BGE for self-teaching and for adult learner groups

The next milestone of the BGE project is reached: Both the German accompanying material for the self-teaching book Welcome to the World! and the German adult-group handbook Welcome, Global Players! are now among ASEcoLi’s products. Further language versions are planned.

An extract of Welcome to the World! – Deutsche Begleitmaterialien is available here. The book costs 8 EUR.

An extract of Welcome, Global Players! – Deutsche Version is available here. The book costs 9.50 EUR.

Joachim Grzega

BGE for Self-Teaching

I would like to quote three passages that have helped in furthering the Basic Global English projects during the past months:

• UN Millennium Declaration (“to promote greater harmony and tolerance in all societies”, “allowing genuine participation by all citizens in all our countries”)
• UN Declaration of Human Rights Art. 26 (“Education … shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations”)
• UN Declaration of Human Rights Art. 27 (“the right freely … to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”)

We have now mastered the next stage of our vision “global competences globally”: in order to enable everybody a fair chance in getting access to international information and communication the self-teaching basic material Welcome to the World is now available via the BGE website and the ASEcoLi website. As was announced, the basic book is for free. The “luxury equipment” will be available for a fair price.

Joachim Grzega

BGE and the European Day of Languages

Today is the European Day of Languages. Therefore, I would already like to give the link to the self-teaching material for Basic Global English here, on an inofficial basis. When the accompanying material is ready in 2-3 weeks, there will also be an official publication on the BGE website and the ASEcoLi website. As a social-enterpreneurial contribution the central materials will be accessible for free.

The European Day of Languages has been celebrated since the European Year of Languages in 2001. It commemorates the promotion of multilingualism. I regard BGE as one way to multilingualism. Many people are afraid that a promotion of English as a thread to other languages. But I see it as a component of global trilingualism, or “global triglossia” as I have called it (and as it can be read in my publications, e.g. in an article in the Journal for EuroLinguistiX). This means that I see BGE as door-opener to other cultures. Once English has allowed to communicate with people from another culture, I can decide to delve into this culture in a more thorough way and start to learn the language(s) of that culture. When I am talking to people about this, I always use the same example, which happened when we taught BGE to children in a EU project. The German kids were not only able to communicative with their EU partner-schools via letters, but when they were in Italy they could already talk to their Italian partner-kids on a basic level. They found it so interesting that they asked their principal also for a course in “Italian”. Basic Global English as a door-opener to Italian; and it can be a door-opener to other languages, too.

Joachim Grzega

Close to completion: BGE materials for adults

The work on BGE materials for self-study has required my full attention of the past weeks. It was a very tough task to find good “transcultural” or “culture-free” pictures and to create good intercultural dialogs. The book is practically finished; however, there are a few technical problems due to the size of the file.

Also completed are: the accompanying book for German autodidacts and the accompanying book for German adult learner groups. They will soon be available to the public.

Joachim Grzega

New material for sale!

ASEcoLi offers a new book: How to Become the Perfect Intercultural Professor – Tricks and Bricks for Intercultural Academic Teaching in English (and Other Languages).

In this book I bring my experience with, and ideas of, English as a global means of communication in an atmosphere of empathy and tolerance to the advanced level of “Global English for Academic Contexts”.

This book predominantly wants to take away fears from instructors who have to give courses in their discipline in English as non-natives and to provide them with “bricks and tricks” that enable a more comfortable atmosphere for both sides of the intercultural group, the instructor and the students.

Large parts of the book—the communication tricks, the instruction tricks (including LdL), the critical incidents and cultural information bricks—are also useful for intercultural academic teaching settings if the language of instruction is not English, but another language.

The book is available via ASEcoLi as an e-book with a simple cover page for 5 EUR.

At Lulu (accessible also via the ASEcoLi website) the book can be purchased in print form with a high-quality cover for 12 EUR.

German college teacher association (bpv) interested in BGE

Two days ago the chairman of the bpv, the Bayerischer Philologenverband (Association of College Teachers in Bavaria) and two of his colleagues came to see me in my office to discuss Basic Global English. We had a very fruitful debate and the bpv was highly interested in reflecting on BGE for an improved transitory period from elementary school to secondary schools. One of the plusses of BGE the bpv was the high communicative competence of the learners and that the BGE material respected the heterogeneity of learner groups. The next meeting will be in October/November.

Joachim Grzega

1st BGE lesson with adults

Last Tuesday I had my first BGE lesson at the Akademie Schönbühl: 16 adult learners + 1 future BGE teacher. The group is very heterogeneous: some already have basic knowledge in English (“false beginners”), some are true beginners and represent the actual addressees of the course. Due to this heterogeneity I have to pay attention that the beginners are not scared off and I have to be ready to offer special services to these participants. On the whole, though, the atmosphere was very good and not even the video-camera was bothering. The principle of rapid “teacher-role rotation” worked well and it seems that LdL will be well suitable for the group. I’m also glad to see that I can use some of my self-teaching material and that I don’t have to revise and supplement my adult group material from scratch.

Joachim Grzega

BGE in the press

Nice report on BGE in the April/May edition of The Linguist.

Joachim Grzega

Linguistic Edutainment: Foreignish for Freshmen

Always in search for new ways of disseminating linguistic knowledge, I tried out a new one last Thursday: linguistic edutainment. I combined lecturing, audience participation (through quizzes) and music for a performance “Ausländisch für Anfänger” (“Foreignish for Freshmen”) at the Volkshochschule Weißenburg. It seemed to have worked as shown by the report in the local newspaper here.

Joachim Grzega

Upcoming events

My first events at the Akademie Schönbühl are set:

2 April:

introduction to Basic Global English for a general public

15 May:

1. introduction to Basic Global English for compulsory school teachers

2. introduction to Lernen durch Lehren (LdL) (for teachers)

3. how can we use Wikipedia and its sister projects) (for students, teachers, parents and everyone)

19 June:

1. what does user-friendly language look like? (for business people and administration people)

2. how do I learn effectively and efficiently? (for students, teachers, parents and everyone)

3. edutainment on communicative behaviour around the world (for everyone)

I’m also eagerly working on my edutainment lecture “Ausländisch für Anfänger” that I will give to a general audience next week.

Joachim Grzega