welcome to Alliance Française de Chittagong Blogspot

Welcome to my blog. This blog has been designed with you in mind and will allow you to keep up-to-date with my work representing Alliance Française de Chittagong and it's diversified  activities. I am  privileged to represent  the excellencies  and superiority of this institute in the field language learning and skill development. I welcome any suggestion from you regarding the betterment of my work. Thank you... 

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

ANNE GRADE with her "Chittagong Lifelines of a city"

This is the last day for sending post for this competition. I was quite upset to accept the fact that there won’t be any writing about those innovations happening in our little Alliance Française de Chittagong. Then I felt it’s a great initiative to do something big in life, and I will continue this till end. I am grateful to everyone who arranged such a wonderful competition. And through this competition I have learned so much about AFC and other people associated with it those I was totally unaware of. If I be honest, it’s a great personal experience of my life.

As it happen to be the last post only for this competition and I got many things to tell. Unfortunately, due to time constraint i can't talk about all of them now. So far I have told about some painting and musical events, but I forgot to mention about photo exhibitions and workshops which held regularly in AFC premises. So i picked up a famous exhibition which was organized recently by AFC.

Last December we had famous ANNE GARDE visiting Alliance Française de Chittagong. She I an internationally renowned photographer for works on architecture ( Indian palaces, lido, Niemeyer, Bordeaux, Paris etc). Moreover, she has added some significant innovation in the field of contemporary photo representation. Plus, she has hundreds of articles, exhibitions and books at her credit.

She was here to cover up the main life line of the city and to compose the nature of this city where change has little effect only. To pursue her energetic and demanding vision she conducted a workshop which held in Alliance Française de Chittagong in mid January 09. She worked with a bunch of photographers form photobank organization. Throughout the year they worked on it which result in the “Chittagong lifelines of city”, a creative exhibition representing a certain sense of the uniqueness of this city. I was lucky to talk one of her student Md. Didarul Alam Chowdhury , He told me how thrilling that workshop was. As he said,” we have learned so many things previously which was ignored or wasn’t a important concern for us”. He added” during her work on ‘Navire Night’, I worked with her, her direction to the subject was not good, it was excellent”. That photo exhibition held between 20th and 24th December, I was present there to view her work. I liked all of them, because each and every photo contains something special. Although at first glance those photos may appear too simplistic, but, if someone sees them from inside he can sense the the beauty of this workaholic city. It was really a wonderful exhibition and many gathered to view her excellent work.

Alliance Française de Chittagong arranges this type of event such as workshop to provide opportunity and transfer the excellence of European art and culture to this part of the world. “Chittagong Lifeline of a city” was an excellent orientation of that purpose.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Road to Quality Education

Alliance Française de Chittagong always tried to provide its students with quality education ever since it started teaching the French in Chittagong. Past two years I have found no difference to that commitment. Students are thought through their utmost care and unique teaching methods. Teachers are continuously upgraded to deliver the best of their best. I have even talked to my teachers about the process of continuous up gradation. Today I’m going t talk about every ins and outs of their teaching method and our learning process and changes that has been made.

From students point of view we see lots of changes in recent time mostly in text book and orientation of those material in the class. For example, newly introduced Neveux Taxi focused on tapping students’ response in more interactive way what studio 100 lacked of, in fact, for the most part. It was like being bored in the class unless your instructor trying to engage your self into something special. I can still remember our prior teacher M. Asraf as hilarious person, most of the time he caught our attention with humor, just making sure we weren't sleeping while reading studio 100. I think I have done enough criticism of studio 100, I hope whoever wrote that book will not read my blog.

Let’s move on to teachers’ point of view. Teachers in AFC get continuous training at home and abroad by both local and international trainer throughout the year. This is due to develop their skill and approach for teaching students of AFC. These training programs has been developed through a process of scientific research and wide consultation, which provide a practical tool for teachers by setting clear standards to be attained at successive stages of learning and for evaluating outcomes in an internationally comparable method.

And that method is called Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). The CEFR has built up for course designers, textbook writers, testers, teachers and teacher trainers , indeed to all who are directly involved in language teaching and testing. It facilitates a clear definition of teaching and learning objectives and methods and provides the necessary tools for assessment of proficiency.

Training for teachers categorized into different level, as I said earlier, locally given trainings are for full fledged instructor are often jointly coordinated by AFD and AFC. But, most of the time newly recruited teachers are initially trained in AFD, then sent to their local teaching center. Our experienced teachers sometimes sent to France to receive higher level training in French language. Last year after completing such training from France our instructor M. Asraf and M. Mahfuj shared their view with me. According to them” it was a huge experience first of all, and then they were taught different skills and techniques to deal with student more friendly and playful way”.

Our most honorable teacher both M. Asish Sen and DR. Gurupada Chakraborty recently went to France once again for getting higher training to discover new methods to provide best teaching to the students of Chittagong. M. Asish Sen stayed from 15th to 28th November and M Gurupada Chakraborty stayed between 9th and 18th December. Both of them went to CAVILAM in Vichy, a training center for French teachers, where they met other teachers came from different parts of the world. It was jointly organized in cooperation among AFC, French Embassy in Dhaka, EGIDE and CAVILAM. That training program was concentrating on to extend the use of modern teaching material such as TV, drama, songs etc apart form book in the class. Hope to see them teaching us with more joyous manner then ever.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Fête de la francophonie 2010 in AFC

Alliance Française de Chittagong has celebrated 40th anniversary of creation International organization of Francophonie. It is the “FETE DE LA FRANCOPHONIE”, namely festival of francophone we celebrated this year. As we know, French is the second most studied language after English and this language is spoken in the five continents. The festival of Francophonie is a yearly event which is celebrated all over the world. This is the occasion for French speakers and learners to pay homage to the beauty and diversity of the French language and to reaffirm the faith in common values. Bangladesh is not a francophone country even though; celebration of Francophonie celebrated here with lots of joy and enthusiasm.

Let get back to history, it is French geographer Onésime Reclus, brother of Élisée Reclus, coined the word Francophonie in 1880 to refer to the community of people and countries using the French language. Francophonie was then created a second time by Léopold Sédar Senghor, founder of the Négritude movement, in the review esprit in 1962, who assimilated it into humanism.

The modern organization was formed in 1970, with vision to establish égalité, complémentarité, solidarité ("equality, complementarity, and solidarity"), referring to France's motto. Started as a small club of northern French-speaking countries, the Francophonie has since evolved into a global organization whose numerous branches cooperate with its member states in the fields of culture, science, economy, justice, and peace.

AFC celebrates this day by holding the same motto of equality, complementarity, and solidarity. In AFC, we actually celebrate the festival through the month. This year we have lots of fun. We celebrated this year’s festival by watching movies, singing music, joining quiz competition and doing so other things.

The formal program arranged between 28th and 30th march. On the 28th we had the French language film festival. We watched two movies that day, started with Father and Guns, (1H47), by Emile Gaudreault and then Maman est chez le coiffeur, (1h37), by Léa Pool. Next day, the program started from 4.00 p.m. Hélène Ringot, Madam Anne Tual and our director M. Dr. Samuel Berthet; each gave a speech about opportunities in French speaking world and talked about higher studies in France. Our cultural program started form 5 p.m, both students and teachers performed equally in cultural part. Students from Little Jewels School, William Carry Academy performed music. Then some individual students performed music, followed by poem recitation by teachers. Then we had a fantastic drama, “Nous sommes tous d’œuvres d’art“performed by the mixed group of B2 and C1 level students, which was directed by Madam Anne Tual.

The following day, we had prize giving ceremony for quiz participants. Which followed by two films from Vietnam, I liked both the movies. Finally our Froncophonie celebration came to an end, every one of us thanked our event organizer M. Dr. Gurupada Chakrabarti and M. Dr. Samuel Berthet. It was all breliently done.

Thus, through this event AFC has been building up an interesting relationship of cultural exchange that strengthen communication and contacts between Bangladesh and Froncophonie countries

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

AFC, source of motivation

Today I’m really feeling happy, as my result of DELF b1 exam came out. And I have succeeded in my DELF b1 diploma. It is very important for anyone who is perusing his higher level study in the French language and most significantly it is a recognition for all of your hard work. Anyway, today I will talk about the effort to bring innovation by Alliance Française de Chittagong in photography & photographic art area.

By now most of the people who follow my blog know that, AFC is one of the biggest promoters for our local innovations. It always looks forward to introduce new creative work through opening window for new comers. And that doesn't ends here, finding their inner sense, beauties and expressions of artwork are what it purports at least. Through out the passage it has brought about some amazing things for our artistic generation. An Example can be given of increasing number of photographers and artists and viewers in art who gather during exhibition, workshop, and training session.

I would like to share some of my wonderful experience at this point, for instance, last year I visited AFC’s newly renovated gallery when the exhibition “MANUSH” was going on. It was an extraordinary exhibition of 52 photos that he included, with text both in Bangle and English. The theme of this exhibition was to display the different stages and phases of human life,which typically include childhood and teenage stages, generations, single and multiple identities, it's connection to the environment, work, alienation and death.

The presentation of each photo was exceptionally unique, reflecting photographer’s great flavor of presenting contemporary artworks. The photos were framed in sober black color which made those very attractive to look at as well as more expressive. Mr. Shoab FARUQUEE,the photographer himself was present there and was addressing journalists and viewers as he was acknowledging the success of that exhibition. He said… “I was very much pleased and thankful to all the enlightened viewers, because of whom the exhibition was successful.” He added,” I could arrange at least 50 exhibitions using my current photo stock, but lack of motivation and encouragement hindered me to step forward, especial thanks to AFC,for it's strong Initiative without which it was not possible to arrange such a magnificent solo exhibition.“

That exhibition was one of my favorites because everything about that was just perfect. After the exhibition I talked to Mr.FARUQUEE about how important was AFC's involvement in presenting your art work? He replied, “its a good platform any artist who are willing to show their work,their cooperation was a huge boost in confidence, for the most part”

Personally I felt, AFC’s devotion to cultural development and nurturing young artistic generation is incredible as well as a source of motivation for all.

Friday, March 26, 2010

AFC, Conserver Of Our Cultural Heritage

In my first post I told a little about French innovations and cultural contributions to this world. Our Alliance Française de Chittagong is approaching the same goal since its establishment in 1965. Its founder also came up with the same vision, to enrich our local culture as well as to spread the light of knowledge in our locality.

Having no change in vision, current Alliance Française de Chittagong now representing various cross cultural events on a regular basis. Thus its contribution is so much that can not be stated in a single post. So I will try to describe its cultural contributions in a way.

Alliance Française de Chittagong has been organizing the “FATE DE La MUSIQUE”- International Music Day each year on 21st June for the last 24 years. It was since 2006; AFC decided to bring some renowned artist with a purpose of making a landmark event for all folk lovers. Forida PARVEEN was the first artist who joined this event in 2006; we have had as many as 700 audiences that evening, remarkable indeed.

The following year we had Rezwana Chowdhury BANYA, the famous Rabindrasangeet singer, for the same event. She performed some fantastic Rabindrasangeet on that program. It was also a very successful event. Next year, Shaheen SAMAD was invited for that event, who is undoubtedly one of the most famous Nazrul artists in this country.
Impeccably, her presence on that event was a gracious appreciation for our culture loving generation. Moreover, people from different parts of Chittagong joined that event and enjoyed the music. Their response made that event even more enjoyable.

Last “FATE DE LA MUSIC” was also very special for all folk lovers in Chittagong as we had folk Music legend Kiran Chandra ROY. All the music he sang that evening was my favorite. He started with Guru Bandana (warship to Guru), then commenced singing from Lalon. Later he picked up songs form Rada Rahman, Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah and the Great Sachin Dev Barman. In addition, he delighted the audiences with some rare folk music from different regions of Bangladesh. All the instrumentalists performed electrically through out the event. Finally, he end up with a request form a passionate audience member, unfortunately, it was not me who made it though I tried in vain to convey my request.

This is how we celebrated the “FATE DE La MUSIQUE” in 2009. After that, AFC organized “1st Lalon music conference 2009” on the 9th December in Chittagong for the first time, at AFC premises. Fakir Bazlu shah, Fakir Abul shah, Ustad Mashiur Rahman shah, Abdul Mannan & others were there to present numerous Lalon songs. It was a phenomenal effort to reenergize our lost heritage, as we know nearly 6000 out of 10000 Lalon songs has lost with the course of time. Our director of AFC, Samuel BARTHET and The mayor of Chittagong, A.B.M. Mohiuddin CHOWDHURY was there to enjoy the extraordinary music of Lalon. I enjoyed the whole evening with the rest of audiences.

In 2010, Alliance Française de Chittagong welcomed one of the most prestigious artists in this subcontinent; he is none other then, Ustad Wasifuddin Dagar. He was in AFC premises to present his Dhrupad, unique rendition of his creation, in the program of INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC FESTIVAL 2010. We also had Ustad Azizul Islam, great flute musician following day, and Peter Pannake, classical fusionist. Actually, I was lucky to see them performing under same roof. Thanks to AFC.

I know, it’s quite dull to interpret all these names and events than sitting in front and enjoying them. Though, my purpose does not lie in just mentioning the names, but to determine AFC’s generosity to my country's heritage. As we can see it is continuously putting its effort to promote our greatest riches, our folk music. Plus it is revitalizing our lost wisdom for our country music.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Frindahip and Alliançe Francaise

Last time I shared some of my experience with Alliance Française de Chittagong. Today I will share some others experience with this great French language center. Actually I have been taking some interview of some current and former students just to find out why they came to this language center, what was their motive?

Most of junior level students’ first acquaintance to this organization is through the University of Chittagong. In fact, they have a one year duration course at Chittagong University and due to have some in depth knowledge of French they come here to study. Not only them but also some student of English medium school who got the French language as a foreign language subject or has collaboration with AFC also come here to study the French. Others just come to meet their curiosity or just passing their time or, to meet their job requirement.

After talking to some fellow mates I found that their early intention was quite complex, however their following words were incredibly heart touching. All of them fall in love with this fantastic learning center. And that is not just for its unique quality and extraordinary facilities, but for its clam nature surrounding its premises and for its great CAFÉ DU PARIS, a great place for having short refreshments and most importantly making friends. Everyone whoever stepped into to this café has liked it because of its cozy & homely environment as well as for its nice and welcoming faces.

One of my senior mates from level 301, M. Mamun, shared me his experience. It is like…”I came to this center to learn French, first of all, and I thought it will be helpful to pursue my university study, but I simply fall in love with it ever since I stepped into it. I love every thing about it”. M Sumadri, one of the teacher of AFC shared me his experience as a former student of this language center, “it was a coincidence, I came here first in 1992, as a participant of a yoga program held here back then, my cousin and brothers in Chittagong University motivated me to come here and finally in 2003, I started my journey here, and I loved this place at first sight”. He added” I love to visit resource center and study there and I made lots of friend in AFC and those moments are just invaluable to me”

Hundreds of current and former student come here everyday to visit this great place and meet their friends. All of them are from different background, from different society, but this place is smashing up all their differences and welcoming them to unconditional friendship.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

My days of Alliance Française

It’s been more than a week since my last post. Actually I’m working for my upcoming DELF B1 examination. That is one of the mile stone for the student of French language completing there second year. Personally I found myself very lucky to be at this point and experiencing so much of this language. This is not just because this language is challenging to learn but also for other environmental challenge such as lack of scope for interaction outside Alliance Française etc.

Personally I'm not a good student so it was quite a hassle for me to pass those exams. Things changed for me while I found M. Asraf as a course instructor just before my DELF A2. He used to do fun with me and I can still remember his smiley face. He used to tell me “TRAVAILLE FORT Khairul”. That means work hard Khairul, I really miss his smiley face. He is now completing his master’s degree from Bordeaux University, France. I wish his success and hope he will join us again after completing his educational expedition.

After him we were replaced by a young lady called Mademoiselle Murial. She was a very good instructor in a sense that she forces us to explore the deep inside the French language. To her it was just as much as a sea which never ran out of water. I have to admit those classes were really tough for us. As she was the first French teacher we ever confronted and this confrontation was a huge experience for me.

After her, M.Gurupada started to take care of us. And we underwent under him quite smoothly until I slipped in my 203 level for some of my personal reasons. It was a shock for me, but it was not enough strong to take control over my will. Then, Madam Zarin stared our new 203 course, she is explained all the things in the class and waited for response until we utter the correct one. She helped me in lots of ways specially she thought me how to develop imagination during oral exam.

Now I'm joining one of the most prestigious teachers of Alliance Française de Chittagong and she is none other then Madam Anne tual. Actually, it was a surprise for us as M.Asish sir managed her to take our class and not letting us know who is taking our new 204 class. We entered our specified class and found a blond women waiting for us eagerly. My first impression was like “it will turn out to be a great course for us”. Till now it has already turned out as a successful one. She thought us how to evoke argumentation and how to contrast and how to prepare for oral exam. I have joined 12 classes of M. Anne and it feels like you entered into a new world of knowledge as her priority always surrounding by us.

We have already received a lot from her and yet hoping to receive more.