Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

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The Module “Developing Competence in English Language Teaching” (FD1/FD2)

Anne Mihan

With the aim of developing your abilities as a reflective practitioner, the seminar “Theory-oriented research and practice” provides you with the opportunity to deepen your knowledge of didactics. You will analyse and critically reflect upon how a variety of factors such as general society, the teaching profession itself and language policies influence the way English is studied and taught and how didactic concepts bear upon foreign language education.

As a student training to teach English either at primary school level, or following the programme leading to the award of the ‘kleiner Master of Education,’ you will take the seminar “Skills-oriented Foreign Language Education,” where you will examine current expectations of a competence-oriented approach to English language teaching. In the Colloquium, you will be given assistance in preparing for your MA thesis, both in terms of content and methodology.

In the seminar “Problemfelder der Praxis – Ansätze zu ihrer Bewältigung” (Practical Challenges and Possible Solutions) you will explore topics pertaining to literary and cultural studies from a didactic perspective and within the framework of a communicative, learner-oriented approach to teaching English. Additionally, you will explore how to use foreign language education as a means of focusing upon and discussing social conflicts in the context of school. It is in this unit of the module in particular, as well as in courses offered by the Applied Language Studies section (‘Classroom Discourse’ and ‘Culture and Language Learning’), that you will be able to design extended units of language teaching, both individually and in collaboration with your fellow students, which will then be trialled and tested in simulated teaching sessions that enable you to implement and evaluate various learning arrangements and to discuss different learning and teaching styles. In all parts of this module, you will reflect upon the multiple demands today’s globalised society makes on you as a foreign language teacher and you will seek ways to reconcile these with the needs and requirements of future generations of learners.