Carmen Becker - Diagnosing language competence – bridging the gap
The conditions for language acquisition at German schools have undergone drastic changes over the last few years: Today students transfer from primary to secondary level with a well developed linguistic competence. In order to ensure the continuity and success of the learning process started at primary level it has become extremely important for secondary teachers to expand the students' competence and to build upon the knowledge they have acquired before. But many teachers still feel uneasy about what level of competence their students have actually acquired at the end of primary school or the beginning of secondary school. They see problems in diagnosing the linguistic competence of their students.
By giving concrete examples, using a multimedia box – a CD-ROM and picture cards – this presentation will address these two questions and try to find answers: What level of linguistic competence can teachers expect at the beginning of secondary school? How can they accurately diagnose this linguistic competence?
Aim of session: to introduce an innovative solution to teacher supply using ICT for diagnostics.
For: primary and secondary (lower secondary level) teachers and teacher trainers
Biographical information: primary school teacher from Celle , Germany , editor of the educational journal Grundschule Englisch published by Kallmeyer Verlag, regularly works as a teacher trainer for the NiLS (Lower Saxony State Institute for Teacher Education and School Development). Member of the Lower Saxony Team working on a LINGUA 2 European Cooperation Project for the devolopment of classroom materials for staging early foreign language learning.
Janice Bland - Early English and literacy
Learners of a world language and of cultures throughout the world, autonomous learners, lifelong learners – primary English is the beginning of a never-ending story. Literature can provide children of all ages with fantasy friends to keep them company on the journey of learning. Robin Hood, Harry Potter and their gangs are as popular as any contemporary film or pop star!
The intention of this paper is to explore the ways in which the young language learner's sophisticated skills in visual literacy, rhythm and rhyme can be harnessed and exploited to promote literacy and communication skills using picture books, fairy tales, nursery rhymes and role-rhymes, and hopefully leading to a lifetime of reading for pleasure. Nursery rhymes and fairy tales provide children with heroes and heroines, the mythopoeia of colourful characters like Wee Willie Winkie, Peter Pan, Little Red Riding Hood and many more friends forever.
Aim of session: to highlight the need for school libraries, and for the availability of picture and poetry/rhyme books (authentic literature) in schools in class quantities. To show that young learners - with good materials - can enjoy reading English, with great gains for secondary and tertiary education.
For: my target audience is teacher trainers, curriculum and policy planners, primary teachers too, of course
Biographical information: offers seminars at the University of Duisburg-Essen on the didactics of early foreign language teaching, on theatre as methodology, on children's literature and on creative writing. Her publications include textbooks, supplementary materials for 8 – 12 year-olds and articles on the methodology of teaching English and intercultural communicative competence.
Janet Enever - Implementing an early start: learning from each other across Europe .
This paper will draw on data evidence of the introduction of early start foreign language teaching from two European countries, together with recently-collected statistics on mandatory start age provision in the 25 nation states of the European Union. The talk will aim to draw a picture of the similar and different experiences currently occurring around Europe . In particular, the focus will be on issues such as managing innovation and planning for sustainability; internal and external support and resistance to innovation; curriculum dilemmas and solutions; teacher competencies and school leadership. It is anticipated that data presented from these other studies will resonate particularly with an audience currently engaged in a similar project and will serve as a starting point for discussing how we might all learn more from comparative studies with our neighbours across Europe and beyond.
Aim of session: engage the audience in gaining an awareness of the processes of multiple innovations and an understanding of how to seek out solutions to achieving sustainable models for implementing early start programmes.
For: academics and practitioners, planners and politicians.
Biographical information: currently teaches at London Metropolitan University where she leads the MA in TEFL and delivers a specialist module in young learners. Spent some years teaching in Poland and Hungary and has completed consultancies in Latvia , the Czech Republic and China . Research interests include young learners language policy and globalisation in ELT.
Carol Read - Scaffolding children's talk and learning
This workshop aims to explore the metaphor of scaffolding in relation to children learning a foreign language at primary school. Through examining classroom talk and social interaction arising from stories, songs, games and real content, we will consider multiple ways to support –
or scaffold – children's learning from initial, spontaneous responses (often in L1) to increasing competence, autonomy and creativity in L2.
Aim of session: to establish the significance of the concept of scaffolding in primary language teacher education and its role as a useful, practical tool for ensuring successful early teaching and learning.
For: primary teachers, teacher trainers
Biographical information: an educational consultant, teacher trainer and writer with many years experience of working with children. Co-author of a number of coursebooks for children including Superworld, Hello Robby Rabbit, Little Bugs and Big Bugs 3 (Macmillan Education) and has also written Instant Lessons: Fairy Tales (Penguin Longman)
Sabine Reiter - Moments of discontinuity in the transition from primary to secondary English language teaching
A major requirement of successful goal-oriented English language teaching at primary school is its consequent continuation at secondary school level. The practical realisation of this requirement is challenging and still an area of questions , doubts and misinterpretation as it seems.
In this workshop videotaped classroom sequences of primary and early secondary school will be presented. Participants are invited to identify and possibly categorize moments of discontinuity in teaching as well as to make suggestions for techniques and approaches which might ultimately lead to more appropriate ways of teaching as regards the transition from primary to secondary school.
Aim of session: to make teachers of both school forms aware of problems, clashes and contradictions in everyday teaching as regards the transition from primary to secondary school as well as offering a chance for discussion across school boarders.
For: primary teachers, early secondary teachers
Biographical information: qualified teacher of English and Russian, Technische Universität Dresden, teacher and wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at Department of English Language and Didactics for 15 years, involved in pre- and in-service teacher training of primary and secondary level, topic of research: primary teaching and transition.
Konrad Schröder - How to turn English as a first FL into a gateway to languages and cultures
There have been long discussions over the last 30 years on whether English should remain in its place as the most prominent first FL in the German school system. FL teachers' associations have asked for a “controlled diversification” within the FL cycle (Zapp 1979), however without much success. At the beginning of the new century English is the number one (and in most cases the first) FL, not only in Germany but all over Europe . With the advent of Early English the development has gathered additional momentum. There is a danger in Germany (and elsewhere) now of turning rather inefficient 7 to 9-year ELT courses into even more inefficient 9 to 11-year courses, and experts warn that “insufficient English for all” cannot be a substitute for the implementation of EU language policy with its vision of the trilingual and polycultural European Citizen. In fact, and in spite of the great amount of ELT in our schools, the number of school leavers with a genuine C1-knowledge of the language (not to mention a functional knowledge of everyday Anglo-Saxon cultures) is – to put it politely – relatively small.
How can the demand for English (both as a neighouring language in the European context, and as an international lingua franca) and the aims of European language politics and policies be reconciled? The answer is: by changing the way in which we teach English, by “teaching English the European way” (French-German Project Group). The talk will focus on how this can be achieved in Primary Education and beyond, the major aim being to turn English as the first FL into a gateway to languages and cultures. Proper examples will be provided.
Aim of session: to enhance a modified approach to teaching English as a second or foreign language, developing ELT as a gateway to language and cultural learning in the framework of the language policies of the Council of Europe and the EU (plurilingualism and pluriculturalism)
For: primary and secondary school teachers, teacher trainers
Günther Sommerschuh - Mind the gap: student-activating methods for a smooth transition
In this workshop methods will be presented and tried out which acknowledge what pupils have learnt at primary school, cater for the heterogeneity among the pupils and integrate the usually very affective approaches to language learning in primary school into the more cognitive ones of secondary school.
Aim of session: to mirror in the workshop what can later be applied to the classroom context.
For: primary and secondary school teachers
Biographical information: teacher trainer, EFL coordinator in Schleswig-Holstein, in-service training courses, curriculum development, textbook advisor.
Reinhold Wandel and Kavita Ghone-Berlitz - Drama scenarios in Early English
Starting from a critical view of the 'primary English situation' in Saxony-Anhalt, this presentation deals with the opportunities - and limits - of drama activities or 'theatrical improvisations' in the context of Early English. It covers a joint project of Magdeburg University 's English Department and St.Mechthild Primary School : a group of university students (members of a seminar on 'teaching narratives') staged three different kinds of improvised dramatic tales with primary pupils (3 rd and 4 th grades). The aim of these drama activities was to make the children fully and holistically participate in the improvised plays - miming, acting and using English, thus giving them the chance to express their abilities in the foreign language. The film presenting these activities (recorded on DVD), on the one hand, shows the children's curiosity, motivation, fun and adequate language use. But at the same time it becomes obvious that the children's inability to concentrate for longer sessions places limits on this kind of scenario. Still, we feel that this approach might be a model for secondary school students who could be asked to prepare and organize dramatic activities for beginners.
Aim of session: to acquaint the audience with the problems associated with the use of drama techniques in Early English
For: primary and secondary teachers, teacher trainers
Biographical information: Reinhold Wandel, born 1947, read English and German at Tübingen, Zürich and Berlin Free University (PHD), taught English and German as foreign languages in the UK , in Sweden , Germany , Taiwan , China , since 1994 in charge of the sub-department of methodology of ELT at Magdeburg University .
Kavita Ghone-Berlitz, born 1976, read English at Bombay University (MA), PHD-student and English teacher at a primary school in Magdeburg
