Using authentic materials and longer texts rather than mainly the textbook is desirable for several reasons, among others that students get extensive exposure to the target language. This language is meaningful and culture-specific and thus the tasks around those books will be of a different nature than the tasks built around the often constructed textbook stories that aim to highlight grammatical features. In this course you are going to experience how a class reader, e.g. a novel, can be used in a creative and project based way. As part of the course we are actually going into a school in order to work with year 9 students (within our time-slot). The course is going to take you through the whole process of choosing a book, discussing ideas of how to use them, creating tasks/projects for students and then using them in the classroom (at the Burggymnasium in Essen; 15 min walk from the university). Active participation in the sessions at university, joint planning of tasks/a project idea, microteaching at school and a brief presentation back at university are set requirements for getting credits in this course. |
