Linguists distinguish between a formal approach to the language system and the communicative language use in culturally embedded situations (langue vs. parole with de Saussure 1916). As a consequence, the basic unit of language description and analysis is different. Whereas structural-generative linguistics takes the sentence as the central category, functional linguistics sees the genre (ie. […]
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This year’s Congress of Education in Muenster entitled “Promoting Talent, Developing Performance, Enhancing Educational Justice” impressed by its size alone. Long before the congress (19th to 22nd September 2018) it was fully booked with over 1,000 registrations, an expression of great enthusiasm in schools and among teachers. The keynotes always took place in the large […]
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Digitalisation is everywhere. It has become a political and economic buzz word, and it has moved to the top of the education policy agenda, at least rhetorically. Of course, foreign language pedagogy has been dealing with it for some time now. Two observations may lead to the following diagnoses. Hardware Questions On the one hand, […]
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The considerable number of learners with a family language other than German poses a big challenge for all of those who are involved. Once again it must be suspected that, at the political level, their integration is regarded as being successfully completed once they have joined the educational system.
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In Germany, future teachers of foreign languages do not only develop their language proficiency, but they also study linguistics, literary studies and foreign language pedagogy (didactics, as it is termed in Germany). Since, at most German universities, all of these are autonomous disciplines, this raises questions of interdisciplinary correspondences, coordination and interrelatedness between all of […]
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In didactics there are many terms (concepts!) that are so established and in long-term use that no one asks anymore what they are actually supposed to designate. Characteristics displaying a kind of pedagogical naturalization can be seen in the unreflected use of these terms in every sort of pedagogical context, as well as in scientific […]
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I don’t have anything against curricula. On the contrary, they are important instruments for institutional education, for building structured learning and educational processes and for mutual agreements on educational, competency and knowledge objectives between federal states, educational authorities and schools, as well as in academic circles and between educators in schools. After nearly 15 years, […]
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