address. Most of websites are commercial (com.) and to check their credibility we are supposed to evaluate websites with the help of 5 criteria: authority, purpose, objectivity, accuracy and currency.
Galiya Kalen (Petropavlovsk) We had the opportunity to present our advertisements and evaluate them according to the criteria. Now we have the full understanding of all details of the advertisements, how to motivate target audience to do something
Асель Джаксалыкова (Petropavlovsk) Discussions help us understand more clearly positives and negatives of social media.
Within the project teachers also read and discuss materials and papers from the Forum on American English for Educators Facebook page. The facilitated sessions for Cohort 4 are going on and new topics will be discussed.