Svårt med motivationen

Andra boken i Twilight Sagan

Jag har svårt med motivationen så här på sluttampen av vårens kurs. Solen skiner ute och man börjar så smått se fram emot semester i sommar. Men det som gör det allra svårast att sätta sig med kurslitteraturen just nu är att jag började läsa boken Twilight utav Stephenie Meyer. Jag har hört så många prata om den här serien och var nu tvungen att se vad alla pratade om. Jag fastnade fullständigt i vampyrers, varulvars och tonårskärlekens värld så gammal jag är ;) Det är svårt att lägga ifrån sig boken. Jag har nu snart läst ut den andra boken i serien, men slutet i den måste vänta tills jag har läst ut Literature and Language Teaching. Men man kan åtminstone säga att när det handlar om Twilight sagan så handlar det om ren, pur läsglädje för min del.

Studieteknik

Björn Liljeqvist som har skrivit boken Plugga smart och lär dig mer har även spelat in ett antal filmer om studieteknik som man kan hitta här: http://kth.mirocommunity.org/search/?q=studieteknik&x=0&y=0

Jag har precis lyssnat på ett webbseminarium med honom och det var intressanta och samtidigt enkla tips han hade. Webbseminariet kan man hitta här: https://connect.sunet.se/p37459362/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

Han pratar bland annat om att använda sig av en studiedagbok eller blogg i vilken man skriver ner vad man har lärt sig under till exempel en föreläsning. Anteckningarna ska man göra redan samma dag och så repeterar man dagen efter, sedan efter en vecka och så sedan efter en månad.
Man ska vidare se till att förebereda sig lite innan en föreläsning bland annat genom att bläddra igenom kurslitteraturen ett antal gånger, inte med fokus på att förstå utan mer för att bekanta sig med ämnet och få en förförståelse. Att sätta sig och börja läsa kurslitteratur från början utan att ha bläddrat igenom boken ett antal gånger var inget han rekommenderade.
Så nu ska jag sätta mig och bläddra i kurslitteraturen för nästa modul ;)

Att blogga i svenska som andraspråk

Anteckningar från Vuxenutbildning i Samverkan i Linköping mars 2011

Att blogga i svenska som andraspråk Linköping 22/3-11
Föreläsare Stina Thunberg

Varför ska man använda sig av en blogg?

·        Det handlar om sociokulturellt lärande – man kommunicerar med andra på en blogg.

·        Flerstämmighet och dialog skapas kring elevernas texter och kunskap skapas i interaktion och samspel.

·        Det är en autentisk situation – eleven skriver inte till läraren. Det gör att det blir mer meningsfullt att skriva än när det bara är läraren som läser.

·        Diskussionerna fortsätter när eleverna lämnar klassrummet – man fortsätter att använda sin svenska även i hemmet då man skriver sina blogginlägg och kommenterar på andras inlägg.

Exempel på uppgifter:
Läsa en text, se film, TV-program som kanske diskuteras i klassrummet och så får eleverna sedan reflektera över vad de diskuterade eller ge sin syn på ett ämne i ett blogginlägg.

Man kan ge eleverna ett tema som de ska fotografera (hennes exempel något konstigt) och så får eleverna lägga upp bilden på bloggen och berätta om den. Hon hade inte upplevt några problem med att någon elev inte har tillgång till en kamera.

Man kan använda den som en läslogg när man läser böcker och då ge eleverna olika uppgifter att lösa. (skriva ner två citat att diskutera, beskriva huvudpersonen)

Titta på en debatt på exempelvis SVTplay och sedan i klassrummet dela in dem i en grupp som är för det som debatterats och en som är emot, de får spela en roll. På bloggen kan de sedan få skriva sin egentliga åsikt.

Hon hade också använt sig av bokklubbar eller läsecirklar där 4-5 elever läser samma bok och själva bestämmer när de ska träffas och diskutera boken. Sedan får de blogga om det de har diskuterat efteråt.

För att få en blogg att fungera måste man ge eleverna något att säga, något att diskutera, det är samtalet och diskussionen som är grunden.

Thunberg menade att det är lätt att förena bloggandet med kursmålen för SVA1201.

Hon har använt sig av en gemensam blogg där hon har bjudit in eleverna så att de också kan skriva och kommentera.

Hon menar också på att det är viktigt att sätta kommunikationen i fokus, inte estetiken. Även om bloggen kanske varken är snygg eller strukturerad så flödar språket.

När man börjar med blogg i sin undervisning kan det vara bra att använda sig av en datorsal 1 gång i vecka då eleverna kan skriva inlägg i bloggen och man som lärare kan hjälpa till och kommentera på språket hos var och en av eleverna.

De studerande kan mer än vad du tror.

nysvenskilulea.blogspot.com

Book review: Stone Cold

Stone Cold by Robert Swindells – review
Kids are disappearing, but no one cares…

Linda Kornberg Krogh
Saturday 26 March, 2011

Robert Swindells is known for writing thought-provoking novels about contemporary society and Stone Cold, published in 1993, is certainly one of them. It was awarded the Carnegie Medal and Sheffield Children’s Book Award in 1994 and it was adapted for the screen by the BBC in 1997.

One of the main characters in the novel is Link. When he was fourteen years old his father ran off with a receptionist. Link’s life became a mess but he stuck it out in school and managed to finish with five GCSEs. His mother has by then met Vince whom accuses Link of living on his money since Link is unable to find work. Finally, Link cannot stand anymore of Vince’s verbal abuse and therefore decides to try his luck in London instead. However, he runs out of money and ends up on the streets where he befriends Ginger, who teaches him about the life of a homeless person. What the two of them are not aware of though, is that there is serial killer on the loose in London and his target is homeless people, Link and Ginger included. Unfortunately, no one seems to care when homeless teenagers start disappearing and one day Ginger does not turn up at their agreed meeting point.

The story of this novel is also written from the viewpoint of another character who calls himself Shelter. He has been discharged from the army where he used to turn young men into proper soldiers and his belief is that there is a plot of undermining the country by filling it with homeless people, alcoholics and drug addicts and that it is his duty to clean up the streets.

Throughout the novel we follow Link and Shelter in alternating chapters and both stories are told in first person. In the chapters about Link we follow his struggle to survive and he is made likeable by being a victim and by the way his story is told with a colloquial language and he often turns to the reader, for example when describing in detail how it feels trying to go to sleep on a hard concrete floor when your feet are as cold as ice. The language in the chapters where we follow Shelter is different and you get a military feeling with short sentences and harsh words and these chapters are also a lot shorter. We follow Shelter from where he meticulously plans how to lure the homeless youngsters to his home until he is a full-fledged serial killer. Shelter also turns to the reader, but this does not have the same effect as with Link’s story since the reader quite early understands that his plans are to murder young people. Shelter himself does not quite seem to understand why he was discharged from the army but to the reader this soon becomes quite clear.

This novel is a very realistic novel about teenage problems, but as many other novels it has a touch of adventure in that Link tries to find out what has happened to Ginger and for a moment he goes from being a nobody to being a hero even though it is just for a short while. There is also a touch of family story in the beginning when the reader is told about the abusive situation in Link’s family and the fact that his own mother does not stand up for him. But most of all it is a teenage problem novel with a tale of what could happen to you if leave your home without having anywhere to live and no money and that running away does not solve the problem. But it is also a story of what can happen if parents choose to ignore the way their children are treated. Furthermore, my opinion is that Swindells’ main reason for writing this novel is to give a very realistic picture of the lives of the homeless people. The people that most of us tend to choose not to see when we pass them in the streets, believing that it is probably their own fault that they are living like that.

The topic of teenagers living in an abusive home is not a new one. Neither is teenagers on the run and living on the streets. Teenage problem novels have been written in thousands and it is a sub-genre of young adult literature. They can also be said to belong to the genre of moral and instructive tales. The early novels in this genre were written mostly to teach children how to behave in a mature way, whereas during the late twentieth century they came to have a much more social and political point of view and Stone Cold is certainly a part of this tradition.  Examples of earlier texts in this sub-genre are The Catcher in the Rye (1951), The Outsiders (1967), Go Ask Alice (1971), Forever (1975) and Dear Nobody (1991) who all deal with problems faced by teenagers such as drugs, confusion, rebellion, sex, pregnancy and friendships.

Swindells’ describes very well how easily a young person can end up being an outcast in society without actually having done anything wrong, which I also think is the message of this book. It gives you another view of homeless people and you understand that there might be other reasons than alcoholism and drug addiction that causes young people to end up in the streets, that there are children who would rather live like that than go back to the abusive homes they came from and this causes me as a reader to view upon homelessness with different eyes.

The ending of this novel is very open and free to interpret the way the reader wishes and this is perhaps a negative point since I would have wished for a happier ending. Furthermore, it does not quite match the excitement that has been built up in the rest of novel, but feels rather flat in comparison, almost like Swindells got bored with the story. Nonetheless, I think this is a thought-provoking novel with an enthralling plot which is well worth reading.

Mulåsnorna

Förra veckan hade jag nöjet att få lyssna på en föreläsning av Per Johansson som ligger bakom Glada Hudikteatern. Han var rolig att lyssna på och han beskrev med exakthet hur det går till i det kommunala arbetslivet. Han pratade bland annat av vilka olika typer av personer som man kan hitta runt bordet vid ett möte. En grupp kallade han för mulåsnorna och det är de här människorna som motvilligt kommer till jobbet på måndag morgon och utbrister - Fy faan nu är det måndag igen. Per menade att dessa människor ska bort omedelbart. När man har tappat glöden och passionen för det man gör då behöver man byta yrke och jag tror att dessa personer finns på många arbetsplatser.
Men sen började jag fundera över det här med att tycka att det är pest att gå till jobbet på måndag morgon. Jag kan ibland känna att det bara hör till att man ska beklaga sig över måndag morgon eller utbrista att nu är det äntligen fredag i det här landet. Och då kan man ju också fundera om fler personer egentligen borde byta yrke.
Jag gillar att gå till mitt jobb. Jag älskar det jag gör - ja kanske inte alla dagar - men det är inte tungt att gå till jobbet. Men ändå hör jag mig själv säga till mina elever som jag har haft för sista gången för veckan på tisdageftermiddagen - ha en trevlig helg när ni kommer dit. Men varför fokuserar vi så mycket på helgen? Javisst är det skönt att vara ledig, men borde vi inte kanske bli lite bättre på att faktiskt uppskatta vardagen också och inte bara leva för helgen?

Vår bästa tid är nu

Här kommer en föreläsning av Micke Gunnarsson som pratar om skolan och användandet av IT i skolan.
Han har helt klart sina poänger!

Charterresa eller backpacking?

I sin blogg Flexspan skriver Alastair Creelman om vårt framtida lärande. Han menar att den traditionella skolan är som att åka på en charterresa där allt redan är planerat, tryggt och du guidas av guider som kan sin sak, men att detta inte hjälper oss att lära oss söka reda på informationen själva och därmed inte heller att ta ansvar för vårt eget lärande. Vi behöver bli mer av backpackers och mindre av charterresenärer menar han och jag är böjd att hålla med. De elever som jag möter idag mer eller mindre förväntar sig att bli servade med material och information. Vi är inte bara curlingföräldrar utan också curlinglärare kan jag uppleva ibland. Men det är kanske inte så konstigt att det har blivit så för har inte lärare genom alla tider serverat sina elever med information i hopp om att de ska ta till sig denna och göra den till sin kunskap?
Men samhället idag kräver allt mer att vi klarar av att finna informationen på egen hand och lärandet tar ju inte slut bara för att man slutar skolan. Vi lär ju oss nya saker genom hela livet. Men har du själv egentligen funderat särskilt mycket över hur du går tillväga när du behöver lära dig något nytt? Och vilka kompetenser kommer vi egentligen att behöva i framtiden?

The use of the L1 in the L2 classroom

I think most teachers agree with the idea that the L2 should be used as much as possible in the L2 classroom. Most students probably agree too, but of course there are always exceptions.
I too think it is important to use the L2 as much as possible, but there are situations when I prefer using the L1 which is Swedish in my case. When talking about grammar I tend to use mainly Swedish, but I think that is about the only situation when I make an active choice between Swedish and English. In other situations I start off in English and finish in Swedish, for example when giving instructions or talking about homework when I notice that the students don't seem to understand what I am on about.
However, yesterday I noticed a situation which has been discussed in the course literature and that is showing that you have understood a text. My A-course students have watched a film called Stone Cold and it was divided into three parts. Before we watched the last part I asked them to just retell what happened in the previous episode. They did this in Swedish and retold the whole episode and thereby showing that they had understood what happened. Had they done this in English they wouldn't have retold half as many details. This is mainly due to lack of vocabulary and not knowing how to express what they want to say. But it got me thinking - should we once in a while let our students talk about or retell what they have read in their L1 instead of their L2 to get at better picture of their interpretation of the text? If they only ever talk about texts they have read in their L2 we might actually miss out on their thoughts and ideas just because they do not have the words. Then on the other hand you have the fact of practising using the L2 in different situations.
It is a totatlly different story with my C-students because many of them are very fluent in English so for them it is not that difficult to express their thoughts and ideas.
To sum up, what I mean is that sometimes we might let our students use their L1 to show their actual understainding of a text. What do you think?

//Linda

Discussing literature

Aidan Chambers talks about the importance of talking about literature in his book Tell Me: children reading and talk. It is when you discuss what you have read together with others who have read the same text that you may be able to get a deeper understanding of a text. The reason for this is that there is no absolute way of interpreting literature, it is a very individual thing depending on for instance when you read the text, which culture you are from and your previous experiences in life.
Chambers says that it is when you discuss literature with others you get their views on the subject and that may give you a deeper understanding of the text.
Reading a text together and then discuss it on a deeper level is not something I remember doing when I went to school. So even though I think that Chambers is absolutely right I don't have any experience to base my opinions on. However, I have recently asked my C-students (upper secondary school) to read three texts and then compare them and especially the women in the texts. I have not had the time to study the texts myself, I just read them through and I found one of the texts very confusing and it left me with a number of questions. When I read some of the analyses that my students had sent me, the value of reading and discussing something together really hit me. Because they had seen things I hadn't noticed or thought about. This became even more obvious when I discussed the three texts together with some of them and they told about their ideas and interpretations.
So this will most definately be a method used in my teaching from now on.

Using the first language in the second language classroom

Next autumn (2011) we will get new syllabuses here in Sweden and today I had a look at the proposal and in there it was written: "Undervisningen ska i allt väsentligt bedrivas på engelska". This wording is not to be found in the present syllabuses.
When looking for a research article to discuss in our group my choice was "First language and target language in the foreign language classroom" by William Littlewood and Baohua Yu. The authors discuss the balance between using the target language and the students' first language in the second language classroom.
For many students the classroom is the only opportunity they have of using the target language. It has therefore for quite some time been considered that the target language should be used as much as possible in the classroom and the first language should more or less be avoided.
But when the authors asked a number of students about the use of the first language in the foreign classroom it turned out that even though the teachers agreed that the target language should be used as much as possible, there were situations when they tended to use the first language instead. These situations were mainly:

• when establishing constructive social relationships
• communicating complex meanings to ensure understanding and/or save time ('explaining difficult grammar' or 'giving the meaning of unknown words')
• maintaining control over the classroom environment
  (p. 5)

The authors argue that there are situations when using the first language can be motivated, for example when contrasting the two languages to understand certain grammar points or when clarifying the meanings of words structures and utterances. However, the goal should be to use the target language as much as possible and this may now, as seen, be stated in the Swedish syllabuses and I agree with this, and so do my students.
But there are situations when I prefer Swedish and that is for example when talking about grammar since I think it can be confusing enough without having to learn the terms in English as well. Then there are days when I realize at the end of the lesson that we have spoken a lot of Swedish and I can't really say why.
What is your opinion about using the first language in the second/foreign language classroom?

Lecture by Micke Gunnarsson

Today I've been to a lecture by Micke Gunnarsson who was talking about IT and the generation growing up today who has constant access to information, friends and networking through computers and mobile phones.
According to Gunnarsson, it is important to accept that this is what our situation looks like right now instead of remaining in what it used to be like. He also said that it is not the technology in itself that we are afraid of but change. We all react differently to change but we mustn't let our own fear limit our pupils creativity. Instead we have to meet them where they are and encourage them to learn and develop.
He also talked about education and the importance of not thinking that you are done just because you have finished your education. You are never done he said, and I think that this is very important to keep in mind as a teacher. We have to be open to change and what our students and pupils have to offer us and teach us.
Relating to myself and my own teaching situation I feel that the adult students that we have at the moment do not all belong to the generation growing up with constant access to the Internet and networking. Therefore I don't feel that behind when it comes to using IT, but I still have a lot to learn and I feel far from done.
Another thing I started thinking about is that knowledge today is so different from when I grew up and I'm only 34 years old. What are we really going to teach our students and pupils in school today when they have such an easy access to information?

When I feel like a digital immigrant

Most of the time I consider myself as being something in between a Digital Immigrant and a Digital Native. I started using computers during my last year in upper secondary school so I must have been somewhere between 18 and 19 years old. I remember that we started with programming in Pascal and I managed to put my computer in an eternal loop and the teacher had to switch off the power on the main switch ;) We then moved on to Word but didn't learn that much. A few years later the course had changed substantially and I studied at the adult education and learnt a lot. I also learnt how to create websites which I enjoy doing and have so far created 6-7 different websites.
Today I use my computer every day, at work and at home and I would find it hard living without it and doing my job without it. I teach two courses at distance and I use a Learning Management System for all my courses and my students submit their assignments by email and I correct them using TrackChanges and return them by email. I save their assignments on the server and very rarely print them out.
In my sparetime I use Facebook, I blog and I run a discussion forum for some friends whom I've met through the Internet. So I do know quite a bit about using computers.
But there are a couple of situations where I truly feel like an immigrant. Firstly, when I use the DVD-player in my computer together with the projector and the programme or the computer start acting up and the whole class is sitting there watching. Then I do feel a bit incompetent and embarrased ;) However, I'm not afraid of asking my students for help,though, quite often they don't actually have any suggestions. But I learn from every situation when a problem occurs.
Secondly, I feel a bit incompetent when it comes to playing games on the computer since I don't really do this because I don't feel I have the time and I'm not interested. I've been trying to explore the virtual world Second Life but I have trouble even moving my avatar ;)
So far this course has in my opinion been really interesting and I have learnt a lot and I'm really glad that I decided to take this course and I'm lookig forward to the rest of the term next year a lot.

Disadvantages when using IT

It doesn't really matter how eager you are as a teacher to use IT in your classroom when the technique isn't working, does it? At my school we have a course management system originally designed for companies. It is often down and doesn't have the features I would like since I teach on distance as well. You are supposed to see who is online with the help of MSN Messenger but it doesn't work. And it hasn't really been upgraded since 2006.

Today I had a discussion with the IT-institution about the available space I have on the school's server, which is 150Mb. Of course you are supposed to save everything on the server in case your own computer brakes down and that back-up is great. But what is 150Mb when you get your students' written assignments via email and have to save them for at least a year + my students on distance.The answer I got was that I should save anything that I wanted to keep on CDs and if I want to have more than 150Mb I have to ask my boss, who has to order it for me and pay extra. This honestly annoyed me a bit because I don't think it is promoting the use of IT.

If I want to use computers in class I have to book the laptops (we have 20 of those) and hope that they aren't already booked by other teachers, drag them up on the second floor and then hope that they work and that the students remember their user name and password.

Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate that I have my own laptop, a projector in my classroom, and wireless access to the Internet. But what I want to say is that it is one thing wanting to use more IT in your teaching and another to actually have the possiblity of using it.

IT in education

In the articles and Svensson's book, which are a part of this module, we read about the importance of using computers and IT in our language teaching. Marc Prensky calls us Digital Immigrants and the generation which has grown up with computers, Digital Natives, and his opinion is that the immigrants will never quite learn to speak the language of the natives. But still we have to adjust to the natives and not the other way around. His suggestion is to turn teaching into a computer game since the natives play a lot of computer games, thus assuming that most of the natives are are interested in gaming.

In Svensson's book we read about different ways of using computers and IT in language teaching and I find it a very interesting book with a lot of ideas that I want to try and some that I am already using.

I had a discussion about using IT with my B-course students today. They are a group of 18 students aged between 19 and 46 with half of the students born between 1985 and 1991, thus belonging to the Digital Natives according to my opinion. I asked them how many play computer games and it was about half of the group (mainly the younger ones) and they agreed that you can learn English by playing games such as World of Warcraft. But they didn't think you learned so much social competence which is considered so important when finding a job today.
Then I asked them if they thought we should use more IT in the different subjects and to my surprise their answer was a more or less unanimously no. I'm very aware that my small group of students is not a source of scientific proof, but one may wonder if it is the students or the various writers and researchers who think we should use more IT in our teaching?

With that said, I do think we can have a great use of IT in language teaching and my brain is working hard trying to turn the knowledge I've gained so far in this course into practice.

To teach or not to teach grammar - that is the question

The methods for teaching language have moved from being focused on grammar and translation to teaching anything but grammar. So what should we do? The general opinion today seems to be that the students can learn English without the teachers lecturing for hours about different aspects of grammar, and besides, there’s really no point in spending too much time on grammar anyway because the students won’t learn anything they are not ready for.

I have to admit that I have more or less given up trying to teach grammar in front of the whole class because as soon as you even think of uttering the word grammar you can actually see the brains of some students shutting down and once or twice they have even fallen asleep. And I don’t blame them when even I as a teacher dislike grammar lecturing ;)

So what I do is instead to mark their grammar mistakes in their written production but I don’t give the correct answer straight away. If it is a frequent mistake they make I recommend them to look it up in a grammar book or I will try to explain it individually. So before I give the correct answer they will have to think about their mistakes on their own and most of the times they actually manage to correct them without my help. This way I think that each student will get the grammar he/she needs right then.

Then there are some things like the genitive which I talk to the whole class about and hope that at least some of the students are ready to learn.

But what I would really like to know is how the rest of you deal with the grammar?

What is a good teacher?

In Tornberg( p.9) you can read that having had a good teacher can be of decisive importance to some students. I sometimes think it is a bit scary how important we as teachers are for the students, since we can’t really teach them anything at all, because it is the students who have to do the learning. Who doesn’t remember one or two teachers from their own schooling who were considered better than the other teachers? But what was is that made them better? A teacher who was good at explaining was often considered good I think and in Tornberg it also says that it can be that a certain teacher has seen the students and understood them or inspired them with their own interest in the subject and all this is probably very true. But I also believe that what makes a good teacher is the ability to look at himself/herself with critical eyes, to dare to admit that you are not perfect and to strive to improve yourself and your teaching. Then I also think that some people have a natural gift for teaching.

One of the best comments I have received during my rather short teaching career was a woman in her 40s who hated English when she was in school but now as an adult student had discovered that it was rather a fun subject. Then I felt that I had managed to make a change…

So what do you say - what is a good teacher?

When is the pronunciation not good enough?

In the curricula for the A course one of the criteria for the grade Godkänd (pass) is that you speak clearly and there is nothing strange about this. Of course the goal when learning another language has to be that you make yourself understood when speaking.
On p. 81 in Lundahl it says that when you learn a foreign language your first language will influence your pronunciation in the foreign language. Generally our native Swedish students do not have a great problem with the English pronunciation. However, in my classes I have students born in countries outside of Sweden and their English pronunciation is sometimes very influenced by their first language and there is nothing strange about that either. But what do you do when it comes to the grading when their first language influences their English so much that it is hard to understand what they are saying, but they still have a good flow to their spoken language and the rest of their work reaches the criteria for Godkänd? When do you say that their pronunciation is not good ,because somewhere you have to draw the line, don't you.

A true native pronunciation is only reached by a very few students and is not really something to focus upon attaining, but where does one draw the line between passing and not passing when it comes to the pronunciation?
I would really like Skolverket to have an example of what is not good enough pronunciation in the grading examples of the National test

Teaching Culture

In the current curriculas for the A and B course in English in the Swedish Upper Secondary School it says that the students should have knowledge about conditions of society, history, culture and cultural traditions and ways of living in areas where English is spoken. This is something that I have been thinking quite a lot about. Exactly what is it that should be brought up in class? Which English speaking areas should be chosen? I think many teachers, including me, tend to focus on countries like Britain, the USA, Australia, well you get the picture. But then there are all the other areas where English is an official language and this makes the culture part of the curriculas huge and very much up to the teacher.

In Tornberg, chapter 4, one can then read that when you in language teaching talk about culture this has often been associated with nationality and that has meant that the culture of the country has been studied. But what is culture and is culture homogeneous and never changing and whose culture are we talking about? Culture is not only about ethnicity because we are all part of different cultures. If you consider this, can we really teach about culture? And if we try to teach about the culture in a particlar country aren't we actually generalising a bit too much?

At the same time we need, according to Brown (p.238) to teach our students about kinesic communication and this is part of the culture in a country. The way we use different gestures differ from country to country and a gesture that is appropriate in one country is perhaps obscene in another.That is why the students need to learn something about this as a part of their communication competence.

So we need to teach about culture to improve the communication competence but culture as such can't really be taught, according to Tornberg anyway, and I tend to agree. So what can we teach then, well perhaps only pure facts?

How do the rest of you deal with this in your courses?

Välkommen

Höstterminen 2010 påbörjade jag min utbildning till Nordisk Master i Engelska med inriktning mot undervisningen. Jag har sedan tidigare en gymnasielärarexamen med en fil.mag. i engelska. Mastersutbildningen är ett samarbete mellan Linnéuniversitetet, Göteborgs universitet och Högskolan i Östfold, Norge. Den är på distans och eftersom jag också jobbar så läser jag på 33%.

Hitintills har de två kurser som jag har hunnit läsa gett mig mer än vad min lärarutbildning gav mig och det är nog främst för att den mastersutbildning har en didaktisk inriktning. Utbildningen blir ju också väldigt nära kopplad till det jag gör i mitt arbete och det dyker upp en massa tankar och funderingar när man sitter på sin kammare och läser kurslitteraturen. Jag har upptäckt att för mig är det ett bra sätt att genom bloggning reda ut tankarna - för det är när vi säger högt det vi tänker som vi verkligen förstår vad vi tänker. På sätt och vis kan man också säga att bloggen blir en sorts bollplank.

Under kursen som vi läste i höstas som handlade om kommunikation och användandet av IT i undervisningen skulle vi blogga om det vi läste. Dessa inlägg finns på ett annat ställe på nätet men jag kommer att kopiera dem och lägga in dem här för att få det samlat på ett ställe. Språket på denna blogg kan komma att bli en blandning av engelska och svenska.