International website for language teachers
I recall the visit to a small conference with about thirty Spanish teachers which took place in Santa Rosa, California, in October 2008. As always, it was wonderful to meet with others, to learn from them and make new contacts. No sooner was the conference over, when I built the website “World Language Teachers In Waldorf Schools” (http://wltws.org). Its aim was to enable the teachers to stay in contact with one another throughout the year and exchange materials, ideas and inspiration. A short time later, teachers from all over the USA were invited to participate in this website. The news spread quickly and soon language teachers from all over the world visited the site. In the meantime... [more]
Foreign language teaching today
Once linguistics had developed into the actual reference discipline for foreign language teaching, research contributions based on individual teaching experience largely lost their academic acceptance. Contributions which dealt with the pedagogical dimension of foreign language teaching became fewer and fewer. Studies looking critically at the societal context of foreign language teaching could not maintain their position in the specialist literature any longer either. The findings of linguistics began to be observed more critically because it was unable to describe and illuminate many different factors which determine the learning of foreign languages in school. Research areas such as the psychology of learning, psycholinguistics and research into... [more]
Language teachers must also be artists
In his seminal work on Waldorf foreign language teaching, Johannes Kiersch in 1992 called for teacher training to be comprehensively extended in that language teachers should learn “that their profession requires training as an artist, and philological training is only in preparation or support of that”. This call triggered some fundamental developments in the training and advanced training of foreign language teachers at Waldorf schools in the last fifteen years. This can be seen very clearly in the development of the “English Week” for example. When it was set up fifteen years ago, it directly took up many elements which had been developed in the long tradition of Waldorf foreign language teaching. But what was new about it was the conviction that... [more]
Learning to teach in modules
The knowledge that we need more qualified foreign language teachers has given rise to a new concept for a modularised and decentralised training. The steering group responsible for the new concept came across many different types of training during its review in Germany. The aim was to find a flexible form which remains practicable in terms of outlay and content while at the same time being comparable, open and transparent. Comparability is ensured in that under the programme the various training centres undertake to provide the foundations of an understanding of the human being and of teaching methodology and to enable practical experience. The course aims to offer students modules at various training centres whereby a specific number of obligatory... [more]
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