Teachers' Day 2009

Authenticity and Skills-Based Teaching

Skills-based learning has now been widely accepted as the essential principle of modern foreign language teaching. But sustainable and efficient teaching of the various communicative skills as they are outlined in the bildungsstandards is not possible without authentic texts and authentic situations. But what exactly are authentic texts, which authentic texts are adequate for skills-based teaching and which methods can be used in the English language classroom to train the relevant skills? By taking reading comprehension as an example, this lecture tries to provide answers to these questions.

Newspapers in the English classroom (handouts / presentation)

In this workshop we will focus on a learner-centred approach to dealing with authentic newspaper articles.
Participants will be provided with suggestions for short teaching units both in Sek I and II.

Efficient approaches and methods to help our students read and understand authentic texts more effectively

This workshop will give some concrete examples of how reading skills can be trained more effectively in an authentic context. Participants will also have the opportunity to put into practice some of the approaches and methods presented at the beginning with the help of the material provided.

Authentic texts and their use in the English classroom

Using a variety of examples from the Klett Green Line course, teachers will work with texts, audio and audio-visual texts and consider appropriate ways to use them in their English classrooms.

Using authentic English texts for communication purposes in the classroom

This workshop will concentrate on two particular methods which can be used with reading texts leading to effective communication between pupils in English classrooms. Particpants will try the methods out themselves.

Working with authentic texts in the English classroom (handouts / presentation, part 1 / presentation, part 2)

This workshop will work with a variety of authentic texts for teaching both in Sek I (e.g. cartoons) and Sek II (e.g. newspaper articles, pop songs).

Training, not testing - helping students listen more effectively to authentic texts

In this lecture I shall critique the traditional listening comprehension approach to classroom listening practice. I shall then present a wide range of practical pure listening training exercises which I have developed for use with any authentic text.

I shall be using a wide range of authentic texts to demonstrate this approach.

Designing listening training exercises for use with authentic texts

Using a variety of authentic texts we shall develop together some pure listening training exercises to train students to listen more effectively.

Participants will receive a CD containing a unit from one of my new Real Lives, Real Listening books for use with their students.