Language courses

  • What was involved

    The idea was to get familiar with our linguistic diversity and juxtapose our six language systems but we went beyond that and decided to train a team of students from each partner school in an innovative language learning methodology known as Suggestopedia to peer-teach our languages to our partners. This activity was meant not only to help familiarize our students with the other languages of the partner schools but also to promote the entrepreneurial potential of language teaching.  

    To this end, the English teacher from the Greek partner school – who is a certified teacher trainer in Suggestopedia – prepared the following course materials and trained peer teachers via Skype. Unfortunately, only four of the six project partners' languages were taught at the meeting because of lack of time to prepare the materials in Turkish and Czech both of which the trainer was unfamiliar with.

    The teacher Training

    To present the teaching methodology to the peer teachers, its background, its means and results, the trainer used the following presentation:

    Our teaching methodology .ppt

    To demonstrate the methodology, she used a demo video of her teaching German to her Greek students before the meeting:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F-9c8fPJR6TRGU0t2IjZuvkk_kynWqvt

    To help them plan their teaching, she gave them the following list of materials

    TEACHING MATERIALS .docx

    and step-by -step instructions

    Instructions for teachers.docx

    The teaching MATERIALS

    For each course we produced and reproduced a Student's coursebook - which is essentially a libretto, a play translated in the reader's first language, or - in our case - in English, which is the common language for communication. This is an illustrated dialogue in natural communication settings which is accompanied with grammar notes. The dialogue is supposed to be recited by the students following the suggestions of the teacher-reciters. Here are the coursebooks for the four language courses that were taught at the meeting in Athens:

    _the Greek LOGOS (1).docx for the Greek course

    for the Italian course Bella ed antica.pdf

    for the Spanish courseUn Viaje.pdf

    for the German coursedie endlose Reise.pdf

    The peer teachers used their Teacher's Book - a version of the coursebook in which there are Stop posts for elaboration of grammar, structures and vocabulary. Here are the Teacher's Books for the four language courses.

    _the Greek LOGOS .pdf

    _Bella ed antica - teacher's.pdf

    Un Viaje- Teacher's.pdf

    die endlose Reise - Teacher's .pdf

     

    Apart from the coursebook in its Student's and Teacher's version, each course was aided by Posters with the basic grammatical and syntactical structures as well as expressions and vocabulary families (eg. the days of the week) The Posters for each course are here: 

    posters for the Greek course-20190530T103730Z-001.zip

    posters for the Italian course-20190530T104131Z-001.zip

    posters for the German course-20190530T103331Z-001.zip

     

    Each course is taught with the help of a set of HANDOUTS with all the necessary grammar and vocabulary units given to the learners right from the start of the lesson. Here are also the lyrics of the didactic and authentic songs used as well as the questionnaire for the job interview carried out at the end of the course for evaluation.

    HANDOUTS-20190530T112430Z-001.zip German course set

    Italian course setHANDOUTS-20190530T111348Z-001.zip 

     

    HANDOUTS-20190530T105142Z-001.zip Spanish course set

    HANDOUTS-20190530T104033Z-001.zip Greek course set 

    To aid the class follow the job interviews we also used the following sets of slides:

    das Job Interview.pptx

    intervista.ppt

    interview in Spanish.pptx

    ΣΥΝΕΝΤΕΥΞΗ.pptx

    Click here to view all the materials used to train the students from the Spanish, the German, the Italian and the Greek school to peer teach their languages during the meeting: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1moJGElQWz9bMqfLAw4eTz-ERxL_x1dUs

    Our teaching methodology

    Suggestopedia is an innovative teaching-learning methodology most commonly known as the Lozanov method applied in foreign language teaching. It is based on the principles of language acquisition rather than language learning even when it is addressed to adult learners. Its main difference from all other methodologies is that the teaching/learning process is directed in such a way that it desuggests the idea of conventional formal learning. Therefore, teacher and learners act as peers in a non-educational communicative context.

    Each course involves a cycle of 4 stages

    the Introduction of each new unit 

    The teacher acts as a tourist who uses the foreign language to get the learners involved in everyday communication aided by paralanguage, didactic songs and dances, props, toys, photos, handouts and posters. 

    the Recital

    The teacher acts as an artist who uses classical and preclassical music in the background to recite the dialogue in the coursebook with all the new lexical and grammatical units and expressions used in the previous stage. The dialogue is like a libretto in a play and is translated in the learner's mother tongue.The learners follow and keep notes. 

    the Elaboration

    The teacher acts now as a play director who helps the learners acting as actors and actresses to recite the dialogue themselves as if they were rehearsing their parts. At moments, the teacher becomes a 'suggestor' for the 'actors' to act out without reading. There is also free communication inspired by the ideas in the dialogue which helps the teacher to elaborate on the pronounciation, the grammar and the vocabulary being taught. At this stage, the learners are encouraged to ask each other personal questions and communicate in the foreign language aided by the grammar in the Posters and the teacher's modelling the structures.

    the Production

    This is the stage of evaluation of what has been understood and is about to be learnt. The teacher acts like a facilitator for the learners to play didactic games, sing and dance to didactic songs and role play interviews with questions from the dialogue.

     

    Here are some instances of the peer-teaching mini courses: