On the 4th till the 5th of April teachers of English language were the witnesses of the greatest events in Kazan: International conference, called “Foreign language today – 2011: the problems and the prospects”. It was held in Tatar State University of Humanities and education.

It was supported by our Ministry of education and Science and English language office U.S. Embassy.

On the opening day our Minister of education and science Albert Gilmutinov reported that nowadays our society should know English language on the purpose that Kazan would invite thousands of young men in 2013 as Universiade would be held. We were very impressed with his spoken English.

Also Thomas Santos, English language officer U.S.Embassy, had a talk with the spectators about “Innovative language Pedagogy: using mobile phones to teach English”. It was very interesting and surprising for us how our gadgets could be so useful during the teaching of English.

There also were parallel seminars by senior English language fellows which had been going 2 days long.

There we took part on the different lectures as: “Community and process: building engaging writing lessons” (John Mark King), “Motivating EFL Students” (Erik Lundell), “Teaching English through visual images and art” (Natasha Isadora Frank), “Using drama in the language classroom” (Thomas Santas), “Using music in the classroom” (John Silver).

We weren’t only the listeners but active participants and chatted with our American colleagues. It was the greatest pleasure for us.

We didn’t want this conference to come to the end. We were given the certificates as the participants of this conference. All in all, we didn’t just take a lot of new knowledge but also have a great joy to meet such a great people.