He who knows best knows how little he knows

“Give me the love that denies fear and converts everything to sweetness”

(Abuna Yaacub)

The motto of the English Department is “Begin with the end in mind”, which is one of the seven habits in Stephen R. Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. To be able to follow a discipline based on continuous development, we keep in mind the above quote by Abuna Yaacub.

This is because with every change, fear stands tall waiting for the confrontation, not expecting to be overcome by love, patience and perseverance.

We all know that the goal of languages is communication. In the English Department, we take this even further towards collaboration and creativity. This is expressed in the oral and written projects the students present, as well as the extra curricular activities they participate in, such as, creative writing and Model United Nations.

In class, we use a lot of motivational skills to manage student anxiety and raise enthusiasm encouraging social development. Our vision is to provide and sustain high quality learning opportunities for our young people in order for them to reach their full potential in all aspects of their lives and enjoy themselves while doing so. Consequently, we start giving English in preschool, KG3, where students enjoy learning the language through songs, rhymes and visual aids. We continue with the same incentive in the primary classes where students now have academic books used for their level in schools that teach English as a second language. In the complementary section, students are introduced to more difficult tasks and are asked to do more readings and book reports.

This carries on in the secondary section where students are also prepared for university entrance exams to increase their opportunities in choosing their respective universities.

All this takes place in an encouraging environment motivated by a saying for the Greek philosopher, Atticus, scholar of Plato’s teachings, “Watch carefully, the magic that occurs when you give a person just enough comfort to be themselves”.

We hope that through hard work and perseverance, we can continue in raising the standard of the English language at school, hence, giving the school disciples of Abuna Yaacub a tool to help them achieve their goals around the world.

Thomas Jefferson said, “He who knows best knows how little he knows”.

As little as we know, we are sure that,

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection” (Mark Twain).