Excellency, Reverends, Distinguished Guests,
Today happens to be our ninth annual conference and the last day of the third elected committee. Monday morning is a new day and a new committee will be in charge. Sad as some members of the previous committee will have left and a new challenge is to start for the new committee. Before going into future plans, a real big thank you goes to the outgoing commit tee and delegates for achieving a lot. I seize the opportunity to announce to our colleagues all the achievements.
Under the mandate of the third elected committee,
A - ATEL office was purchased, furnished, equipped and inaugurated. Due to their efforts, teachers now can enjoy all the facilities, from computer service to library resources to a meeting place.
B - Three international conferences have been organized where more than 4000 ELT professionals have attended.
C - Twenty regional workshops have been organized where about 2000 teachers have profited.
D - Three ATEL newsletters and agendas have been published.
E -Three reading competitions have been organized where more than 40.000 students have participated.
F - Four students and fifteen teachers have received grants to Britain.
G - Fifteen teachers are about to get their certificates for their TKT Training offered by the British Council.
H -ATEL has become a sub centre for Cambridge where about 160 candidates are presenting the exams.
- ATEL has become more involved in the Teacher’s Syndicate and is represented in the syndicate’s executive board.
What about future plans?
The challenge remains in
1 - Setting up and equipping regional offices.
2 - Trying to move forward with our plans for the syndicate where a mission, next to impossible is waiting for us trying to purge this educational body thus turning it into a non political, non confessional and effective social and educational syndicate to better serve the interests of the teachers of Lebanon.
3 - Trying to improve our site which is in a miserable state.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is worth mentioning that out of nine conferences, four have been under the patronage of British Ambassadors. Your Excellency, your presence here honours and encourages us. On behalf of the teachers of English we want to thank you and thank the British Council for their positive and effective role.
Last but not least, we truly want to thank
Pearson Education, Longman and Librairie du
Liban for their generous support to education, to
ATEL and for their professionalism.
Thank you.
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Distinguished Members of the Board, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honour for me to be invited to address you at the opening of your annual conference. I see sitting before me the collected knowledge and work of all that is best in the teaching of English in Lebanon, both as teachers and students. As every good teacher knows, to teach is to learn, and I know that all of you who are devoted to teaching are devoted also to learning how to teach, and how to understand better the nature of the language you have chosen.
The English language has proved a remark able instrument of thought and of communication. From its beginnings as an Anglo-Saxon tongue, it has shown a capacity to adapt, absorb and adopt the words and usages of other tongues, growing rich above all with Gaelic, Latin and French additions. But subsequently with importations from all corners of the world and from the major languages, including of course Arabic. It seems to have a basic flexibility, a simplicity of structure, and above all a genius for coining new words and expressions, which make it well suited to the needs of a world in which the pace of innovation - both scientific and technical - is accelerating.
I feel proud that the native language of my island country has become one of the world languages. But I confess to feeling also some degree of concern about its future. Already it is fragmenting into identifiably different streams of development, both in the spoken and literary forms. I can access with ease the new English language literature of India, for example, or Africa
or the Caribbean, and am enriched by them. But at the level well below the literary one, I wonder how much of the global trend to speaking basic and not very correct English, as a second language, is going to end up impoverishing the original. All languages, including Arabic, face the problem of impoverishment, of dumbing-down, as our modern world puts a premium on speed and simplicity, at the expense of subtlety and expressiveness.
This thought was with me as I came to address your conference this morning. It is for that reason that I am deeply grateful to all of you for taking so seriously your professional commitment to teaching correct English. Not correct in the limited sense of a single, orthodox version of the language. But correct in the sense that you value the particular virtues of the English tongue- directness, accuracy, concision, adaptability - and want to teach them in teaching the language itself. A well-taught language is a great liberator of the human intellect, and precious vehicle of communication. It is much needed in this fast moving, globalizing world of ours. The part you are playing in giving your beloved country, Lebanon, and its young people above all, access to the opportunities of that world, and a proper role in it, could not be more important to your country’s future. I applaud what you have achieved so far, and what you are set to achieve. I wish you all success in your endeavors, and I know you can count on the continuing work and support of the British Council in your task.
Thank You All.
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