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

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

Stumbling in my adults’ BGE Lesson #5

While Lessons #3 and #4 at the Akademie Schönbühl went well, the plan for #5 led to an unplanned and highly emotional evaluation-discussion. After I had the participants write a fax (like a written test, which most of them managed quite well), I had the usual preparatory section. Already during that phase, two groups complained that the topics were too demanding: the group that had to present “how to talk about things in the past” (i.e. simple past) and the group that had to present “how to contrast things” (i.e. comparative). Then there was first a revision and then a vocabulary group (I used the vocabulary exercise also to revise old vocabulary). Then, during the “past tense” group’s turn, people seemed so stressed that I broke up the lesson and started a discussion/evaluation.

It was strange that all of sudden people did not remember words that we have had in every single lesson. They claimed that there were so many unknown words and so few revision exercises (while I, in contrast, had noted that they didn’t even fully use the revision offers in class properly). Back home, I first had to correct the diagnosis. What I could draw from their impressions and feelings is, that it must indeed be stressful for the presenters to pay simultaneous attention to (1) the language, (2) the voice/presentation style, and (3) the contents, and that it must indeed be stressful for the listeners (1) to decode the words and (2) to process the contents. Therefore, I have decided to provide the worksheets for the experts with a German translation in small print and, for the rest of the learners, to intersperse complex contents with more explanations in the learners’ mother tongue. Also, most of the participants seem to have forgotten how to learn, so I will probably have to repeat my teaching advice more frequently.

Let’s see how it will work tonight.

Joachim Grzega

Test Lessons BGE for Self-Study

Today I completed two test versions “BGE for self-study”!!! Version 1 consists of an international main book in English + audio files and an accompanying book in German. Version 2 consists of a book especially for German learners.

These materials are now sent to various test persons, who should work with them and give me feedback by March 31.

Joachim Grzega

Using the mothertongue in foreign language teaching

Peter McKenzie-Brown has written an article on Wolfgang Butzkamm’s concept of functional monolingualism in the classroom here.

Joachim Grzega

Exchange with Wolfgang Butzkamm on BGE

This week I met with Wolfgang Butzkamm, Professor emeritus at the University of Aachen and supporter of “functional monolingualism” in foreign language teaching, i.e. the strictly defined use of learners’ native language to make foreign language teaching more efficient. I could talk to him about BGE and he gave me some valuable ideas that led to an additional appendix to my book “Basic Global English for Age Group 7 to 10: A Teacher Handbook with Materials for First-Year Learners” (available at http://www.basicglobalenglish.com).

Joachim Grzega