The 5th Summer English Camp
Every year, Ammi Said Institute organises Summer English Camps. This year, 2013, The Fifth Camp took place at the institute from 17 to 27 of June. The Camp was supervised by three teachers and organised by two university students. Twenty-two trainees joined the Camp. The majority of them, sixteen, are Middle School pupils. While a minority of them, six, are Secondary School pupils. Teachers together with pupils attempted to achieve the perceived objectives and goals during these ten days of training.
The Camp covered diversity of topics, most of them concern daily life topics pupils face such as, meeting people, daily routine, at home, at school, in the garden, and so on. Each day was devoted to one of these topics. The Camp covers many activities. In the morning, four workshops take place and each workshop takes an hour. Through these workshops, teachers presented their lessons in light of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) to make pupils speak correctly and write at least a correct sentence (this was the main objective set by the camp trainers). Tea Talk is another activity that was held in the afternoon and which was concerned with receiving guests. Trainees have greatly benefitted from guests’ experiences that have different interests in learning English namely teachers, graduate students, people who lived abroad in UK. Guests advice not only made trainees highly motivated and confident to speak English, but also eager to do many things with this language in the future.
Making pupils overcome the difficulties of speaking English was one of the most outstanding goal teachers strived to achieve. By doing so, teachers believe, pupils will be more interested in learning English and will be able to express themselves freely in this language. Additionally, teachers attempted to keep pupils speak only English in this Camp so that they will be able to use it in different situations outside the Camp i.e. in real life situations. English for leisure was another activity whereby pupils play educational games and live English outside the Camp: swimming, picnics and excursions.
Thursday 27th June was the last day of the Camp, on which teachers had provided their trainees with useful tips to learn English in order to expand their knowledge in general and perform better in their school curriculum, particularly in English subject. Last, but not least, teachers attempted to raise their trainees’ awareness by saying: one week English cannot be enough to master the whole language, but it may prompt them to mitigate the effects of speaking difficulties. A round-table discussion was held in a beautiful garden in the Oasis of Ghardaia, in La Adira district. Pupils had the opportunity to evaluate the Camp and provide tentative suggestions for the improvement of future English Camps. Teachers, on the other hand, repeatedly said this expression to their trainees “the more you listen, read, write, and speak the more proficient speakers you will be”.
