On February 21, Sumgait State University (SSU) organized a round table dedicated to February 21 International Mother Language Day on ‘New Approaches to Mother Language Teaching in Scientific and Pedagogical Personnel Training’ organized by the Department of Azerbaijani Language and its Teaching Methodology of the Faculty of Philology.

The rector of the university, associate professor Rufat Azizov, opened the event with an introductory speech, greeted the guests and participants, talked about the historical development path of the Azerbaijani language and the relevance of the meeting. He noted that today"s round table will focus on textbooks and new approaches to the teaching of the Azerbaijani language, as well as the work done in this direction and a number of issues related to the training of pedagogical personnel. As in all areas of our country, rapid changes are taking place in the field of education and successful results are being achieved. Today, foreign experience is widely studied in updating textbooks. In this regard, higher education institutions should use these resources and train staff accordingly. The quality of the implementation of higher education reforms in the near and far perspective depends on the training of scientific and pedagogical personnel. In this direction, special attention is paid to scientific-pedagogical staff training at Sumgait State University. In this regard, today"s meeting is very important. We hope that today some problematic issues in mother tongue teaching will be clarified.

Then, the moderator of the round table, the head of the department of Azerbaijani language and its teaching methodology, associate professor Buyukkhanim Eminli, thanked the management of SSU for organizing the event. She noted that new approaches to mother tongue teaching, the current situation and problems of mother tongue teaching will be discussed in detail at the round table in the training of scientific and pedagogical staff in higher education institutions.

Around the round table, the head of the Azerbaijani language textbook project, Rafig Ismayilov, ‘The main principles of the communicative approach in language teaching’, Aynur Rustamova, the head of the coordination department of the AREI Methodical Support and Professional Development Center, ‘The goals and tasks of the mother tongue subject curricula’, Aysel Khanaliyeva, the leading specialist of the Teaching Resources Department of the AETI Khayala Guliyeva, ‘co-author of Azerbaijani language textbooks for grades 1-6’, 2005 graduater of SSU, teacher of secondary school number 29 in Sumgayit city, winner of the ‘Best teacher’ competition held in 2014-2015. They gave a wide speech on the topic of ‘Teaching mother tongue in the world experience’. They gave detailed information about the process of preparing new textbooks, differences in content and structure of textbooks, and new conceptual approaches in language teaching.

At the meeting, new approaches to the teaching of the mother tongue in the training of scientific and pedagogical staff, cooperation between AETI and SSU and the issue of students" internships there were discussed.