by Maja Gavrilovic

On Saturday, 17. 4. 2010. an in-house YALS seminar was held at “Veljko Dugosevic” primary school, organised by “Livingston Language School”.

Our guest presenter was Ms. Milica Savic, a lecturer from the University of Nis, Department of English. The two workshops themed pronunciation and lesson planning lasted 90 minutes each.

The first session dealt with pronunciation. It offered a number of hands-on activities, real atmosphere and energy boosters, which at the same time proved to be applicable and very useful to a range of levels and learners.

In between the sessions the representatives of  “The English Book”  presented OUP’s new interactive dictionary, which also attracted a lot of attention from the participants.

The second workshop took the participants further and deeper into the field of lesson planning. Based on some theoretical input it also offered a great deal of practical ideas on how to write a good and useful lesson plan. In groups the participants created sample lesson plans on a set content. In the follow up session each of the plans was carefully examined and discussed enabling the participants to leave the workshop with a clear idea of how to write a good lesson plan.

The seminar lasted from 10:30 to 15:30 with 30 participants from different towns in Serbia attending it. The objective of the seminar was twofold: 1. the participants were to take home with them some clear ideas and useful tricks of the trade and 2. the participants were to enjoy in a brainfriendly and humanising details while working. Both aspects were achieved, which is confirmed by the feedback on both workshops and the organistion of the whole day. For all those interested the photo document of the seminar is posted on picasaweb.