{"title":"Responding to the mental health crisis among our language-learning community: A report on the pilot project FLOW (foreign languages offering well-being)","authors":"Heidi Denzel, Nicolay Ostrau","doi":"10.1111/tger.12246","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12246","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"21-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44458578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Re-evaluating online oral examinations","authors":"Felicitas Starr-Egger","doi":"10.1111/tger.12232","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12232","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Testing students’ proficiency in an oral, face-to-face setting has been a central part of education in many disciplines from medicine to modern foreign languages in the United Kingdom for a long time. Uses range from admission interviews to PhD defenses. However, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic afforded a re-evaluation of this assessment method and provided an opportunity for online implementation. There is a wealth of literature on online assessment in general as well as on the increased use in response to the pandemic (Butler-Henderson & Crawford, <span>2020</span>; Clark et al., <span>2020</span>; Montenegro-Rueda, <span>2021</span>; Pokhrel & Chhetri, <span>2021</span>; Jadav, <span>2022</span>), including guidelines (Haus et al., <span>2020</span>; Tuah & Naing, <span>2020</span>) to help prevent an uncritical transfer of the previously used traditional format, that is, in-person, on campus, and on paper, to a virtual learning environment. Shelton et al. (<span>2020</span>) also warn about the possible de-humanization of learning along with assessment and, citing Callaghan (<span>1964</span>), highlight the risk of “<i>becoming swept up in the flawed cult of efficiency… with a crude focus on quick, standardized evaluation of student learning at scale</i>” (p. 125). It could be argued that oral examinations—whether online or face-to-face—are the very antithesis to mass assessment events, re-humanize examinations, and produce better outcomes (Houston et al., <span>2006</span>; Odafe, <span>2006</span>; Roecker, <span>2007</span>). Akimov and Malin (<span>2020</span>) claim that “literature that discusses oral examination in an online context is practically non-existent” (p. 5); Graf et al. (<span>2021</span>, p. 5) make a similar assertion. This is perhaps not quite the case since studies investigating the use of online video conferencing tools for assessment purposes appear to go back many years (Isbell & Winke, <span>2019</span>; Isbell et al., <span>2019</span>; Li & Link, <span>2018</span>; Newhouse & Cooper, <span>2013</span>; Okada et al., <span>2015</span>). However, for universities in the United Kingdom, online oral examinations were and still are a novelty.</p><p>The following discussion focuses on German courses within the institution-wide modern foreign language program (IWLP) at a UK university, spanning six proficiency levels (A1–C1/C2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages CEFR). Such courses are called modules in the United Kingdom and go over two terms with 40 contact hours between October and March. Students take these modules for degree credit (factored into their overall year grade) or extra credit (recorded on their transcript but not part of their degree); content and assessment are identical in both. Assessment combines “take-home” coursework, a written, and an oral examination (both of which are compulsory). Each examination contributes about one-third to the overall m","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"53-57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12232","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43531612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preparing the unprepared: Introducing Nudge Theory to the language classroom","authors":"Jacob van der Kolk","doi":"10.1111/tger.12244","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12244","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"30-33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44386462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Confronting disruptions through student agency","authors":"Scott Windham, Kristin Lange","doi":"10.1111/tger.12230","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12230","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Like German programs around the country, the German faculty and students at Elon University (North Carolina) have faced powerful disruptions to their academic and personal lives. Some, for us, have been positive, such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, curricular and pedagogical reform influenced by the literacy movement and the democratic classroom, student engagement with social problems, the collaboration and community of a small program (two full-time faculty; low enrollment caps), and pervasive technologies that allow access to real-world L2 materials plus communication with global partners. Others are wholly negative: the restricted resources and capacity of a small program, plateauing enrollments, socioeconomic troubles for students, and the twin existential threats of COVID-19 and climate change.</p><p>Elon University is a private teaching university in North Carolina with roughly 6000 undergraduates and 750 graduate students. The German program is supported by two full-time German professors housed in a world languages department, plus a 10-member advisory board from eight departments. Total German enrollments are 150 per year, with 40 to 50 minors and two or three majors. Like other language programs in the department, German features a literacy-based curriculum (Kern, <span>2000</span>) that uses authentic texts as the locus of linguistic and cultural study.</p><p>Student agency has proven an effective tool to counter negative disruptions and support positive ones. The German faculty at Elon promotes student agency in the following ways. In order to pursue a democratic classroom—a positive disruption promoting collaboration and community—students exercise agency by choosing topics and texts. For example, in the 200-level (intermediate) unit on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, students choose between a short story (Peter Weiss), an essay (Martin Walser), and an interactive website on Berlin's Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. In the 300-level (intermediate-advanced) course Germany in the New Millennium, students choose half of the course topics, texts, and materials. Students are polled at the beginning of the semester to generate topic ideas; the instructor and students continuously add to the list of topics throughout the first half of the course. In the most recent iteration, students chose German foreign policy and patriotism in Germany. Because the topics are real-world and the texts are authentic, this type of student agency also supports the faculty's efforts at literacy-influenced curricular reform (Warner & Dupuy, <span>2018</span>)—perhaps the most positive disruption to the profession in decades.</p><p>Further democratizing the classroom, students exercise agency in decisions about pervasive technologies. Technology use thus becomes a choice. For instance, students may create social media posts in place of formal academic essays, and students vote how frequently (if at all) to participate in Talk ","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 2","pages":"193-196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12230","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47451920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cultivating social well-being: (Re)discovering the impact of positive relationships","authors":"Beate Brunow, Kerstin Kuhn-Brown","doi":"10.1111/tger.12233","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12233","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Long periods of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic had drastic consequences for the social well-being in academia. We were forced to learn, teach, and collaborate in restricted social environments, develop new daily routines, and find ways to stay engaged in teaching and scholarly projects. The pandemic work experience demonstrated to us the significance of social well-being, that is, “building and maintaining healthy relationships and having meaningful interactions with those around you” (Boston University, <span>2022</span>, social well-being) on our overall well-being and level of engagement in our work.</p><p>We are reflecting on our experiences and the decisions we made in relation to social well-being as a faculty member and a graduate student who work at different institutions and have both changed workplaces and roles during the pandemic. The pandemic changed the way we think about personal and professional relationships and, as Canale et al. (<span>2022</span>) point out, has made the care for well-being “imperative” (p. 730). We created well-being routines that helped us rediscover what can make our work so impactful, unique, and rewarding: cultivating positive relationships and being in dialogue with our students, colleagues, mentors, and other scholars.</p><p>Well-being is a multidimensional concept that reaches far beyond our physical and mental health. Well-being includes environmental, financial, occupational, intellectual, spiritual, as well as a social dimension. In fact, the social dimension of well-being, which includes our experiences of positive relationships and positive interactions, is the strongest predictor of our overall perception of well-being (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, <span>2018</span>). As instructors, it is critical to consider that learning and well-being are also interconnected. Our ability to engage in learning is affected by our overall sense of well-being, and, at the same time our learning experiences can also impact our sense of well-being (Keeling, <span>2014</span>).</p><p>In addition, we lean on research on basic learning principles, such as on the relation between the social and emotional climate of the course and its impact on student learning (Ambrose et al., <span>2010</span>; Cavanagh, <span>2016</span>) and increasing scholarship on the positive relationship between perceptions of well-being and academic performance (Stanton et al., <span>2016</span>).</p><p>In their national survey, which is conducted every semester, the American College Health Association collects data from undergraduate students on their habits and sense of well-being. Of course, there are many factors ranging from substance abuse to physical health conditions that impact students’ academic performance, and we just highlight a few factors here that might impact the social dimension of well-being. In the latest survey from Spring <span>2022</span>, 37% of students are reporting that anxiety negatively imp","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"58-62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12233","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42140145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is German truly for all? Reflection on universal design for learning in the teaching of German","authors":"Kathleen Condray","doi":"10.1111/tger.12249","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12249","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"38-40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47840300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号
