In our MOLAN project closing conference a couple of weeks ago someone took me by surprise. It was Day Two, all of us following the swing of the formal-PowerPoint-enhanced presentations informing us of aims, activities, and achievements that I felt swept into my childhood and teenage classes of English in a provincial town of central Spain in the early nineties. Thing is, when comparing what I was seeing and hearing with my school memories being nostalgic about the past was out of question. Three-hours three days per week and with neither the conversational method nor the task-based approach in my teachers’ mind it was the same old drudgery of grammar explanations, applied exercises in book, reading aloud, and responding in a quivering voice to a question my teacher put. I even remember lying sometimes; Read More

Dr Giovanna Tassinari teaches Italian at the Language Centre of the Freie Universität Berlin. She is the head of the Independant Language Learning Centre and is the author of the case study “Tandem programme at the Language centre of the FUB“. She published in 2010  Autonomes Fremdsprachlernen, Peter Lang Verlag.  As a specialist of learner autonomy, she agreed to participate to this forum and sent us this article. More are to come. Thank you, Giovanna !

Promoting learner autonomy in the classroom: a motivating experience both for teachers and learners

Learner autonomy is the buzz word of the moment. It’s considered to be one of the musts in language learning and teaching nowadays. It’s a prerequisite for life-long learning; it increases motivation; it contributes to individual development and increased social interaction, to critical thinking and much, much more. But what exactly is learner autonomy in the classroom? How do you implement it? Have you ever tried to foster it in your own classroom? Was it successful, effective? How do you feel about this?

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In a month’s time the International House London, an established language school with over fifty years of experience in providing language courses and teacher training programmes, will be holding its fourth Modern Languages Teachers’ Conference. Their spacious and fully-equipped campus near Covent Garden welcomes you on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 November to discuss the teaching of languages for business purposes and the usage of technology in the classroom –£50 for the two days. Friday’s talks, delivered in English, vary from sessions on technology in the language classroom and tips on how to cope with students unwilling to cooperate in communicative learning classes, to neuro-linguistic programming techniques to boost language learners’ confidence. Saturday’s workshops, delivered in the delegates’ target language, focus on Arabic, French, Italian and Spanish language teaching. Read More

Don’t Give Up! Is a European Union language project that has written a book of 48 best practices for every level of language educators (schools, managers, and teachers). The best practices will help improve the motivation and the results of language courses for adult learners. The project spent 2 years researching and analyzing the problems of adult learners, language educators were asked their opinions and ideas, as well.

The best practices cover aspects of managing language schools and classes, enhancing lessons, engaging and motivating students and dealing with many aspects of the problems adult learners face to learn a language. The best practices are summarized on the project website http://dontgiveup.eu with some examples. The 138 page Don’t Give Up! Book is available in English, Czech or Spanish.