Читать книгу Teaching in English in higher education - Vera Zegers-Leberecht - Страница 7

When you ask me what I think is the most important factor for succeeding in English-medium teaching, I can answer quickly: practice. I firmly believe we become better English-medium teachers by simply going into the classroom and doing it. I know extremely few people – and I am sure you do not know many either – who have learnt to ride a bike by looking at other people on bicycles, by talking, reading or writing articles about it, by creating theoretical models of cycling and presenting them at conferences or, even, by writing blogs about cycling or watching online video tutorials. The same is true for teaching in English: We learn it by doing it. And this does not change when we call the whole thing “embedded social practice”.

Now I can almost hear you object: ‘But I know this! Why do you state all these things that are completely obvious?!’ Well, that is probably because I agree with Erich Kästner, the well-known German writer, who once said that knowledge alone does not turn people into good teachers.1 I am convinced that you know most, if not all, of the things I have been saying on the previous pages; and this may not change much as you continue reading. However, especially in professional contexts, we sometimes make choices intuitively without being aware of whether they are useful, and why. Therefore, every now and then, we are well-advised to step back and reflect on

 the choices we have made,

 what we have learnt from these choices, and

 whether the competences or skills we have acquired as a consequence of these choices are still the ones we need, or

 how we could expand our knowledge and develop our skills in other, more efficient and effective ways.

Hence, I invite you to be open for some food for thought, and for becoming an even better teacher of your subject in English.

Lecturers who attend my workshops sometimes expect that they will turn into confident, fluent, near-native speakers of English in one day. Of course, that is not how it works. Mastering a language takes time, practice, and many opportunities to speak without being afraid of making mistakes. But it does not end there. I see way too many individual lecturers who are burdened with the responsibility of making English-medium teaching work. Yet, not individuals but whole institutions of higher education are responsible for ensuring that their teaching and adminstrative staff and their students are provided with structural, professional support for learning the language (cf. Hochschulrektorenkonferenz 2011). And there are more issues that deserve attention. The following four areas need to be dealt with, early and profoundly, if English-medium teaching in academia is to become more than a one-semester hype:

1 subject matter knowledge,

2 general English language skills,

3 didactics / educational skills, and

4 academic language.

The next sections look more closely at each of these areas.

References and further reading

Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (2011). Sprachenpolitik an deutschen Hochschulen. Empfehlung der 11. Mitgliederversammlung der HRK am 22. 11. 2011. Retrieved from www.hrk.de/uploads/media/Empfehlung_Sprachenpolitik_MV_22112011.pdf on 15 August 2019.