Dear Fellow Germanists,
We have been asked to consider, within our Department, a new
proposal on how students from the German beginners' language group in the first
year are to be integrated into mainstream language teaching and would be
grateful for advice from colleagues in other universities.
The present arrangement is that those who have taken the
intensive course in the first year (this is a combined beginners' and post-GCSE
course involving five hours of language instruction per week) have a separate
second-year course (four hours per week) with a separate examination at the end
of the second year. Those who wish to go on to major in German then spend a
year in Germany and are integrated, in their fourth year, with those students
who came to university with A-Level German; they take the same language
examination as other majors at the end of their final year.
The proposal is to bring forward the point of
integration. Although the ab initio students would be taught in a separate
seminar group, they would sit the same examination as the post A-level group at
the end of their second year.
We would be grateful for any views, particularly from
colleagues who have experience of early integration of the beginners' stream
into major German language courses, or from others with experience of the
teaching of German to university students without an A-Level in the language.
We would like to find out how other universities provide for ab initio learners
and how and when their language learning is merged with the post A-level
students (of German, in particular, but differences between languages and their
respective beginners' programmes would also be useful).
With thanks in anticipation of your replies,
Birgit Smith, Lancaster University
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Birgit Smith
Teaching Fellow in German Studies
Department of European Languages and Cultures
Lonsdale College
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YN
Ph: 01524 592466
fax: 01524 593942
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/eurolang
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