Foreword / Vorwort

Abstract

Dear SCENARIO-Readers, A quick heads-up for starters: From now on, each contribution is allocated a DOI (digital object identifier), which permanently identifies an article or document on the web, helping readers to easily locate publications. The DOI will always be in the first footnote. Furthermore, SCENARIO is moving to a new online platform (Open Journal System) in 2020. During this transfer, all previous articles from earlier issues will also get DOIs. And now to our new issue, which features a wide spectrum of teaching and learning contexts. Eva Göksel (Pädagogische Hochschule Zug) describes an action research project at a Canadian Montessori School. Her article Playing with Possibilities: Drama and Core French in the Montessori Elementary Classroom in British Columbia, Canada demonstrates heightened motivation and improved learning attitudes in elementary school pupils learning French with drama pedagogy techniques. Positive outcomes of performative teaching and learning are also the focus of ‘The only learning I’m going to get’: Students with intellectual disabilities learning a second language through performative pedagogy. The authors Erika PiazzoliandJohn Kubiak(TrinityCollegeDublin)investigatehowintellectually challenged students of Italian as a foreign language profit from the integration of physical learning. InImproving Language and Interpreting Skills: A Teaching Experience,Serena Cecco (Ciels University, Italy) und Andrea Masiero (Cambiscena, Italy) report on the use of improv techniques in interpreter training at the Advanced School for Language Mediation of Ciels University, Campus Padua. Students’ positive feedback encouraged the authors to design a follow-up project to determine the curricula value of improv techniques in interpreter education. Aneta Bučková (University of Regensburg, Germany) writes about a pilot study with beginning learners of Czech at a German university. Her contribution Der Effekt der Dramagrammatik im Anfängerunterricht: Eine Pilotstudie für Tschechisch als Fremdsprache is based on the hypothesis that ‚dramagrammar‘ (Even 2003) yields positive learning outcomes particularly in the field of grammar and results in improved motivation and more active classroom participation. The following two contributions are closely connected with the 6th SCENARIO Forum Symposium that took place in Hannover on September 21-22, 2018. The symposium revolved around the question Are universities on the way to a performative teaching and learning culture? and was extensively documented in Issue 2/2018.