Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 39

The English Week was founded in Germany in 1996 by Norman Skillen (formerly Steiner School, Capetown, South Africa, Institut für Waldorfpädagogik Witten-Annen), Silvia Albert-Jahn (Waldorfschule, Mülheim-Ruhr), and myself.186 It has taken place at different conference centres throughout Germany, in recent years in Altenberg. Each year’s conference has had a different theme: some of the themes of previous years include Moving Language, Artistic Processes and Language Teaching, Encountering the Other, Transcending Borders, Inspiration and Intuition in Language Teaching, and Embracing the Unexpected: Courage and Creativity in Language Teaching. In the meantime, the English Week has become the largest international Steiner Schools language teachers’ conference with more than 100 English teachers coming from Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, France, Russia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy, Finland and the United Kingdom.187 The growing popularity of the English Week among Steiner schools has not only been borne out by the increasing number of participants, but in reports and articles in different journals.188 In the meantime, the approach and structure of the English Week have also been adopted by leading in-service and pre-service programs in Steiner Schools in Germany and throughout Europe.189

What one of the participants once wrote in an article, gives a general impression of the nature of the English Week.

I’m actually quite stupid. I am now writing a report about the last “English Week”, the sixth one. I shouldn’t do that – I should keep it a secret. The “English Week” is so good that more and more teachers want to go there. If I want to have a chance to go there again, then I should definitely not tell any of my English colleagues about it!

Only speaking English for a whole week. Teacher development, methodological training, support – that all happens by itself and along the way. And for schools it is certainly less expensive than sending colleagues to England. Considering this, in my opinion, it should be possible to find a substitute for a week.

I was there for the second time. The timetable and the instructors are similar every year and yet it all still generates enthusiasm and freshness. One truly feels like a member of the “extended family” of English Waldorf teachers: one has so much in common with each participant.

The emphasis lies on the dramatic arts. Theatre work – a number of hours a day. Whoever has never experienced something like this, can hardly imagine how much one is transformed through such work and how intense this becomes in the course of the week. For me, the artistic emphasis is the most refreshing aspect of the “English Week”. There, Steiner’s requirement that the Waldorf teacher should “work artistically” is put into practice and one directly senses the fruits of such work.190 (italics in original)

Recognition of the English Week outside of Steiner Schools has also increased in recent years, particularly through contacts with various guests who have taken part, including Prof. Hans Hunfeld, Prof. Hans Eberhard Piepho (†), Prof. Werner Bleyhl, Prof. Alan Maley, Prof. Manfred Schewe, Prof. Engelbert Thaler, Chaz Pugliese and Mario Rinvolucri. In recent years, course leaders have regularly written about their work in the widely read online language teaching journal Humanizing Language Teaching.191 They have also increasingly been asked to give workshops and courses similar to those which they have given at the English Week at a variety of international teachers’ courses and conferences.192