Читать книгу English in Elementary Schools - Anja Steinlen - Страница 27

Although the KMK (2013b) stated that the Federal States of Germany are responsible for teaching and learning resources for bilingual teaching, it is still a challenge to find appropriate materials for many teachers (e.g., Tel2L, 2000). Although it may be fairly easy to collect authentic teaching materials from the country of the target language, these are in most cases unsuitable for immediate use in the classroom as they are often much too demanding for FL learners in their original language version. Hence the teacher has to adapt the language of authentic materials to the learners’ level of achievement in the FL, which requires extra work. Nevertheless, authentic materials provide the intercultural touch which is also one of the core objectives of bilingual teaching. It therefore remains a delicate balance and is up to the individual judgement of the teacher to assess such authentic materials for use in the bilingual classroom (see also e.g., Böttger & Müller, 2020; Burmeister, 2006; Steiert & Massler, 2011).

So far, only a few coursebooks for elementary school bilingual teaching have been published, because bilingual teaching takes place on a small scale in Germany, and because these bilingual programs vary in intensity and cover different subjects. Teachers may then hesitate to start bilingual teaching due to the limited choice of teaching materials available. This situation calls for universities and centers for teacher training to step in to develop and publish, in co-operation with experienced bilingual teachers, materials that provide an appropriate blending of authenticity and classroom needs for any age group (e.g., Böttger & Müller, 2020; Steiert & Massler, 2010; Tel2L, 2000).