LdL in a teacher journal article

On p. 48/49 of its October 2009 edition the German teacher journal Praxis Geographie refers to an LdL article that was written by Marion Schöner and me and published in the Journal of Education for Teaching. It is an empirical study on the effectivity and efficiency of LdL from university students’ perspectives: “The Didactic Model LdL (Lernen durch Lehren) as a Way of Preparing Students for Communication in a Knowledge Society.“

Joachim Grzega

LdL recently

LdL has recently attracted attention again. Yesterday, Christian Spannagel gave an internet-mediated talk on wikis, weblogs and Twitter at the GAL conference (German association of applied linguists). LdL was a central element in his talk. Here is the recording: http://tinyurl.com/gal09recording

Already some weeks ago, Jean-Pol Martin was visited by a journalist from the renowned magazine GEO Wissen. (Two weeks ago, a few of us LdLians were photographed for this article which is to come out in the November issue).

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

LdL workshop in Jena (Thuringia, Germany)

On Tuesday I gave a workshop on LdL for college teachers. It turned out that, understandably, teachers are primarily interested in concepts that enable an improvement of teaching without having to invest too much time. Well, LdL potentially—at least in the beginning—requires more preparatory effort. However, after a while automatisms will evolve. Moreover, apart from objectively measurable time-effort there is also something like a subjectively felt time-effort. And the latter diminishes with LdL, since you can observe bigger effects in the learners and therefore teachers see their activity as more effective.

The feedback that I have now gotten was positive.

Joachim Grzega

BGE, LdL and socioeconomic linguistics in dissertations

A German student contacted me because she wants to write her Master of Education thesis on BGE and LdL. A student from Singapore is writing his Ph.D. thesis on the use of English in China and aims at integrating BGE and my ideas on socioeconomic linguistics. That is a fantastic development.

Joachim Grzega

4th LdL lesson in Lindau

Our latest BGE-and-LdL lesson at the Akademie Schönbühl went quite well. First I did a plenary pronunciation exercise and a game exercise in pairs (during which I also observed and, if need be, corrected pronunciations of single individuals). The pronunciation will continue to be a challenge for me. Then we had groupwork: there was again a preparatory phase in groups of 3-4 people (revision group, dialog group, word-list group, game group, cultural contrast group). The single presentations took a bit longer than planned because some people didn’t know a game which I had expected as internationally known (“Happy Families”/“Go Fish”) and because people still have to get accustomed to some presentation techniques, e.g. the presentation of the dialog in three steps: (1) presentation in slow motion with the “sandwich technique”, i.e. when you say a new word/phrase, then a background interpreter gives the German equivalent and the literal German expression before the new word/phrase is uttered again (e.g. How are you? — Wie geht es Ihnen?, wörtlich: Wie seid ihr? — How are you?), (2) presentation in normal speed, (3) dialog hand-out plus reading.

During the single presentations, I will take care that the presenters stick to the wording on my sheet when they explain something and that good learners (“false beginners”) don’t choose expressions that the “true beginners” are not able to understand yet.

Joachim Grzega

LdL in adult learner groups? Definitely yes!

In my adult BGE class at the Akademie Schönbühl in Lindau, I used LdL in a rather light way during the first two sessions. I wanted to see first how people get along with my personality. And I didn’t want to risk anything since adult learners are known to focus rather on input than on effect. These were reactions triggered by a talk of mine that I held at an institute for adult classes. But yesterday I dared to do it. Yesterday’s BGE session was pure LdL–and … it worked fantastically. We had

• a revision group
• a pronunciation group (it’s debatable if this wouldn’t be better led by the teacher)
• a “number and months” exercise group
• two dialog groups

All participants—even those who have begun English from scratch—felt very comfortable. One of the future BGE teachers also said that she was impressed how well it worked. Of course, things need to be improved (e.g. people in the center have to speak louder, people should listen to those in the center), but I am fully convinced that LdL is also a very good vehicle for adult learner groups.

Joachim Grzega

New LdL Book

A new LdL book has come out this week: LdL – Lernen durch Lehren goes global. It was edited by Guido Oebel, who started to make LdL known in Japan. The book unites contributors from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Austria and Germany–including articles by Jean-Pol Martin and myself. Here is a brief summary of the contents (in German).

Joachim Grzega

LdL Day in Ludwigsburg

Last Saturday, Jean-Pol Martin and I were invited to give the two keynote speeches on LdL at a conference that Christian Spannagel and his team had organized. Materials, reports and videos (including my own speech) are available on Christian Spannagel’s LdL site.

In addition, Lutz Berger has published a teaser for my speech on YouTube:

Joachim Grzega

BGE spreading at primary and compulsory schools

I was invited to present BGE to teachers at primary and compulsory schools. The workshop was attended by about 20 teachers from different small-town schools. Most of them were convinced of the concept after I showed them the video files from my project classes and said that they would try out BGE. They were especially impressed of the mini-teachers in Lesson 5 and that the class could use so many phrases alredy at that stage.

Joachim Grzega