KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

A conference entitled “Educational Christmas” was held at ASPU on December 23. The conference initiated by the Chair of Romance and Germanic Languages and their Teaching Methodology was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Armenian State Pedagogical University.

The aim of the conference was to bring together representatives of the field, to present and exchange their experience, ideas and findings of their research on modern developments in linguistics and teaching methods.

The conference was attended by representatives of universities, scientific and educational structures, museums, MA students, doctoral students, participants of the ASPU teacher certification programme (30 credits), and representatives of the British Council Armenia.

Emphasizing the importance of the conference, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages Tigran Mikayelyan especially hailed the poster presentations by students, noting that they are an innovation in foreign language learning and teaching methods.

In the plenary session, Professor Alvard Jivanyan presented s report entitled “Devine Brightness: Children's Christmas Books translated into Armenian,” and Zhanna Manukyan, Director of Yeghishe Charents House-Museum, presented s report on “Yeghishe Charents House-Museum as a Sacred Place Perpetuating the Memory of the Poet.

The conference continued in two parallel sessions, where 14 reports were presented.

Parallel Session 1 (Convenor - Professor Karen Hayrian) focused on current issues in teaching a foreign language and development prospects, pedagogical internship as a capstone for student teachers, Turkish language teaching methods in practice and other issues.

Parallel Session 2 (Convenor - Professor Yelena Mkhitaryan) addressed such issues as a cognitive study of epistemically marked discourse: with special reference to adverbs of objective evidence; conceptualization of time in British and Armenian fairy tales, development of legal word units in Armenian according to Ghazar Parpetsi's work “History of Armenia”, etc.
Associate Professor Gohar Melikyan, Head of the Chair of Romance and Germanic Languages and their Teaching Methodology, presented a report on “Poetics of Christmas Tree Decorations.”

Violet Zhao of New York University, made a report on “The Home of Free Souls” and Fulbright visiting scholar Aleksandr Butovetskiy gave an overview of Yale University.

In the workshop sessions, British Council trainers gave masterclasses in understanding thinking skills, communicative activities to enhance speaking skills in EFL classroom.

Dean Mikayelyan said that it was no coincidence that that Margarit Gevorgyan, OTC (Online Teacher Community) Facilitator at the British Council Armenia, participated in the conference. Nowadays, the English language teaching methods developed by the British Council, are innovative and flexible, and the best in terms of English language teaching experience.

The speeches were followed by poster presentations. By the way, their QR codes will allow everyone interested in the conference material to study the presented topics thoroughly.

Anichka Ayvazyan, a second-year student at ASPU, created the poster presentation with her fellow students in the classroom. They are sure that the information about different segments and branches of phonetics will be of great interest to junior students and will make the material more accessible.

The conference was accompanied by an active discussion and exchange of experience.