The 14th annual Talent Show for secondary students took place on April 3, 2010. This time we had over 100 performances featuring about 300 participants, who had a chance to show a particular talent in one of the four categories: Solo singing, Group singing, Recital and Dramatization. We are glad to see the expanding geography of the contest. The participants come to Vladivostok from all parts of Primorsky region (Luchegorsk, Lesozavodsk, Dalnerechensk, Dalnegorsk, Spassk-Dalny, Arsenyev, Barabash, Kamen-Rybolov, Fokino etc.) The panel of experienced judges, which consisted of university professors and native speakers, chose the winners and runners-up in each category. The results are as follows: Results.

As English teachers, we couldn’t pass by the 12th Talent Show because we love it! Every year we are looking forward impatiently to this rainbow of beautiful faces, brilliant costumes and decorations, unique voices and, of course, talents – both of our colleague teachers and of our dear children.

This time we witnessed a 6-hour English marathon with over 100 participants from all over the region! And once again we had a chance to be happy – personally and professionally, – to shed some tears, to laugh heartily and to sing along to our favorite tunes! The Talent Show has always been a source of great emotions for everybody; that is why it attracts so many people from so many places. Emotion is a key word for the audience, for the children on stage and ? for the jury as well: if they cry or laugh during the performance, they will never leave it without a prize.

As a member of the TS jury for several years, I’d like to suggest some guidelines. We are English teachers of different ages, backgrounds and preferences, coming from various institutions. But there are things that we all unanimously appreciate:

• fluent English (esp. pronunciation)
• costumes and decorations
• live music (instruments)
• harmony (for group singing)
• original material (difficult to find but always rewarding!)
• efficient stage organization (adequate microphone usage, the speed of setting the stage ready for the action, observing the time limit, etc.)

And there is also a so-called black list of the things spoiling the impression, which includes:

• poor stage organization (children stay too far from the audience where nobody can see or hear them)
• useless additional performers (poor dancers may ruin the impression of a beautiful song)
• inappropriate topics (a 9-year old boy singing about – thoughtless copying of modern pop stars with their vulgar clothing, movements and intonations — it looks like a parody.

In spite of the criticism above we are all absolutely happy with the 12th Talent Show and extremely grateful to you for participating and for supporting this unique English event.

Maria Dyuzheva, jury member

The Winter School, traditionally held at the end of January, was a two-day event this year which brought together more than a hundred participants from Vladivostok and all over Primorski krai: Ussuriisk, Artyom, Nakhodka, Kavalerovo, Dalnegorsk and Sibirtsevo. Over its twelve-year history, the Winter School has become aevent for both school and university teachers; they all look forward to participating in the seminar and recommend it to their colleagues.

As usual, we tried to make the presentations useful, up-to-date and to cover a diverse range of issues, so that they could meet the needs of all our participants, working in school or university, teaching young learners or adults, dealing with ESP or EFL. The seminar started with a plenary by our distinguished scholar Zoya Proshina. It was devoted to a very topical issue nowadays – World Englishes. Our true friend and a very experienced English Language Fellow Judith Elliott told us about various teaching lifestyles in herpresentation and then gave a follow-up computer-based workshop, a fine example of using the Internet in the classroom.

Natalia Proshjants in her presentation brought up a very tricky question – teaching grammar to non-English majors; in it she shared her own experience of teaching naval students. Maxim Zhuk’s talk on a novel by one of the most outstanding Irish writers James Joyce was admirably presented and highly informative. It has already become a tradition in the Winter School to give teachers an opportunity to tell about their achievements in professional activities, so this year Elena Prihod’ko, a Presidential grantee, made a presentation called. A group of teachers involved in city and krai olympiads made an overview of tasks given at olympiads and commented on the most common mistakes made in these tasks by pupils.

Marina Rassoha’s presentation helped us to uncover many aspects of contemporary Anglo culture by watching a British comedy show. A new form of presentation, the FEELTA jam session, proved to be a rather exciting way of exchanging favourite class activities, and is sure to become one more traditional item in the Winter School. Of course one more event without which we now can’t imagine the Winter School is the raffle. The prizes were kindly donated to us by Judith Elliott, our present ELF, Kevin McCaughey, our former ELF, and the US General Consulate. Thank you for supporting the raffle! We really appreciate it as the money we raise from the raffle is used for buying prizes for Talent Show contestants.

In conclusion, we want to share with you some extracts from the evaluation forms filled out by the participants. For us, these comments are essential feed-back which helps us to improve our seminar and to make them even more useful and helpful for you!

Why did you decide to attend the Winter School?

• To get new information, new emotions
• To communicate with colleagues from other schools/institutes
• To improve my teaching skills
• To exchange experiences and learn something from others
• I know that here I will get inspiration which will last for a long time
• The seminar stimulates me to work better and to find new and more effective ways of teaching

What did you like most about Winter School-2008?

• Diverse presentations, an opportunity to communicate with presenters
• Very refreshing, new forms of presentation, the Jam Session is very interesting
• Well-organized event, using multimedia in presentations
• Very interesting and informative seminar. I think I will come again next year.

And we do hope that you’ll come again and bring your colleagues!

Anna Rusnak, FEELTA membership officer

The latest FEELTA seminar,held in October in Vladivostok was very exciting. Firstly, because there we got acquainted with such outstanding American specialists as J. D. Brown and Michael Krauss and met our faithful American friend Judy Elliott. Secondly, it was really beneficial for us to attend the presentations made by Maria Verbitskaya, Lyudmila Kozhevnikova and Slava Shvaiko.

M. Krauss’s lectures and workshops were devoted to computer assisted language learning. They were really overwhelming for us. Many of us came to the conclusion that the opportunities of Internet technologies are really huge.

There’s no denying that testing is a burning issue at the moment, primarily because we have got a new format of school-leaving examinations: the Unified State Examination. Naturally we should be fully armed with a new form of testing to avoid heavy losses concerning the requirements, the format and the technique of performing different exam tasks. J. D. Brown covered the topics of the purposes of language tests, the effects of language testing and the constraints on language testing. He also drew our attention to different points of view on testing taken by administrators, teachers and students. Maria Verbitskaya added some helpful ideas to this issue at our round-table talk. Her plenary and workshops were very interesting, especially for school teachers. I managed to clarify all the questions I had in face-to-face talks. I also liked Ludmila Kozhevnikova’s workshop dealing with building students’ learning styles and strategies. Maria and Lyudmila turned out to be not only splendid specialists but also very charming ladies.

But what was even more exciting for us, teachers, was a seminar in, where we had a unique chance to talk to all these great experts face to face from morning to night, as well as discuss in small groups problems that are important for us. It was really great! We are very grateful to Bridget Gersten for financial support for the seminar.

As you see, the seminar was full of beneficial and exciting events. The weather contributed to our pleasure, too. It was sunny and warm.

I think I will remember the seminar for a long time, using all the information I got there.

Vera Sazhina,
secondary school ELT organizer of
Komsomolsk-na-Amure

Five days that changed the color of our skin

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead, Anthropologist (1901-1978)

Did you know that the full name of Bangkok consists of 147 (!) letters and is translated as The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated God, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn? In the Guiness Book the capital of Thailand is registered as the longest geographical name.

From January 24-29, 2007 Bangkok hosted the 5th Asian Youth Forum which is traditionally held in the framework of PACconferences. The Pac 6 Conference and Asian Youth Forum (AYF) were hosted by the national organization Thailand Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (Thailand TESOL) with the participation of language education associations such as the Japan Association for Language Teaching and Korea TESOL. The Far Eastern English Language Teachers’ Association (FEELTA) played a crucial role in bringing Russian students to AYF.

Russia was represented by 4 FENU students — Anastasia Onoprienko, Ekaterina Lebedeva, Irina Labuz, Victoria Talantseva.

The 4th AYF was held in Vladivostok, Russia, in June, 2004. This year Russia passed the baton to the <The Land of Smiles>, i.e. Thailand.

This time the Forum gathered 75 young people from 17 countries (Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Russia, New Zealand, Laos, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand).

During the 5 days young leaders aged 13-25 engaged in different kinds of activities, including global issues discussions, cultural performances, and academic sessions aimed to promote intercultural understanding and cross-cultural communication, overcoming the most common stereotypes through role plays, case studies, group discussions and culture stereotypes explanation sessions. Thus, the Russian team showed that Russia is not all about vodka and constant cold, and, besides, bears don’t walk down the streets here.

The participants got acquainted with Thai culture, visited the most famous sights of Bangkok, like the Ancient City and the Grand Palace. There was a separate session devoted to Thai culture and customs, where young people learnt Thai songs and a national dance. The atmosphere of AYF was really warm and friendly. The fact that most participants were hosted by Thai families played an important part in our getting acquainted with Thai culture and cuisine.

Many young people came back home inspired and full of impressions of what AYF is all about. They are ready to share them with you and besides, to motivate all youngsters to join the AYF family:

Victoria Talantseva: A new country, Thailand, with different traditions and customs, a different way of life was waiting for me. I was looking forward to learning new interesting things not only about Thai people but getting acquainted with AYF participants from different countries. I was very lucky to have a splendid host family, which gave me a hearty reception. I stayed with two girls: one from Japan and another from Mongolia, who became my friends. I even managed to teach them some Russian expressions. For example, after I took a shower, they told me: <S legkim parom!c Other Russian girls and I prepared some Russian dishes for the host family. They enjoyed Russian pancakes and soup. At the end of the AYF forum we united into one big family. Nobody wanted to say good-bye. I feel happy when I understand that I’ve found a lot of new friends, whose houses are open for me any time.

Irina Labuz: Most of all I liked the academic sessions on the last day. It is not because of us who had become so close and friendly to each other due to the discussion we had in a small group of people who represented different countries. I had talked to foreigners before but this time I heard the <real storyc about the Philippines education system problems, environmental problems and the ways of solving them in Japan from people who really know what they are talking about and are not afraid to share with people of other nations. My small suggestion to make AYF perfect might be to prolong it just enough to discuss the topics more deeply. I did not expect it to be so amazing and educational at the same time.

Ekaterina Lebedeva: It is like the <unbelievable sights, indescribable feelingsc from the Walt Disney cartoon song. And now I can perform Indian and Thai dances, I know how to drink tea during the Japanese tea ceremony, and I am aware that women should not touch Buddhist monks. They are not even allowed to come up to them to speak. Academic sessions and lots of discussions on global issues helped me to get rid of the language barrier and feel free talking to people and communicating in English. The AYF5 has just ended but we are e-mailing to each other, receiving calls and discussing when to hold on-line conference via Yahoo messenger. Having once filled me up, the AYF spirit stays with me and makes me passionate, active, eager to be interested and involved in the things happening in the world, in neighboring Asia. There are global issues, stress problems in the world around us, and we are the generation who have energy and strength, who are motivated to change the world for the better and we are ready to do it. Actually, with AYF we have already started doing it.

Anastasia Onoprienko: I can write many paragraphs about what AYF is and what it gives us, but if to compress many-many good words into one sentence, I would say that for me AYF is first of all PEOPLE, people we meet, new friends we make. I really believe that not words but people and close relationships one makes can motivate us to do something good in this world! So, what I really value is the relationships I made at AYF! After AYF we have a lot of ideas to implement (like running joint international projects, participating in youth conferences, publishing newsletter, sharing information, etc.). Thus, we would like to make AYF something more than a 5-day forum bringing young people of different nationalities together, to make AYF a series of projects promoting long-lasting cooperation among its participants. After coming back from Bangkok we are full of energy and desire to promote the AYF spirit in Vladivostok as well as in other parts of Russia.

Leaders of our countries sometimes cannot find a common language, and very often they behave like children: as if being offended by one another they start to declare wars and to play a double game. But the youth of the 21st century is against war. We want to live in peace. The mass media often project incorrect information, and pretty often we perceive representatives of other countries on the basis of stereotypes imposed by the mass media and political leaders. AYF, first of all, helps to break existing stereotypes, and it does it by means of a very easy way – it just gives a chance to people from different countries to meet each other in person. The main conclusion that we have come to is that we all differ pretty much, have different customs and habits, but we all strive for one thing – to live in peace and be friends with each other. And it is so easy if you start at least with a simple thing: begin to treat 75 people from 17 countries as your friends?

FEELTA will be sending a delegation of 5 students to the next Asian Youth Forum in October/November, 2008, in Tokyo. For details click here.