Fourth Annual Deutschlehrerfortbildungs seminar

The 2019 Deutschlehrerfortbildungsseminar for western Canada was jointly hosted by the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures and the Language Research Centre on October 25 and 26.

This the seminar began with a research lecture by Janice McGregor (University of Arizona) entitled “Structural monolingualism and L2 learning in study abroad.” Sponsored by the Language Research Centre, this talk attracted approximately 45 attendees including workshop participants as well as students and faculty members from the wider University of Calgary community.

The talk was followed by three hands-on workshops on Friday evening. Saturday’s workshops, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) focused on the following topics: using comics in the classroom (Jason Lieblang, University of British Columbia), assessment (Brit Paris, University of Calgary), intercultural competence (Janice McGregor), and building vocabulary (Peter Peltekov). The day ended with a roundtable discussion, led by Conny Burian and Martin Wagner, on the topics of sustainability and the “other” in the German classroom. All of the presentations were highly engaging and provided participants with materials and information that they can use without delay in their classrooms. 

The 30 participants at this year’s event teach German in a range of settings including community language schools (n=3), elementary and high schools (n=9) and universities (n=18). A total of nine of the participants were graduate students. 

The 2020 Deutschlehrerfortbildungsseminar met the following goals: 

• to enable participants to learn about current research on best practices in classroom language teaching and learning; 
• to provide a solid introduction to a range of pedagogical foundations that are relevant to graduate students and new teachers; 
• to enable teachers to learn about and engage in using best practices for their classrooms; and 
• to enable workshop participants to get to know fellow German language teachers from western Canada.