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

BGE material for sale!

We are happy to announce that ASEcoLi now offers teaching and learning materials, in part in cooperation with Lulu.com,

• for primary schools (Hello World!)
• for self-educated German-speaking learners (Tickets to Basic Global English – Englisch in 111 Tagen)

See the following list or the ASEcoLi Website (Section “Publications/Material”).

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Print 15.00 EUR – eBook 4.50 EUR (Preview at Lulu.com; hand-outs in other languages for free at http://www.basicglobalenglish.com)

Joachim Grzega (with the assistance of Marion Schöner and Katja Weber) Hello World! Teacher Handbook Basic Global English (BGE)for First-Year Learners of Age Group 7-10 ASEcoLi Publications by the Academy for SocioEconomic Linguistics 1.1

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Print 15.99 – eBook 5.50 EUR (Preview at Lulu.com)

Joachim Grzega (with the assistance of Marion Schöner and Katja Weber) Hello World! Learner Materials Basic Global English (BGE) for First-Year Learners of Age Group 7-10 ASEcoLi Publications by the Academy for SocioEconomic Linguistics 1.2

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* download all files  (783 MB!) (7.50 EUR) > Contact ASEcoLi * download textbooks + flashcards (84MB!) (5 EUR) > Contact ASEcoLi * all files on DVD (10 EUR) > Contact ASEcoLi * textbook + flashcards on CD (5 EUR) > Contact ASEcoLi * WAV-files part 1 as audio-CD (4.50 EUR) > Contact ASEcoLi * WAV-files part 2 as audio-CD(4.50 EUR) > Contact ASEcoLi

Joachim Grzega Tickets to Basic Global English – Englisch in 111 Tagen ASEcoLi Publications by the Academy for SocioEconomic Linguistics 3 Consists of: 1. Textbook, 2. computerized German-English flashcards for Phase-6, 3. audio files (WAV-format + MP3-format) Here is a look into the preface and the instructions (in German)

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Trying out my skills in Romanian

Last week I was invited to a conference in Romania. Beside some valuable intercultural experience that I could make, the 2-hours trip back to the airport which I spent in a cab was very interesting, because it showed me that there is still a lot to do in the development of self-teaching material. I had bought myself a language guide “Last-Minute Romanian”. I had practically no knowledge of Romanian (and it is a Romanic language very different from the other Romanic languages I know). I had manage to do 12 of the 20 lessons, but they did not allow me to talk with the driver in an efficient (and sometimes not even in an effective) way.

• The situations that had been covered by the lessons did not help me here.
• The lessons presented only people who already know Romanian so that I had not learned sentences that mean “Slowlier, please” or “I don’t understand”.
• I had not learned to produce an internationalism in Romanian.
• The book included only a Romanian-German, but not a German-Romanian glossary. It was also interesting how the driver started to speak not proper Romanian, but “foreigner Romanian” or “telegramm Romanian”.

If we hadn’t been forced to be together for two hours (in his cab), then the conversation would soon have been over.

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

BGE for Self-Study

I’ve recently discussed the first draft of the BGE material for self-teaching (developed by Marion Schöner and myself). I’ve initiated a discussion thread on my discussion forum at the ELiX website.

It turns out that the toughest tasks is to find

• an effective way for acquiring pronunciation

• different material for the same speech acts

• materials for different types of learners

• good ways for self-testing

Joachim Grzega