Rita Balbi, IRRE Liguria, Italien Carmen Becker, NiLS Hildesheim ...

Forum Multimedia - Hannover 2006
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Rita Balbi, IRRE Liguria, Italien
Carmen Becker, NiLS Hildesheim
Kay McMeekin, East Ayrshire Council, Großbritannien
Prof. Dr. Bernd Rüschoff, Universität Duisburg-Essen
Inés Santos, ESEL Leiria, Portugal
David Whybra, Universität Hildesheim
Europäische Experten des Fremdsprachenunterrichts in der Grundschule diskutierten unter
Bezugnahme auf das Lingua-Projekt „Staging Early Foreign Language Learning“ Einsatz und
Wirksamkeit verschiedener Medien im Englischunterricht der Grundschule.
Weitere Informationen zu dem LINGUA Projekt:
http://www.nibis.de/nli1/europa/index.php?lang=de&MENUE=1&level1=3&level2=0
Inhalte, Methoden und Medien im ergebnis- und standardorientierten
Fremdsprachenunterricht der Grundschule
(Informationen zu der auf Englisch geführten Diskussion finden Sie ab Seite 2!)

Basic issues in Primary English
Summary of a Panel Discussion at Forum Multimedia, didacta 2006
The LINGUA project Staging Early Foreign Language Learning involved the development of
materials for a creative, process-, product-, and communication oriented approach to early foreign
language learning, which places its emphasis on child-appropriate staging and is realistically
oriented towards the learning potential of young target groups.
For everyday use in the classroom it is very important to have a package of teachers’ handbooks
accompanied by CDs with resources for drama activities to develop the children’s fluency in
English as a foreign language.
What characterises the context in which the materials will be used?
To answer this question we shared information about the learners, the teachers and the teaching
of foreign languages in the countries of the participants in the project. The result was a great
variety of organisational situations and an unexpected close convergence of pedagogical trends.
As for the learners, the countries being considered differed regarding the starting age, ranging from
kindergarten age three (Spain) to the third class of primary school (Poland). In Germany, the
starting age varies from six to eight, according to federal state. In Norway six is the starting age,
and also in Portugal many schools offer English from the age of six but it is compulsory only at the
beginning of the third grade (age eight). In Italy a recent reform has lowered the starting age from
eight to six. Only in Scotland does the foreign language start at age nine to ten.
Other differences were the weekly time of exposure including situations with a forty-five minute
lesson per week and those with three fifty-minute ones; the skills considered were just the oral
ones in some countries while others encouraged some limited forms of reading and writing.
In this heterogeneous panorama, however, two common features seemed to emerge very clearly:
the deliverer’s professional profile and the statements about the approach. The deliverer is
generally a primary teacher with an often limited command of the target language and no training
in the teaching of a foreign language at the time of entering the profession. This is often
compensated by strong motivation and an enthusiasm for coping with the challenge of teaching a
subject still perceived as new and different from the others and by special in-service programmes
aiming at the development of the teachers’ communicative and/or methodological competence.
As for the approach, there seemed to be a general consensus as the most frequent statements
about the guiding principles in all the countries concerned were: consideration of the children’s
affective needs and cognitive levels, priority of the oral skills, a content-, resp. topic-based
approach and the involvement of the five senses.
In what terms are the aims of the materials described?
Here it is necessary to make a distinction between direct and indirect users. The first obvious
function of the teachers’ packages is to provide guidance on how to implement the various projects
and also give them the appropriate practical support. Principally they fulfil the former aim and the
latter aim is fulfilled by the CDs of resources to conduct the projects in class.
The other equally important function of the materials is to promote the teachers’ professional
growth along the two lines developed in the materials:
‣ a creative approach to language teaching and
‣ use of the target language as a means of communication with the children.
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Considering the learners’ language proficiency level, our goals involve the ability to understand the
teacher’s instructions; the ability to understand the gist of the stories, songs, chants and poems
included in the project; the ability to interact in L2 with teacher and peers within the limits of the
tasks and the ability to produce language as required by the various activities.
As for the language content, the projects either introduce or consolidate and extend the functions
and the both active and passive vocabulary of the areas commonly dealt with in primary FLT such
as greetings, self-introductions, invitations, colours, physical description, clothes, food, feelings,
ability, action and movement, typical time and place expressions used in story-telling.
The educational aims focus on the development of the children’s positive self-images, an essential
condition for language learning, as success in this field is “inextricably linked to the way in which
learners experience the classroom: as a place where their weakness will be revealed or where
they feel they are liked and appreciated”.
What kinds of approach are appropriate?
According to our view, staging activities, as part of ordinary classroom life, involve all the children
of a class, regardless of their natural gifts, in both the role of performers and audience alternatively;
in acting out actions, poems and stories the children think about what they are performing and in
this way they are guided to construct “an imagined experience” rather than to struggle to memorise
a part written by someone else. Learning is enhanced by both the perceptive and productive use of
the target language for real purposes in meaningful and enjoyable situations. Staging is a good
way to get children’s whole selves involved with language and it makes the language become
active and real. It forces learners to draw on skills which are essential for out-of-class use of
language.
The use of drama in the foreign language classroom implies that children do their acting for
learning in a pleasant way and not for exhibition, however with the opportunity of acting out their
scenes to the rest of the class as part of the game. This, too, becomes a powerful incentive for the
children to improve the quality of their production, especially in the direction of appropriate stress
and intonation as children want to be understood by their peers.
Performing for an external audience could be a natural development of the work done in class but
it is not the necessary conclusion of our approach.
For further questions on the original project and the planned publication, please contact:
Jens Bolhöfer
Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Lehrerbildung und Schulentwicklung (NiLS)
Keßlerstraße 52
31134 Hildesheim
Germany
Phone: +49-5121-1695-270
Fax: +49-5121-1695-292
bolhoefer@nils.nibis.de
www.nibis.de/nli1/europa
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