ISBN: 87 7701 536 3
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| ISSN: 0909 9328 ISBN: 87 7701 536 3 No. 8, 1997: Theme: |
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Editors for no. 8: |
Foreword
Foreword
Hanne Vedel & Gitte Østergaard Nielsen: Why second language reading?
Marianne Ledstrup: Cross-border projects. The Europe Project, with built-in project work - FULL TEXT
Karen Risager: Project work is process-oriented language work
Signe Lehmann Rasmussen & Iben Zukunft: Project work and language learning in Roskilde University Centre's international study course
Hanne Hvims & Mark Andersen: Take-Off - an attempt at holistic teaching at Technical School Slagelse
Susanne V. Knudsen: Project work in a time of frequent changes
Kirsten Kirkelund & Ulla Pedersen: Telecommunication in French between upper secondary classes
Kirsten Graversen: Interdisciplinary work in the commercial colleges' shorter further education courses
Else Lindberg: Danish teaching and workshops. Language learning and acquisition
Judith Parsons & Emma Michelsen: Linking up Denmark
Return to overview of Sprogforum publications
Some people claim that Danish society is not something inherited but a project. According to such a view, Danish society does not exist as something fixed which we take over from our forefathers; it is something which is constantly changing, developing at a pace which corresponds to the demands we make of it as Danish citizens. It is our common project, even though there are opposing factions.
This way of thinking could easily be transferred to the field of education. Knowledge and skills are not (just) inherited, something that is to be taken over and reproduced by pupils/students. Knowledge and skills are also a project. They are something the pupils process, develop, acquire together, cooperating with teachers and possibly others: parents, friends, etc. In educational projects, too, there is a discussion of aims, content and methods. By means of this discussion educational projects contribute to the participants' independent building-up of knowledge and skills that are meaningful for themselves.
Today, language subjects are highly composite. They are tool-subjects in that they develop the pupils' communicative skills. They are orientation subjects in that they contribute to the pupils' knowledge of the world around them. And they are subjects that develop their personalities and attitudes because they influence the pupils' identity and general cultural awareness. These aspects of language subjects can be integrated in different ways. In this connection, a project-organised type of teaching is highly suitable, especially if it is implemented as group work and takes place in the foreign or second language. When the pupils work together in groups on a project topic, they are training and developing their communicative skills, working with many different types of texts, and having an ongoing need to express a whole spectrum of emotions and attitudes: joy, criticism, praise, uncertainty, acceptance, doubt, anger, etc.
To research into the various meanings ascribed to the project idea is in itself a project. As this issue of Sprogforum clearly reveals, project work is perceived in many widely differing ways in various language teaching environments. To a certain extent, this must be seen against the background of the various conditions that exist for implementing teaching of a project nature. But it is also the expression of a general seeking for usable alternative teaching methods which, to a greater extent that the traditional classroom method, live up to requirements concerning pupil participation and commitment. One of the important principles is precisely participant control.
The projects described vary, among other things, according to whose project we are dealing with, who defines the project's content and implementation, who controls the work process and who is taking part in the evaluation: Have the pupils involved defined the project themselves? To what extent has the teacher been implicated? Has an interdisciplinary team of teachers originally taken the initiative for a cooperative project, and what influence have they allowed the pupils to have? Have teachers from two different schools agreed on a - national or international - cooperative project? Or has it been the educational institution as such that has initiated a major project, e.g. a European class that the pupils have had the opportunity to sign up for? Or has such an administrative authority as a county authority started a development project that schools or teachers can take part in?
The original impulse can thus have come from many different sources - although, pedagogically speaking, the ideal must be that the pupils involved have as much initiative, control and responsibility as is at all possible regarding planning, implementation and evaluation - including process evaluation.
Another principle that has been important for the project idea is problem orientation. This is a matter of contention, for what is meant by the word problem in this context? First and foremost, problem orientation must be understood in opposition to topic orientation: Traditional class or course teaching is typically topic-oriented, since it works its way through a series of topics defined in syllabuses, etc., topics that are thought to constitute the school subject itself. In this sense, one can speak of the school subject as being inherited, something to be taken over and reproduced by the pupils, cf. the introductory passage of this foreword. Problem-orientation in project work focuses on the world's many varied issues that can be processed educationally - and which call for the pupils to develop their cognitive insight and skills in new contexts. They create their own knowledge through working independently on the project, including all the subject input they need, possibly from several other school subjects.
Foreign and second languages can be a part of project work in two different ways: as a content issue and as a working language. In the first instance, language is the object of investigation completely on a par with other aspects of the diversity of the world, e.g. How do people converse with each other in certain situations? Do the two sexes use language differently? How is language used in the mass media?, etc. In the second instance, where language has the status of a working language, there is a considerable risk that working on verbal expression is neglected because working on content appeals much more to the pupils. Here the teacher has an important role to play as the person who, apart from supervising the content side of the project, keeps the pupils on track by working consciously with verbal skills. The medium and the message must develop in tandem.
We begin with an article by Marianne Ledstrup on the recently introduced compulsory project assignment in the Folkeskole and on how it is possible in language subjects to implement such an assignment, e.g. in connection with exchange visits. Then we include an article by Karen Risager on how project work is the framework for integrated work on developing language skills, based on project work at Roskilde University Centre (RUC). This is followed by a contribution from two students at RUC, Signe Lehman Rasmussen and Iben Zukunft, on the importance of language awareness in project work.
Then follows a description of at attempt at a technical school to integrate subject and language teaching, including a stay abroad, by Hanne Hvims and Mark Andersen, and an article on present social needs for project-organised types of work by Susanne V. Knudsen. This is followed by an account by Kirsten Kirkelund and Ulla Pedersen of a cooperative project between two Danish upper secondary classes on telecommunications (French), which also included a class in France. And Kirsten Graversen writes about a project assignment on Italy that was partly conducted in English at a commercial school.
Finally, Else Lindberg discusses language learning and acquisition in connection with a project for immigrants that included workshop teaching, and Emma Michelsen and Judith Parsons write about certain experiences that have had of project-oriented cooperation between two immigrant schools at opposite ends of Denmark which included the use of ethnographic methods and mutual visits.
This number's language chronicle is by Hanne Vedel and Gitte Østergaard Nielsen. It deals with why adult immigrants have the right to demand reading instruction in Danish as well as what is necessary for the teachers to be able to offer good teaching in reading proficiency and good support for individual reading training.
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