Princess Nourah University’s English language program soars to new heights

RIYADH: The English language program at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) has held its end of year event, awarding members of its faculty with the Cambridge university “Train-the-Trainer” qualification.
Attended by hundreds of English language teachers, the week-long convention included a series of workshops, locally designed to improve the quality of English language teaching and learning, at the world’s largest women’s campus. The event included two international keynote speakers, dozens of PNU English language program speakers, and a final award ceremony attended by the PNU vice president for academic affairs, Samar Al-Saggaf, as well as program supervisor, Maha Al-Suraihi, and her senior leadership team.
The successful year-long professional development program supports the university’s strategic goals in its quest to make the English program a world-class organization that delivers outstanding results. In a statement a spokesman said PNU was “excited” about the process of establishing its new English language center to redefine the shape of its learning and teaching based on internationally recognized practices. This includes planning, management, curriculum, professional development, assessment and e-learning.
Keynote speaker, Leslie Anne Hendra, a Cambridge university course book author and teacher trainer, spoke about the development of modern materials and offered new insights into how teachers can directly involve students in their learning. She was followed by Macmillan course book author and teacher trainer Anna Hasper, who presented a keynote speech on current research in the fields of cognitive science and educational psychology and their importance in language teaching.
Al-Suraihi highlighted the importance of professional development at PNU and the English language program’s commitment to continued excellence in learning and teaching.
Throughout the event, the 13 PNU “Train-the-Trainer” graduates delivered some 46 face-to-face workshops to PNU’s language teaching faculty, tackling up-to-date language teaching topics with a contextualized focus to display best practices in the field.
Cambridge university’s representative and senior teacher trainer Claire Hattle presented the certificates to the PNU English language program faculty members, who successfully completed the year-long training program. The training has now provided PNU with a large pool of qualified and experienced in-house teachers to help continue the process of building up its faculty and program.