78 LERAC 120

Hay
AlMassira,
Laayoune
June 4th, 2012
The Director
The Inspectors Training Center
Bab Tamsna, Rabat
Dear Madam or Sir,
My name is Ahmed Salem Najah, and I am writing to apply for the two-years training
course at the inspectors training center Bab Tamsna in Rabat.
I am currently working at Hay Alkassam Senior High School in Laayoune. I got my
Bachelors degree in linguistics from the department of English language and literature in
Marrakech in 1989, and later in 1991, I entered the teachers training center ENS in
Rabat and took a one-year course in English Language Teaching. Then, I worked as a
senior high school teacher of English in Moroccan public schools for 17 years. After that, I
joined the center for the CPGE (Classes Prparatoires au Grandes Ecoles) in Laayoune
for 4 years, before shifting from teaching duties to administration responsibilities as a
surveillant gnral in 2011.
This long experience with different students, different staff members and different
supervisors taught me good skills in dealing with people, managing group and team work,
and especially adjusting the curriculum requirements to the tools and resources available
without compromising the goals and principles of the National Charter for Education and
Training. I also obtained my colleagues respect thanks to my valuable contribution to inservice training sessions organized by the inspectorate of English, especially through the
model lessons and the oral presentations I gave throughout my career.
There are several reasons why I am interested in this training course. First of all, studying
at the center is a great opportunity for me to benefit from the knowledge and experience
of outstanding Moroccan educators and to exchange views and experiences with
prominent teachers of English. Second, a training course such as this one will certainly
enrich my educational knowledge, sharpen my teaching and supervising skills, and
therefore make me in a better position to help other Moroccan teachers with their
everyday classroom practices. Third, it is a good opportunity for me to go beyond limited
action research to more academic research in order to study certain phenomena and find
answers to questions that will contribute to the development of the ELT discipline in
Morocco.
As for my research project, it will be about the role of extensive reading in improving the
writing skills of Moroccan senior high school students. Research has shown that extensive
reading plays a great role in improving overall language proficiency. My hypothesis will be
that extensive reading will enhance my students writing skills by enabling them to
generate ideas during the brainstorming and drafting stages.
The reason for this research is that I noticed throughout my teaching experience that my
students were short of ideas when writing composition. To remedy for this situation, I used
every technique I could come across to help them, but no technique seemed to achieve

the results I aspired for. Later, I knew about informal classroom research, action
research, so I decided to benefit from it and do something to solve the problem.
I hypothesized that the use of extensive reading would improve the quality of my
students' writing. So every time I planned to do a writing lesson, I would assign an
extensive reading activity beforehand so that my students get ready for the writing
session. The results were good enough in the science classes, but the arts students in
general did not make much progress. This research was not standard research, but it
helped me solve the problem for some of my students. I could not generalize the findings
because the research was informal, and so the results would not necessarily apply to
other situations.
Now that I am applying for entrance to the Inspectors Training Center program, I have
chosen to carry out research about the same topic, but this time in a more systematic way
to see whether the use of extensive reading will help improve the outcomes of the writing
component in the syllabus. I will be using an extensive reading activity as a preparation
for every writing task my students will do, and I will be using the students written
products as a source of information. As for the participants, I will have four classes, two as
control groups and the other two as experimental groups. The four groups will go through
the same intensive reading course as in the textbook, but the two experimental groups
will receive an extra extensive reading program consisting of readers and long texts
dealing with themes covered in the textbook. This, I hope, will make my research results
more reliable and more generalizable.
I am certain that my previous teaching career, my eagerness to develop my teaching and
supervising skills, my experience in teamwork and group management, and my fervent
interest in improving the English teaching profession in Morocco make me a suitable
candidate for admission to the Inspectors Training Center program.
I would like to thank you for considering my application and I look forward to your positive
response.

Yours faithfully,

Ahmed Salem Najah