Community College of Qatar holds 2nd English Language Teaching Symposium – The Peninsula

Community College of Qatar holds 2nd English Language Teaching Symposium – The Peninsula

The English Language Center (ELC) at the Community College of Qatar (CCQ) organised the Second International English Language Teaching Symposium virtually, under the theme of “Reflection and Change - Language Teaching in a Post-Pandemic World,” to reflect on how teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic has altered our outlook and approaches to learning and teaching English as an international language.

Masroor Hassan, Chair of CCQ’s English Language Center, highlighted the new, exciting, and innovative ways that returning to the classroom following a long hiatus has brought to provide and incorporate adapted and adaptive methodologies.

The Symposium started with a plenary session by Alan Mackenzie, Director of Transform ELT, titled “The Dance of Change: Transitioning to Teaching Online”.

This was followed by three concurrent sessions that witnessed various valuable contributions by educators, researchers, lecturers, and stakeholders from different local and international educational institutions, who shared their expertise to develop mechanisms and adopt new methodologies of English language teaching in a way that can help in overcoming different challenges and exceptional circumstances.

The first session addressed several important topics. Dr. Toni Dobinson, from Curtin University, shed light on interaction in online classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond; and then Prof. Mehdi Riazi, from Hamad Bin Khalifa