Language course - second or third foreign language

One of my goals for my exchange studies was (and still is) to do my best and try to master the native language, which is Swedish. Because of that I was really excited that I got in the EILC (Erasmus Intensive Language Course). This course took place a month and a half before the university term started. There was no placement test beforehand, so we basically just got split up into two groups, regardless of previous Swedish knowledge. The course lasted four weeks and our exam at the end was worth A1 level.
But at the end, not only I (as a language-teacher-to-be), but also everybody else who attended felt unsatisfied. When you take a four week long course, and you have lessons every day, you get homework and you generally hear a lot of Swedish, it felt like it would be impossible to not have some kind of understanding of the language. Then again, mostly the basic success depends on the teacher and their methods. I have to say that even though I expected to be in a better shape regarding my Swedish, I gained a lot of experience when it comes to teaching.
One thing I learned during my first years at the university as a student-teacher was that you should never stop reflecting. Whether it may be your own lesson-sequence or your own lesson, a presentation in a seminar or one of the courses you sit it, there always be opportunities to think about your professionalization and personal development.
So I would like to outline a few things I noticed. It has to be noted that I’m pretty sure that a few logistical problems could be an issue for the organizational staff of these courses, but nonetheless, as a teacher you have to make the best of what you have.

I believe the first issue at hand at many language courses is the level of the participants. Every language teacher knows that it is simply impossible to find any group (of random) students that have the same language proficiency. In our particular case it would have been way more effective for everybody if we would have split up our groups after the second week, or even the first week since you quickly get an impression how each individual deals with the language.
Obviously individualisation is always the issue when it comes to teaching. In this case it could have helped the better students to reach the level they wanted to reach. It was also clear that not everybody intended to really know about the language at the end, which is no big deal since the whole course structure offered many more benefits than just the language. But because of this, more advanced and motivated students could have progressed better. All in all, splitting up a group like this benefits both the good and not-so-good students. It offers more challenge for one group if the overall level can be higher but is also offers easier access for the weaker students, who may only want to learn really basic stuff.

The second issue is something that is thoroughly stressed throughout the teacher training program, namely the importance of lesson planning. This is the one thing that student-teachers cannot forget. A lesson plan has to be handed in an thought through before every lesson, even if you are only teaching the last ten minutes of a lesson. So with this in the back of my mind, it wasn’t pleasant to be part of lessons where the complete opposite was the case. The worst part about this was, that this problem was so obvious that even non-student-teachers immediately noticed and could point the finger at it. Especially when it comes to language teaching, it seems like a waste of time to teach a class without having a plan. It just won’t work if you are going to talk about whatever comes to your mind that morning.

Lastly, there is one thing that can really tip the scale for beginner students. When it’s the first time you hear a language, no matter how close it is to your native language, it can be confusing. Based on this thought, starting to talk in the new language in a lesson might not always be the best idea for beginners. Listening and speaking skills are usually the first ones to be taught to language learners, but that does not mean that it is good to confront beginners with a new language non-stop. The key thing is to find a balance where everybody is comfortable, but this is hard to achieve when students get more and more frustrated because everything is done so fast and without proper explanation in a language they actually understand. If the teacher goes to fast, the students become more and more frustrated and will soon close up and no progress can be made. It is tough to find the right balance between speaking and listening-to the new language and generally being understood, but to come back to a point I made earlier, it can help to split up students into groups according to their level.

All in all, it is tough to learn a new language, no matter how talented one might be or how common it is to one’s native language. The most important aspect is to be confronted with the language in everyday life, so learning a language in it’s native country is simply the best choice. And even though talking should be the focal point, there is so much vocabulary missing, that there is just nothing more that one could talk about. Students of a new language have to motivated to work on their own, picking up phrases and focusing on new vocabulary will help with everything else. As time goes by, the practical use becomes more and more natural.

Exchange year in Göteborg, Sweden

Now that the first big wave of stress and astonishment has passed I can focus on my studies again.

In this autumn term I will attend three different courses which are all really exciting for me.
The biggest course is called English for young learners and is divided into three main topics: Didactics, Literature and Pronunciation.
My second course is called The School System in a Comparative Perspective which deals with all kinds of Educational topics.
The third course I'm taking is English: Oral and Written Proficiency. 
This is a great mix between pedagogic themes and also a general improvement of my own language skills.

I will get more into writing for the courses anyway, but I still have a few other topics to cover for which I had no time the last two months.
Also I'll still be using our Mahara Portfolio for my work here!
It offers a great Platform to organise my thoughts and assignments even though its not directly involved in my studies here, but I'm glad to have it nonetheless.

So, new posts will be up soon!

Bachelorthesis - Mahara and teacher education

The last few points are getting finalized, and then starting with the next term, a colleague and me are going to start to work on our Bachelor thesis, which will include a heavy dose of Mahara, and it's role in our teacher education at the University of Education Vienna.

Our Mahara-research project is in it's second year now, and we are getting more and more involved with Mahara as an ePortfolio tool for our student-teachers.

The thesis will include the basics of ePortfolios, what kind of portfolio types are there and how are they used. But our biggest focus will be on Mahara, not only on the technical part of it, but also the possibilities of its use.

Some of the data that’s available from our research project will also be processed, and we will focus on our teacher education. We are both very much looking forward to digging in and involving ourselves more and more into Mahara, ePortfolios and teacher-education at our University.

One of our goals was to put out a Mahara-Tutorial for our student-teachers, which we accomplished last semester. It wasn’t the first time we worked together on a Mahara task, but it was equally challenging and fun. As the research project went on, and we’re getting closer to the end of our studies, it seemed more and more obvious that our Bachelor thesis will be about Mahara in combination with our teacher education. One of the benefits of the research project was that we were able to see both sides: the student-teacher side, which uses Mahara as a tool during their studies, and also from the reseacher side, where we got to work on questionnaires and evaluate the results, create a Manual and generally help students with Mahara.

So as one of our research team members suggested that we write a Bachelor thesis together it hit us as the most obvious idea. It sounded exciting right from the start even though we had a lot to do at the end of this semester and couldn’t focus that much on it, the start of the fall semester will also mark the start of our work!

Language - barrier or stepping stone

It was a long time ago that I came to a new country as a kid without basic understanding of the native language. Even tough I took some (very few) language lesson before moving, those didn’t really help because they were pretty bad. When I got into kindergarden, where I only stayed for about half a year, I wasn’t able to communicate at all. My mother still tells me stories about how fascinating it was that I didn’t complain once. I couldn’t understand or speak a word, but I was still alright. After six months I had no problem whatsoever so get into a pretty good school and never experienced problems with the german language. The school I got in, was even one of the few schools at that time, that taught english from the age of seven or eight on. Which is probably also one reason I love the language, starting so early made me grow up with two foreign languages. Thankfully at home we still spoke (speak to this day) in our mother tongue.
As you can see, language learning was always kind of a big deal to me growing up. So, it’s no surprise that my path lead me to being a language teacher.

Language teaching is very diverse. There is school, which can also be divided into primary schools and secondary schools, in districts and so on. But there is also adult ecudation and university teaching. The range is so wide that it’s almost impossible to understand how each sector works. It is also tough to talk about teaching with people from a different sector than yours, because you just can’t now about all the details that go into their work.
My experience regarding language learning/teaching is small in comparison to other professionals.
But there are a few things that I experienced which made me think about the language acquisition process.
First of all, as I described above I’ve been exposed to three languages growing up and the way it is now, I’m fluent in all three of them, it may vary a little between speaking and writing but overall it’s pretty equal. My next big challenge will be to learn swedish, since I’m going to study abroad for a year.

I’ve talked about it a few times in this blog, I’m also currently a student-teacher teaching in highschools, and I also work as an english trainer with a project where I teach migrants who are looking for apprenticeships. 

I’d like to share a few thoughts on this subject, based on my experience.
-) motivation for learning a language:
Back then, it was obvious for me that I need to learn the language if I want to stay. I really needed to learn the languages because I wanted to stay here with my mother. And she made it clear to me that I’m here now and I will be in school soon. So it was necessary for survival. 

Additionally I had the support from home to learn the language, my mother cared just as much about german as she did with hungarian (I took hungarian grammar lessons a few summers later). And that’s the point, the kids we teach in the high-schools are in school becaue they are in school, not much to add. Very few of their parents are supportive, not of their general education and not of the languages. The society is changing, but somehow still stagnant. On one side, it’s obligatory to speak the local language, but it’s also kind of okay if you don’t speak it very well, because they somehow don’t really care.
Language for me is the cornerstone of a culture. So if you are new in country and you want to stay there, it should be the very least thing that you learn to communicate. And I’m not even talking about actual ‘spreaking’, I only mean ‘communicating’, so talking to a doctor, buying tickets, talking to the cashier at the supermarket and so on. It sounds very partial, but applies to a lot of people.

But, there are also really amazing young people, who came this country not more than two or three years ago at the age of maybe nineteen, without parents, without friends trying to start a new life. Not only do they have to learn the local language, but then they also have to learn another foreign language, because it’s needed for their apprenticeship or further education. The biggest difficulty for them was that the words they didn’t understand in english I need to be explained to them in german, but there were also many german words that they just didn’t understand, so someone who knows what that word means has to explain it to them in their mother tongue. 

As a young adult having to learn two languages at the same time is more than tough, especially because the last few years brought news and studies that it’s always better to start language learning at a young age.
Unfortuntely not everyone has a motivation for learning a language, which only makes life(s) tougher.

-) talent for languages
You can call it either skill or talent, but for me, coming from a sport-background I like to call it talent.
For me it was obviously the right time for languages, I was five when I started with my first foreign language and about three years later I started to learn the second one. Later in school, I also attened spanish and russian classes. I did alright, but looking back on it, I should have put more effort into it and actually use the ‘talent’ for languages I developed early on.
Of course it’s the same in school; some kids already speak three languages even tough they are ten and just came to the country a year ago. These kids usually don’t have problems with anything new, either if it’s german or english, they seem to have a mostly flawless understanding. The same with young adults, some of them speak excellently and are eager to learn new vocabulary to speak even better, others really struggle. These struggles are mostly about pronunciation rather than grammatical issues. Since they already have school experience they can easily deal with grammar rules and regulation.
The key to this is common knowledge: strengthen the strength, and work on the weakness. But the most important part is patience. You can’t rush somebody if they obviously have a lot of difficulty with parts of learning a language, but you also need the keep an eye on the more talented.

-) frame for learning language
Most people I've talked too who learned a foreign language said the best way to do so is to be confronted with it on a daily basis, meaning if you’re in a new country, go outside and get involved in everyday life. The keys part is to surround yourself with native speakers. Everytime I get a chance to meet or be with an english speaking native I try to talk as much english as I can with them. That sometimes seems problematic, but only because most of the natives want to learn german, so subsequently it ends in me talking english, while the native answers in german. Maybe not every native will be patient enough and hear you out, but the time you spend in that foreign environment the more you start to pick up language and it becomes natural.

And later on, it should help to attend some kind of language course and learn the structure of things you've been saying the whole time.

All in all, language can be a barrier to some people, but for the most part it’s a major stepping stone for everybody.
Language learning and teaching is tough, multifaceted but has an uncanny ability to connect people and cultures, and there needs to be an awareness out there how vital it can be.
The first step shouldn’t be at the school or university, not even in the work world, it needs to start with the families and parents, they can lay the groundwork for future development.

School-visit

Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit different schools with progressive teaching emphasis. A few other colleagues and I got to go to a school, where they basically just started with Montessori-teaching methods. Their first two grades were the first to implement it. So the last two grades, the thirteen and fourteen-year olds, still had regular classes.
At first, we didn’t really know what to expect from this whole experience, but thankfully the first part of our visit included a basic theoretical overview about their beliefs, Montessori specifically, and some general information about the school. Their principal gave us a pretty good look at their Montessori system and proposed that we can look around in all the four classrooms, where they have these kind of lessons.
The first teacher we met was a real veteran. She probably was first one of their teachers, who has gotten an actual Montessori qualification (the other teachers only attended a few mandatory weekend seminars before the school switched).
Their ‘lesson plan’ is divided into two main parts. First of all, they have ‘language-days’, where, obviously, the content focuses on either german or english. The other part is referred to as ‘cosmic days’, which is basically a mixture between history, biology, physics and so on.
In principle, it all sounds pretty interesting, especially because the kids weren’t forced to actually do everything at the same time. At the beginning of a specific time period, they all got their plans and in the next few weeks they could work through all the stuff on their own pace.

But now to a few points that I observed. These points all refer to what we heard at the beginning form their principal. They all are in some way, a focal point for them in their teachings.
- Kids helping other kids
Due to the fact that the kids can work on their own pace, there are some kids who finish exercises earlier than others, and in this case, it’s great that they put a focus on kids helping other kids finish their tasks.
But: One of their teachers was really annoyed by kids quietly talking to each other. And they talked REALLY quietly, but she just kept interrupting them, even tough it was obvious that one was trying to explain something to the other kid.

- Kids have their own pace
Everybody in the class gets a list with tasks they have to accomplish. The good thing is, they can start with whatever they want, do whichever task they like second and so on. It’s great for the kids, because they don’t get forced into doing things in a specific order.
But: it seemed like just in a regular class, you can’t finish your stuff whenever you want to, for every list there is a specific time frame it has to be completed in. So this way, it still puts pressure on every kind of learner to finish in (at the same) time.

- No more teacher centered teaching
The key thing to their philosophy is that the kids do the learning on their own, meaning there are no more lectures from the teacher. The kids have to acquire everything on their own regarding any topic (Of course there’s enough material for them to go through, which the teacher provides)
But: The first class we went to, had a mathmatics lesson. And as soon as the lesson started, their teacher told us that they can’t teach mathematics with Montessori methods, because they won’t work with this class, so they’re teaching them the ‘classic-way’.

- Disciplinary measures
In the introduction the principal told us that their kids really like to be in school, because their focus is on the kids doing what they want to do.
But: These three hours we were in this school and the classes, it almost seemed like there are less disciplinary problems in a regular school, maybe because a regular has some kind of restrictions?

- Interdisciplinary teaching is the key
The material for all the subjects is mixed. Not only for the ‘cosmic days’, but also for the languages days. For example there will be an english story about frogs, and during the cosmic days, the kids will be able to research, what kind of different frogs there are in Austria, how they live, how they look and so on.
But: do they really get everything covered. At the early stages you definitely get the feeling that a lot of things get left out, but when you think about it, there can be the same approach in a regular school, the only difference is that there is a flow to the things you do, because you follow the tasks given by the teacher and you are depending on the lesson more.

- 100% open learning and individualized learning
To be fair, it’s not entirely open and individualized learning, there are times after learning phases, where the kids get to present and talk about the things they did and liked.
But: When I think about 'regular schools', in one week, it contains presentations, group work, working in pairs, individualized learning, open learning phases and also teacher centered presentations and so on. So there can be methodological diversity, which can’t really be reached with the Montessori methods.

- Transition into higher school and education
It would be really interesting to see how these kids, who get to go trough a Montessori school, fare in a regular school, or when they start their apprenticeship.

So, after the visit some questions remained, but I certainly want to see more of Montessori teaching methods, especially in schools, where it’s also the standard method and has been used a few years already. Especially because for me, in teaching, it’s the same as in coaching, you have to see all kind of different methods and pick the one that fits your style and you think are good. Then you can build on them and form your teaching personality accordingly.

finally...the Mahara Tutorial has been released

It was about time. After a roughly three week delay, we were able to launch our Mahara Tutorial. We hit a few bumps on the way, especially time-management and communication-wise, but at the end of the day my colleague and I were able to finish it off properly.
A specific practical-training Manual was already in the research plans for the second semester, but after our research regarding the acceptance of Mahara in the first semester, it became clear that a proper tutorial is really much needed.
The tasks for the students teachers evolved with Mahara (we had an older version of Mahara for our first year), including adding specific pages for practical training and personal development, in form of a ‘Gazette’ page, which includes reflections, tasks and also material to share with colleagues.
But since it was something for future student-teacher newcomers, we pretty much started from scratch.
The first chapter includes a basic outline about what it’s all about. Then the first few steps: registration, filling your profile and so on. But since we wanted to focus on the specific practical-training approach, the next chapter was already about how-to create a page and how-to upload files into it. One chapter gives a quick overview about the group-option, which is pretty basic, since most of the students are familiar with forums and how to communicate with their help.
The new part, even for us, was the Gazette page. This page defines the collaboration part of our e-Portfolios. Basically it includes three blogs: useful material, thought a day and link a day. For one, it is about sharing your thoughts about practical training, and also sharing useful links and material with your colleagues. The Gazette page also includes milestones, which are also new, where you can track your progress, either regarding your studies or practical training. The last part is reserved for the main tasks from practical training.

So we held the whole thing pretty basic, and as of right now, more and more students are updating their e-Portfolio with the help of our Tutorial.
But the key thing is that the next generations of student-teachers at the Univerity of Education Vienna will be able to get up-to-date smoothly with this Tutorial, right from the start.

(b)easy reflecting

The last two months have been particularly busy. Managing work, teaching, preparing for exams and coaching, take up pretty much all of ones time.
Because of this, I wasn’t able to post new things to this blog. But not writing about something, shouldn’t mean you can’t think about it. Reflecting about your teaching is necessary either way. Most student-teachers won’t even reflect in a written form, they just ‘say’ they’ve been reflecting, but most of the time, the only thing they did, was to think about their preparation, or the lesson in a very basic way (‘well, I liked the lesson, it was good’; ‘the kids weren’t focused today’). But this thinking won’t get you far, you have to dig deeper and ask the ‘why’ and ‘how’ about the lesson or the kids. Being that busy, it’s easy to get into this random reflecting. But there are a few things, which can help make busy reflecting into easy reflecting.

There was one lesson, where near the end, the focus of almost everyone in the group just plummeted. It was one of the first spring days, where it was kind of warmer than the weeks before, but not necessarily different. It was after the lunch break, and the first part went pretty routine, but the second part (we did some reading and speaking exercises) was just ‘useless’.
It bothered me as soon as I stepped outside of the classroom and my mind raced through what happened, why it happened for the first time today and what could be done differently the next time. Almost naturally, I took out my phone and typed in two or three notes about this lesson, and because I wrote it in my phone, I had no urge to write more than three, four sentences. This way, I summed up my thoughts perfectly. Not only did I remember it easier, it made me focus on the important part of what happened.
The second thing that I also found useful, was to talk to somebody right after the lesson, just like with the notes. Now even if you don’t find colleagues, who are willing to listen to you for five minutes, just try one of your friends. The important part is to do it quickly and trying to sum it up. That way you have to focus on the little things that made it work or didn’t make it work. In my experience, if I’m busy and running from A to B all the time, it’s easier to share my thoughts quickly, than to get into long deep discussion, in which one of the partners loses their point anyway. So, share immediately, reflect through telling someone.
The last one is obvious. Before preparing your next lesson, try to think about the last time. But, don’t dwell on everything that happened, take the first two things that come to your mind. Now try to incorporate it into the new lesson (if it was something good), or think about how to avoid or fix it in the upcoming lesson (if it was problematic). Again, the key thing for me was to make it quick. Also, the two things that I remembered spontaneously, were usually things that stuck in my head for a reason.

I didn’t actively try out new things and try to reflect differently, but because of my schedule, I stumbled across a few methods that helped me. And since these things kind of came spontaneously, they were pretty natural. It made it easier and helped quite a bit.