Lenka Popélyová
Düsseldorf

The two-week stay consisted of a one-week intensive language course at C1+ level and a teacher training course focused on the development of methodological and didactic skills.

 

The language course was a hybrid - part of the participants were present in person in the classroom and another part was online. Participants from all over the world had the opportunity to work together in groups, to solve different language tasks and also to converse and get to know each other. A frequent task was to explain a cultural difference in their own country. The course content was oriented towards mastering all skills and language competences. The lecturer was able to motivate the participants in both the full-time and distance learning forms to cooperate well and was willing to answer a number of questions about their own history. On the last day of the language course, discussions were held on various current statistical data obtained in surveys (practice commenting on graphs) and at the end everyone was given the task of writing an essay related to current statistics within the topic of volunteering. The following week, the tutor personally handed each person an assessment with comments according to the examination criteria.

 

Teachers from different types of schools from all over Europe participated in the methodology course. During the week, several lecturers rotated through the course, focusing on different forms of teaching with an emphasis on use in online teaching. Topics included creative writing, communicative grammar, forms of listening, cooperative learning, working with interactive whiteboards, games in digital environments and different possibilities and aspects of testing in foreign language teaching.

 

One morning was spent in an online hospitalization in a distance learning course at B2.1. level in the zoom platform. The lecturer taught the class from the Berlin office of the IIK and 20 participants from all over the world were present and had the camera on. Before the lesson started, we had the opportunity to talk to the lecturer and find out the lesson intention and further information about the course.

All course participants had access to the IIK Institute wifi at all times, as well as to all materials stored in the course on the moodle platform and the library of traditional printed materials. The Institute provided each participant with a laptop, headset and tablet on the course premises. Each lecturer prepared information material for the participants available electronically on moodle and in printed form.

The institute arranged a guided tour for the participants in the centre of Düsseldorf with a shared meal in a local restaurant. In addition, I visited a summer cinema on the Rhine waterfront in my free time, took a guided tour with an architect in the harbour district and took a train to Cologne.

 

The course was held during the time of anti-pandemic measures, which, according to the strict rules of the institute, involved checking the vaccination certificate, drapes, spacing, disinfection, temperature measurement, frequent ventilation...

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I am very grateful for this experience, where as a teacher with many years of experience I could gain new experiences abroad, learn new methodological approaches and compare experiences with colleagues from different countries. At the same time, I benefited from the opportunity to communicate intensively in the language and learn about current realities.

 

New knowledge and experience:

• technical solutions for hybrid teaching, group work in an online environment

• interesting use of some teaching applications

• working with a database of images for description

• creative writing - methodology

• working with film clips, trailers, youtube videos

• working with DW materials - Themausing programmes for children - Sendung mit der Maus

• cooperative learning + reflection, evaluation