Meyer / Volkmann / Grimm Teaching English

2. updated and completely revised Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-8233-0344-2
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 349 Seiten

Reihe: bachelor-wissen

This foundational coursebook offers an accessible and up-to-date introduction to all relevant areas of Teaching English. Definitions and practical examples guide the understanding and reflection of basic and advanced concepts of foreign language learning. The fully revised second edition responds to new developments in language education: (1) Recent policies from the Kultusministerkonferenz and updates of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages with its Companion Volume (2020) pay more attention to language awareness, mediation, and media literacy. (2) New empirical research explores the aims, methods, and impact of professional teacher education, Task-Based Language Teaching, and Content-and-Language-Integrated Learning. (3) The dramatic need for online teaching has met with refined concepts of multimodal media competence and cutting-edge tools for the digital classroom. This essential introduction and the PowerPoint presentations online facilitate multimodal teaching and learning.

Prof. Dr. Michael Meyer lehrt für englische Literaturwissenschaft und Fachdidaktik an der Universität Koblenz-Landau, Campus Koblenz. Prof. Dr. Laurenz Volkmann lehrt Englische Fachdidaktik an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Dr. Nancy Grimm ist Referentin für Medienbildung am Brandenburger Landesinstitut für Schule und Medien.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Meyer, Michael

Volkmann, Laurenz

Grimm, Nancy

Leseproben

1.2 Current educational standards and curricula

If the introduction of CLT in the 1970s led to the biggest change in 20th-century language education, then the ‘PISA-shock’ of the year 2000 and the publication of the CEFR in 2001 initiated a revision of language teaching and learning for the 21st century. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) started (Program for International Student Assessment) in order to test the learning outcomes of 15-year-old learners in reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy across the globe. Germany, which had always taken pride in its educational system, was shocked to learn that the overall performance of its learners was below the OECD average of more than 50 countries.

1.2.1

A common frameworkThe CEFR has served to redefine language learning policy in Germany. The objectives of the CEFR are quite comprehensive, straddling the general divide between pragmatic and educational aims of language learning:

• Communicative skills in foreign languages

• Intercultural communicative competence

• Individual education and emancipation

• Social skills and values

• Economic empowerment and mobility

• Political participation in a democratic and multicultural Europe

• Learner-centered methods of teaching through real-life tasks

The CEFR claims not to tell teachers what to do but is committed to educational reform with the specific agenda of “enabling learners to act in real-life situations” (2001: 29). The CEFR advances concepts of the and . . Individual members of society are understood as social agents, who use all of their competences to solve tasks together with other people in particular circumstances:

Language use, embracing language learning, comprises the actions performed by persons who as individuals and as social agents develop a range of , both and in particular . They draw on the competences at their disposal in various contexts under various and under various to engage in involving to produce and/or receive texts in relation to in specific , activating those which seem most appropriate for carrying out the to be accomplished. The monitoring of these actions by the participants leads to the reinforcement or modification of their competences. (Council of Europe 2001: 9; 2020: 32, emphasis in the original)

is a comprehensive and fuzzy term. The CEFR merges and goes beyond the conventional linguistic concepts of competence as knowledge of the language system and performance as its usage. The CEFR subsumes knowledge, know-how, ability, and skills under the heading of competences, as the following list reveals (cf. CEFR 2020: 32–35; see chs. 6.1, 7.2.2)CEFR competences.

1. General competences:

• Declarative knowledge (; knowing what, including sociocultural and intercultural knowledge)

• Know-how and skills (, including sociocultural and intercultural know-how as well as flexible problem solving)

• Existential competences (; personality traits, points of view, attitudes)

• The ability to learn (; e.g., learner strategies, metacognitive awareness, media literacy)

1. Domain-specific communicative language competences:

• Linguistic competence about language structures and how to use these (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and intonation, spelling)

• Reception (listening and reading)

• Production (speaking and writing)

• Interaction

• Mediation

Competence and knowledge in learning and teachingIn order to avoid confusion, , such as communicative or intercultural competence, and .

Psychology and Pedagogy define ‘knowledge’ in detail. of facts is distinguished from of know-how. . You know how to speak, but explaining how speech is produced is difficult (see ch. 5.1.2). results from experience and has a great impact on , i.e. conceptions of how learning and teaching work. Subjective theories are deeply ingrained and need critical reflection to be developed. is applied to reflect where learning and teaching routines run into difficulties (cf. Feryok 2018; Viebrock 2020).

Reference levelsApart from the competences summarized above, the CEFR established six reference levels, which are specified in ‘can do’-descriptors (2020: 175; see fig. 1.5):

Proficient...