At the FTSK, we tried to design intensive scaffolded language emergence courses and seminars for students. The intensive language courses should promote and demand a holistic learning of foreign languages for students, whereas the seminars were to be in the area of foreign language didactics. Students get the chance to take part in research projects and extend their skills as prospective language teachers and mediatiors.
The intensive language development courses comprise approximately 50-75 contact hours and are operated by teams of students, who will later also represent the course facilitators. The structure, content and learn activities of these courses are usually not prefabricated in form of a method, but are individually designed by the facilitators for each group.
1) Intensive Spanish Course for Beginners
The project began with a Spanish intensive course, which was offered by the department of English Linguistics and Translation Studies in cooperation with the language centre of the faculty in Germersheim in October 2011. This course was developed for participants without previous knowledge of the Spanish language and was directed at students of other languages in Germersheim.
One week ahead of the course, a one-day workshop was held, where the students learned about the main features of the Natural Approach and the Second Language Emergence in the Classroom method.
2) Research Oriented Seminar in Foreign Language Didactic: Processing of Data of the Vivid Spanish Course
22 students participated in the seminar, which was part of the Foreign Language module in the summer semester 2012 at the faculty in Germersheim. The students had the chance to get an insight in foreign language didactics and learning processes by practicing largely autonomous research work in teams. The students were given the following tasks:
- working collaborative with the lecturer (Dr. Donald Kiraly) to look into the collected data of the previous Spanish course
- analysing and searching for indicators of learning processes in the data
A selection of background reading of diverse studies concerning second language acquisition was given to the participants.
Footage of various language courses at the FTSK: