词汇大师-- Morocco's New Way

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble is away -- this week on Wordmaster: meet a young English teacher from Morocco.

　　LAHCEN TIGHOULA: "My name is Lahcen Tighoula. I am a high school English teacher from the south of Morocco. I am from the city called Agadir. It's to the Atlantic coast. It's just two hundred kilometers from Marrakech -- I think Marrakech, lots of people know it -- so it's a beautiful city."
AA: "So tell me about developments in English teaching in Morocco."
LAHCEN TIGHOULA: "In the last three years or so there has been a reform in Morocco, of the educational system in general. And concerning English, now we [have] started to teach English in middle schools. That is, just after the elementary school. Before, we just taught English in high school. So this is the first change.
"The second change is in the curriculum. Before, it was structure-based, it was just teaching grammar and so on. Now, we include content, we teach the content through English -- like, for example, in our textbooks you'll have units on citizenship¹, on environment, on human rights, on women in the world, etcetera. So this is why now teachers have started to be involved in projects like tackling issues of citizenship, issues of human rights and using them as springboards to teach English in the classroom."
AA: "How do the students like that?"
LAHCEN TIGHOULA: "Well, the students enjoy it, because these are issues that really interest them [and] they would like to know about. Especially with the global changes now, the things -- I mean, and unfortunately what happened on September the eleventh, students are preoccupied² with a lot of issues that are sometimes taboos³.
"So the English classroom provides them with an opportunity to talk about this. And at the same time they are learning English. Instead of teaching English in the traditional, boring way, you teach it through exciting and interesting issues, and that's really a big thing. And we notice that the students in their feedback like that and they carry out projects in their cities about these topics and issues."
AA: "So the students like it. How do the teachers like it?"
LAHCEN TIGHOULA: "Well, for the teachers, there's just a little problem. We have a problem of in-service training. The teachers are used to the traditional way of teaching English. So just now a lot of teachers are not yet motivated or sometimes they are not well equipped to do this, to implement⁴ the content.
But we are trying in our association -- we have an association of English teachers in Morocco -- trying to help teachers deal with this problem. But still the government, and the ministry⁵, needs to do more efforts in this way. So it has to do with teacher training, in-service teacher training. We still have a lack in that domain⁶."
AA: "That's common, isn't it. In other countries, too, they face the same problems when they try to change the style of teaching English. Is there an example of a project that your students have done where they've taken it outside the classroom?"
LAHCEN TIGHOULA: "Sure. I can assure you that at least my students have done a lot in this. And I feel really satisfied that a lot of my students have done so much in this domain. For example, just before I came here, three groups of students did projects in their city.
"One did it on the effect of American culture on Arab youth. And she talked about things like students' favorite stars, students' favorite brands in terms of clothes, etcetera. And then the second part of her project was to talk about the American culture and to try to explain the difference between American culture and the image that we have about America in the media.
"And one other group of my students did a project in the city on the environment, how to protect the environment in our city. They went out of the school, did interviews in Arabic first and then translated them into English and came to the classroom and presented. And they felt very satisfied with their work, and they encouraged them and they felt very happy that the students can really do something with the language and in topics of interest to them that are motivating for them. And a lot of other colleagues are doing the same thing in Morocco, although other teachers need to do the same thing, but we feel that this is the start for more projects or more collaboration⁷ maybe."
AA: Lahcen Tighoula of Morocco was in Tampa Florida, for the convention of the international group TESOL -- Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. He's been an English teacher for eight years.
And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected] and all of our segments can be found on our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster. I'm Avi Arditti.

1 citizenship   

n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份)

参考例句：

• He was born in Sweden,but he doesn't have Swedish citizenship.他在瑞典出生，但没有瑞典公民身分。
• Ten years later,she chose to take Australian citizenship.十年后，她选择了澳大利亚国籍。

2 preoccupied   

adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式)

参考例句：

• He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice anything wrong. 他只顾想着心事，没注意到有什么不对。
• The question of going to the Mount Tai preoccupied his mind. 去游泰山的问题盘踞在他心头。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 taboos   

禁忌( taboo的名词复数 )； 忌讳； 戒律； 禁忌的事物（或行为）

参考例句：

• She was unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. 她被藩蓠、法律及外来的戒律赶下了马。
• His mind was charged with taboos. 他头脑里忌讳很多。

4 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

5 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

6 domain   

n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围

参考例句：

• This information should be in the public domain.这一消息应该为公众所知。
• This question comes into the domain of philosophy.这一问题属于哲学范畴。

7 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。