News and Events

Al-Ehsaan's Reading Festival Event

Last month, Al-Ehsaan School invited Cambridge-Obeikan to take part in their Reading Festival Event. What was the aim of this interesting event?

We all know that reading can be the key to improving language skills, broadening horizons and developing an enquiring mind. Some young people love reading and for them, being without a book can be like being without water. However, do all students love reading? Many perhaps haven't got into the habit of picking up a book in their spare time, or haven't yet realised the benefits that reading can bring to their lives. Either way, Al-Ehsaan's Reading Festival aimed to help everybody appreciate the value of reading a little more.

Cambridge-Obeikan's ELT Consultant Rasha Abudeeb would like to say a particular thank you to the students of Al-Ehsaan who demonstrated their creative flair in helping her arrange Cambridge-Obeikan's books so beautifully. So well done to Shaden Al-Nojaidy, Reema Al-Rabeesh, Maram Al-Ghamdy and Salma Al-Manesy!

Cambridge-Obeikan at the Sixth Annual Learning and Technology Symposium

The Sixth Annual Learning and Technology Symposium, organised by Effat College and held in the Jeddah Hilton, was an excellent opportunity to share ideas about how the development of technology will affect education. The general theme was 'Cyber Citizenship: Vistas and Visions', with the highlight of the event being the Education and Technology Exhibition.

Around 40 organisations, including Cambridge-Obeikan, were invited to exhibit their products and materials. All stressed that education must not only keep up with the advances in technology, but with the changes in the ways people interact with each other due to the rise of widespread communication websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. This is, of course, particularly pertinent in the case of English language learning as communication lies at its very core.

Messages launch in Riyadh

A very enjoyable day was had by all at the recent Messages launch in Riyadh. Around 130 members of the local ELT community were able to learn more about Cambridge-Obeikan's latest English course for the Gulf in the beautiful surroundings of the Marriott Hotel.

A series of stimulating presentations were made by Dr Ali Al Hakami (Obeikan Research & Development), Dr Sami Al Showairkh (Al Iman Islamic University) and Paul Zbihlyj and Peter Holly (Cambridge University Press).

Messages is a four-level English course for lower-secondary students. Each level of the course provides 80-90 hours of classwork and lots of recycling of language with regular four-page review sections. The course takes students to an intermediate level by the end of Level 4. This edition was developed by Cambridge-Obeikan's editors in Dubai, Cambridge and Cairo in accordance with the needs of learners in the Arab World.

All the delegates received coursebook and workbook copies of all four levels of the series, and feedback on the new course was extremely positive. Thank you to all the guests and to the Cambridge-Obeikan promotional team in Riyadh for making it such a successful day. We look forward to similar events in the future!

Messages launch!

Cambridge-Obeikan is pleased to announce that the launch of Messages, the fantastic new lower-secondary English course for the Arab world, will take place on Tuesday 13th May 2008 in the Marriott Hotel in Riyadh. We welcome any English Language teachers who would like to attend. For more information on this event please contact the Cambridge-Obeikan office on +966-1-216 8900 Ext.305 /300.

April's competition

The title of our competition this month is ‘How do you as a teacher make your students love learning English?’ The prize will be a complete level of Primary Colours. To take part, please send your answer in a maximum of 300 words to eltmena@cambridge.org before 30th April 2008 and wait until May to see if you are the lucky winner!

Write a review for our website

Have you recently attended an English Language Teaching event in the Middle East? Would you like to write a review of it for our website? If so, please send your review to eltmena@cambridge.org and watch this page next month!

Qatar TESOL Third International Conference

The College of the North Atlantic in Qatar is delighted to host the Qatar TESOL Third International Conference on 11th - 12th April 2008. The subject of this year's conference will be 'Towards Excellence in the Classroom', focussing in particular on developing practical strategies that work well in classrooms in the Gulf region. To find out more details on this event, please visit http://qatartesol.org/conference.html