Almost twenty years after the publication of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the so-called Companion Volume is now available. It rewrites some central concepts (e.g. mediation) or introduces whole new domains of competence, e.g. pluricultural and plurilingual competences. A Conference on the new Companion Volume For this reason, the Research Network Educational […]
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The advent of online dictionaries has banished the classic reference book in its printed paper form to the substitute bench. At first glance, the advantages of Internet dictionaries are overwhelming: you always have all languages in one app on your smartphone. Whole sentences or idioms can be googled. Complete declinations, conjugations and directories are just a […]
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The educational standards for foreign languages in the upper secondary stage decreed by the German Conference of Ministers of Culture in 2012, have only just been implemented in the Abitur examinations. Now the educational standards for the lower secondary level, which came into force in 2003, are under revision. If this is to be a […]
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Exciting ways of learning with the competence task Task-based learning has long been established in the field of foreign language learning – in a sense. However, it still competes with textbook-based instruction and, above all, with the curricular specifications and frameworks: comparative tests, official exam tasks, and the limitations of skills-orientation. The competence task shows […]
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The success of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is reflected both in the growing demand for bilingual education and in the results of empirical studies. Bilingual learners achieve a significantly higher level of foreign language competence while, at the same time, they acquire subject-specific concepts. In addition, they are provided with excellent opportunities for […]
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For quite a while it has been generally acknowledged in foreign language pedagogy that the vast majority of communicative acts is no longer solely verbal; rather, most of our communication and most cultural discourses are characterized by multimodality, using a broad range of semiotic modes, and visual languages in particular. In his book on multimodality […]
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In former times the ideal of language learning was the imitation of the native speaker. However, today’s learners are exposed to a multitude of languages in their own natural social and cultural environment. English has become an almost natural part of everyday communicative life. Not least on the Internet, and for young people in particular, […]
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When it comes to multilingualism, it is not a West African country like Ghana that comes to mind easily. This is no coincidence: Anglophone Africa is not really a focus of English studies and certainly not of English language pedagogy. While postcolonial literary and cultural studies have dealt intensively with the great representatives of Anglophone […]
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