One of the winners of the “Best English Video Lesson” competition, Uldana Nauryzbaeva, told us why she dreamed of becoming a teacher and how the competition helped her improve her professional skills.
“I was born in the village of Kurmangazy in Kurmangazy District, Atyrau Region. In my family there was my mother and two sisters. I graduated from Baurzhan Begaliev secondary school. Inspired by my favourite teacher I started to learn foreign languages. I dreamed of studying at the same university as my teacher had studied at".
Uldana graduated from her school with honours in 2013 and received a government grant to study at Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages in Almaty. In 2017, she graduated with an honours degree in foreign languages.
"Despite offers to teach in schools in Almaty I decided to return to my village. Now I work at Abay secondary school. I have been teaching here for three years and hold the position of teacher-moderator".
It should be noted that Uldana is making a name for herself district and regional levels. According to her, she does not regret her choice of profession.
"My students win prizes at regional competitions. As a teacher I am proud of every single one of their achievements".
She decided to take part in the "Best Video English Lesson" only for the experience. She had no idea that she would be shortlisted for one of the prizes.
“My main goal was to learn more about English language teaching methods, to implement them into my work and exchange ideas and experiences with fellow professionals. Participating in the competition webinars, receiving valuable information and engaging with the trainers has inspired me to put what I have learned into practice. Even if I had not won, I am sure that it would be of great help in my future career as all the information provided by the trainers was new and valuable to me. I also wanted to learn about effective online educational programmes and resources to use in the current pandemic. Therefore, I wanted to get all the British Council materials".
According to Uldana, the competition has been of great help.
"At the start I chose Question tags for my 11th class. This grammar topic helped me to get into the list of 30 finalists. Then we were given practical tips and suggestions on improving our videos. I would say that each webinar deepened my knowledge and developed my teaching mythology. For my final work, I chose “The Passive” grammar topic for my 11th class. In the end I took 1st place in the Atyrau region".
The competition was useful not only for distance learning but also for traditional learning.
“During the competition I developed in many ways. In particular, I learned to define the purpose of the lesson in accordance with the relevant learning objectives using "Smart Target" methodology. During the training, I also learned how to engage with students to determine their level of knowledge. This is the age of technology and digital teaching approaches are interesting and motivating for today's children. In this regard, I learned to make each lesson interesting and motivating for students using this technology. I learned to conduct video tutorials providing concise and valuable information. I hope that the benefits of this programme will be integrated and used practically in the teaching methods employed in our country. I would like such programme to be carried out more often as they are very important for our country’s young teachers.".
In order to support teachers during the Covid-19 pandemic the British Council organised the "Best Video English Lesson" online competition. More than 200 teachers from all over Kazakhstan took part in this. It was aimed at improving the quality of English video lessons using the British Council’s Internet resources. The project was funded by Tengizchevroil LLP to contribute to the professional development of English teachers in Kazakhstan.
The full list of winners of the competition can be found here.