More than 200 English teachers, mostly from the northern regions, attended a professional development conference last weekend at the University of Namibia in Oshakati.

The event was probably the largest gathering of English teachers in the history of the country.

Sponsored and funded by the US State Department, and assisted by the Namibian English Teachers' Association (NETA) and by Unam, the conference focused on 'Shaping the Way We Teach English', a flexible series of teacher-training modules for all levels of students from children to adults.

The series is unique because it contains natural, unscripted video footage of classes in four diverse countries which is then used to isolate various language teaching skills.

Topics for the Oshakati conference, among others, included coping with large classes and integrating all four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening).

One hundred teachers received the complete 'Shaping' curriculum kit for their schools, courtesy of US taxpayers.

Five publishers, Zebra, Pollination, Macmillan, Cambridge/Namcol and Longman's, displayed their English teaching materials and spoke to the audience.

Some representatives were local, but others travelled from Windhoek for this event.

The Longman's representative donated dictionaries to several lucky schools.

Both Pollination and Namcol provide curricular materials for Namibian schools written by Namibians.

Other publishers of Namibian writing displayed at the conference were the Women's Leadership Centre, Sister Namibia, and NAWA: Journal of Language and Communication.

Teachers from 80 schools joined NETA during the conference, expressing their desire to engage in more professional development and to assist with similar conferences outside Windhoek.

The need is great.

One teacher poignantly commented, "Our learners are failing, but we do not really know what we are doing wrong in the classroom."

Another wrote that "NETA should look at the real situation in [rural] schools without water, electricity, chalkboards, posters, textbooks, photocopy machines, etc."

The organiser of the conference was Dr Marna Broekhoff, English Language Fellow to Namibia from the US.

She was assisted by Eran Williams, the US Regional English Language Officer for southern Africa, based in Pretoria, and by Richard Finch from the British Volunteer Services Overseas (VSO), who volunteered to organise the next conference in Oshakati in early 2009.

Member of Parliament Chief Ankama, a linguist and expert on the Namibian language policy, gave the keynote address for the conference.