Guest lecture on eurolinguistics in Innsbruck

Last week I was at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). I had been invited by Professor Wolfgang Pöckl for a guest lecture. Originally, all students wanted to buy my “EuroLinguistischer Parcours”, but unfortunately the publishing house is sold, because the owner has fallen seriously sick, and there were not enough book copies left. I’m currently looking for another publisher for a second edition of the book and hopefully also for an English edition. The students had been given a copy of a few chapters of the book and my talk was now to supplement the reading.

I was glad to hear that Professor Pöckl wanted a rather programmatic lecture. So the title that we both decided on was: “Goals and Ways of Applied Eurolinguistics in a Globalized World”.

After summarizing the basic competences for knowledge societies that we could deduce from best-selling books on socioeconomic history and development, I presented my ideas of how we should/could teach eurolinguistics and what kind of research questions we should/could focus on. Of course, I also introduced LdL, BGE and two of my student projects (at the moment, the outline of my presentation together with the links I used is still available on my Wikiversity site). I also tried to activate the students using questionnaires and inserting brief discussions; their professor afterwards told me that he was surprised how much the (normally shy) students actually participated in the brief discussions. Another professor told me immediately after my talk that her students said that they were inspired by the ideas presented and that they would like to talk about them in the following seminar session. Both professors told me that their students—all future interpreters and translators—normally ask for practical exercises in interpreting and translating and dislike too much “academic research”; but due to my talk, they said, students could see that doing research, if in some way connected to practical problems, is something that students should try out in present-day society and that it is something that can be fun. As a matter of fact, when I came back to my office in Eichstätt, there was already a mail by a student who wanted to add me to her network on xing.de and to exchange ideas on a thesis she is working on.

Joachim Grzega

LdL article on Goethe-Institut’s website

A few weeks ago, Jean-Pol Martin and I were interviewed by a journalist working for the Goethe Institute. His article has now appeared in English on the Goethe Institute website here.

Joachim Grzega

Peer group learning: LdL, BGE and IPK at a conference in Berlin

Last Friday I was in Berlin at the Didaktik Dialog (organized by Institut für prospektive Analysen (IPA), Team Global and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) to present LdL in connection with BGE (2^nd-graders) and my course Internet and Project Competence/Internet- und Projektkompetenz (IPK) that I’m currently offering for teenagers at the college next to our university. At present, the outline of my presentation, including some internet links, is still available on my Wikiversity page.

1. As to IPK, I illustrated the targets and showed some examples of websites by my students at university as “best practice” (see the example 1 and example 2). Then I tried to show what the difficulties are when (a) you do such a course almost exclusively non-face-to-face, via internet, (b) not everyone who first said they supported the idea (in this case the teachers of the different subjects) do not any longer support this, (c) students are not permanently compelled to complete certain tasks, (d) when such a project takes too much time. In the end, though I was able to make it clear—thanks to the student projects—that such the basic concept can lead to impressive results.

2. As regards BGE, I showed a video from Lesson 5 when the kids have to act as “mini-teachers” for an entire section of the lesson for the first time. The reactions from the audience were positive and supportive and showed curiosity to learn more about LdL and BGE. I could distribute several business cards

The entire conference was quite interesting. There was a teacher with two girls from a compulsory school who organize activities (“Fit for Life”) with teenagers from a town in Brazil and one in South Africa. They either do these projects (e.g. writing and presenting a theater play) via internet or together in one of the “network towns”. Throughout their presentation they showed how all of this is done during leisure time and their averseness to school (except for their teacher) became clear. Someone from the audience asked why they felt such averseness to school, and one girl replied that they have already organized many events and they always invite their friends, family, teachers and principal. As of yet, not a single one of their teachers has ever come to one of their events.

Another guy was the coordinator of the “Buddy Projekt”. Buddies are kids that are charged with finding a solution for a problem or being responsible for certain tasks, including the tutoring of other kids in class. So this comes close to what LdL is about—actually, the guy knew LdL and Jean-Pol Martin.

The audience consisted of all kinds of people active in education business: teachers, professors, private tutors, journalists, members of education institutes. Three utterances that set me thinking are the following:

1. Teachers are still very resistant when someone comes from outside to offer help—one, because they feel their work and their competences are ignored, and two because they fear they have to investigate still more time and effort. To me, this means that what we can bring to school are just offers and ways to find out how teachers with their individual personalities can integrate our suggestions to facilitate their life, to experience more fun in their profession. When we develop teaching concepts we have to keep both sides in mind: the children and the teachers.

2. You won’t convince teachers to try out concepts when you don’t convince their principals.

3. There are still areas of the German school system that are rather neglected: the Hauptschule and the Berufsschule. I’ve decided to spend on networking in this area.

Joachim Grzega

“LdL in pictures”

Lutz Berger has gathered a valuable LdL podcast.

Great compliments also to Kathrin Gaißer, one of Christian Spannagel’s students, who has created a wonderful LdL cartoon illustrating the essence of LdL.

Joachim Grzega

LdL in the press

Here is a newsreport (in German) on my presentation of LdL in Heilbronn from the Hohenloher Zeitung.

Joachim Grzega