Learning Languages Newsletter February 2013

NEWSLETTER Vol-1 | 20 February 2013

Project France 2014

Teachers on Chinese Scholarship Programme

German Short Film Competition 2012

Students pass German International Exams

Two goals in one: learning Spanish and playing football

Twelve teachers went to Beijing on a three week Chinese Scholarship award.

Native and non-native speakers participated in this diverse programme

Many schools and universities participated in this competition with the topic “Es war einmal…” (Once upon a time) .

Students at intermediate and secondary level are successful in learning German—and can prove it with international exam results

Two schools experienced lots of fun with learning Spanish and playing football with professional Spanish football players

Opportunity for year-12 students to participate in World War 1 commemorative events in France

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Chinese Scholarship in Beijing At the end of last year, twelve teachers embarked on the great adventure to go to China on a Scholarship Programme. The seven native and five non-native speakers of Mandarin both developed their language skills and increased their cultural understanding of China during their time in Beijing. One of the aims of the programme is to give teachers the opportunity to practise the target language and to develop intercultural communicative competence. At the same time, teachers have the chance to create and evaluate tasks relevant to their teaching in New Zealand.

The teachers first met for a two day predeparture orientation where they learnt about what was expected of them during their stay, but another important purpose was to get to know each other.

In Beijing teachers were offered language classes with the aim to support and prepare them linguistically for tasks they had to fulfil later in the day. Those tasks related to either learning or teaching needs for the NZ language classroom.

Cultural Activities and School Visits Tasks and activities included an orientation on the Campus of the host University, Capital Normal University, activities related to food and dining and transportation in Beijing.

The participants also went to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and to the Summer Palace for a cultural experience and for trialling and evaluating language and culture related tasks.

Other highlights included a short homestay with a Chinese family and a school visit where teachers had the opportunity to talk to pupils and their Chinese colleagues.

Chinese Scholarship continued

German Short Film Competition

In their feedback, teachers emphasised the collaboration between native and non-

The year 2012 was the 200th anniversary of the publica-

native speakers highlighting the benefits for both sides and the ‘hands-on’ use of

tion of the first volume of “fairy tales” collected by Jakob

language and cultural experience. As one non-native teacher put it: ‘Thank you for

and Wilhelm Grimm. School and university students

the opportunity to attend this course, I have found the course extremely helpful not

from throughout New Zealand devised and produced

only in improving my confidence and use of Chinese but also the application of new

original short films in German, the language of the

teaching methods in

Brothers Grimm, on the theme “Es war einmal…” (Once upon a time…). About 50

the classroom. I

entries from Auckland to Invercargill provided entertaining and enchanting viewing

would highly recom-

for the judging panel from the Goethe-Institut and the German Embassy, who select-

mend this course to

ed 9 films to feature at the Awards Ceremony on 7th December in the Film Archive in

other Chinese

Wellington.

teachers as it pro-

Inspired by the Summer Olympics, some film protagonists participated in the Grimm

vides a huge variety

Olympics , others fairy tale characters competed for the privilege of flying to New

of activities and opportunities to explore different teaching methods and reflect on

Zealand (where princes have been replaced by … All Blacks!) , and an innocent boy,

them. The trainers were enthusiastic, helpful and well-organized and worked hard to

inspired by a bedtime tale, set out to rescue a princess in a tower (or the attic of

meet the needs of the teachers on the course.’ Not only the non-native speakers

Christ’s College), overcoming obstacles including school prefects and the wrong prin-

found the programme highly beneficial, but the native speakers did, too: This is an

cess in distress –and in drag - en route.

amazing program and I recommend it to any of my colleagues. I enjoyed all the lessons we had because we have our caring facilitators, teachers who guided us in learning Chinese, researching, collecting teaching resources and ideologies in our teaching. We are professionals and hard working classroom teachers who wanted to improve our classroom teaching. I believe this course has helped me to be a better language teacher which I am grateful about it’

German Short Film competition 2012 continued The winners of the film competition were: Students, teachers, parents and grandparents travelled from Auckland, Dunedin

Winner Year 7/8

Ramarama School

Es war einmal

and Christchurch to attend the public screening, which featured an animated film of

Runner up Year 9

Glendowie College

Das zauberhafte Buch

Winner Year 9

Columba College

Zwei hundert Jahre später

Runner up Year 10

Columba College

Die Märchen-Olympiade

Winner Year 10

Michael Park School

Es war einmal … wirklich?

Winner Year 11-13

Christ’s College

Schöne Knochen

Runner up tertiary

University of Otago

Schneewitttchen

Runner up tertiary

Victoria University

Die Hűte wechslende Hexe

Winner Tertiary

Canterbury University

Wahrheit und Lűgen

fairy tale variations made by Year 7 students from Ramarama School;

a time traveller version of Aschenputtel (Cinderella) by a Year 9 group from Glendowie College; a police drama about the search for the Lebkuchen-thief amongst fairy tale characters from Michael Park School; a corporate drama about apples (Otago University); a trial of Hansel and Gretel (Canterbury University) and a comedy about an unsuccessful witch (VUW), as well as the Fairy Tale Olympics and the flight to NZ (both from Columba College) and the innocent lad’s quest (Christ’s College). wikipedia.org

In 2012 the first students in New Zealand successfully passed the B2 examination while

NZ students successful at German International exams

still at school. “We had not previously even considered offering this very high level to school students in New Zealand, who generally start learning languages quite late and

2012 marks the seventh year that the Goethe-Institut has run international benchmark

with a relatively low number of contact hours,” said Judith Geare of the Goethe-Institut,

examinations in the German Language in schools in New Zealand.

“but then students attending the International German Olympics or Goethe-Institut cours-

The European Reference Framework divides languages into 6 levels: A1 (the initial level), A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2 (the highest level), and there are internationally recognised examinations at each of these levels.

In 2006 the A1 examination for young people “Fit-in-Deutsch 1” was offered to some secondary school students of German at the end of Year 10. In the following years, some

es for young people in Germany were sitting and passing the B1 examination at the end of Year 12 and looking for a challenge in their last year at school, so this year we gave it a go, and some top students managed even this.”

Another first for 2012 was the success in the A1 examination of a student in Year 6 at St Thomas’s school.

students at the end of Year 11 or start of Year 12 sat the A2 examination, “Fit-in-Deutsch

Congratulations to all students for their amazing achievement and to teachers for their

2”, and Year 13 students were successful in the B1 examination, “Zertifikat Deutsch für

fantastic support and initiative to make such positive experience happen for their stu-

Jugendliche”.

dents!

In 2009 the first students at a primary school in New Zealand sat and passed the Fit 1 examination. Their teacher had completed TPDL (Teacher Professional Development in Languages) and had herself worked through the levels of the European Framework. She decided on the basis of this experience to give her Year 8 students the chance to aim for this benchmark, and students at St Thomas’s School in St Heliers have been doing this successfully since then.

One goal: Spanish and Football At the end of last year schools in Wellington and Auckland enjoyed learning Spanish, playing football and meeting some of the New Zealand’s professional football players.

This exciting experience was launched by a cooperation of the Spanish Embassy (Office of Education) and ILEP (International Languages Exchanges and Pathways) to promote and support Spanish in New Zealand schools.

Two schools, one in Auckland (ACG Strathallan College) and one in Wellington (Wellington College), were part of the pilot programme where players from Auckland City FC and from the Wellington Phoenix went into classrooms introducing themselves and discussing issues revolving around football, and certainly all in Spanish. The other part of the programme was a training session led by the players, followed by a match between students and professional players. It goes without saying that students were excited about both parts of the programme!

Manel Exposito, Angel ViĂąa Berlanga, Pedro Santa Cecilia (Auckland City FC) and Dani Sanchez and Ricardo Clarke (Wellington Phoenix) supported this project happily and expressed their wish to promote football and Spanish in New Zealand as well as be closer to their communities.

The programme will continue this year and with 50 applications already received by the end of last year, promises to become a great success.

Project France 2014 — WW1 commemorations, language and culture

The French Embassy (Patrick Coustance, Education Attach é) and the National French Language Adviser-ILEP (Glenda Palmer) are planning to give year-12-students the opportunity to participate in WW1 commemorative events in France.

This will allow them to forge relationships with French counterparts, improve their language skills and increase their motivation to promote French language learning, French culture and France as a destination amongst their community/ school.

Events in France will be launched on Bastille Day, July 14th 2014. Commemoration events will be spread out over the following 4 years. Tour group departures from New Zealand could start during terms 3 and 4 of 2014 and continue into 2015 with timing to consider school holidays and examinations.

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To create a sustainable network system for learners of French in NZ schools To provide schools and students with opportunities to develop partnerships and cultural and language exchanges by sharing in common activities To create an opportunity for Year 12 students to enhance their leadership potential To offer to a wide group of year 12 students an opportunity to take part in an essay writing competition within their schools. Winner to represent school on project.

Funding Initial per person costs of up to $6,000.00 are based on estimates of International travel, accommodation, visits to Paris, WW1 event visits, travel within Trance, a travel group kit, and teacher supervision.

Support— School and its community, NZ Ministry of Education, MFAT, NZAFT, French Embassy NZ, France, family and student fundraising, sponsorship and online fundraiser

Wikipedia.org

Project goals:        

To build and strengthen relationships with France To enhance language knowledge amongst New Zealand French students To raise awareness of French – New Zealand connections To offer an incentive to language learners, uptake and retention.

To immerse students in French language, culture and history, WW1 To create awareness of world Peace initiatives and to publish student voice on Peace To provide an opportunity for NZ students to act as ambassadors for their country.

To provide a Professional Development opportunity for French teachers

Wikipedia.org

Coming Up ...

Key Contacts and Links

 Orientation Programme for Language Assistants This year’s Language Assistants (LA) will officially be welcomed in Auckland on 28th February and 1st March. The LA s will have a chance to meet the National Advisers, , government representatives and will hear from former LA s and teachers giving them support and guidance for their participation in the language classroom. 

iCLT workshops for Spanish and French teachers The first two workshops of a series will be running in March . 

Palmerston North New Plymouth

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Both workshops will focus on

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12th March 9-4pm 13th March 9-4pm

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iCLT and sociocultural contexts

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Digitalising and collecting of learning evidence

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Gathering evidence and engagement with issues of Maori/Pacifica learners in LL classrooms

The workshops will be delivered by specialists from different institutions and are organised by ILEP To register please send an email to d.mitenkov@auckland.ac.nz

Stage de Noumea 2013 Teachers participate in a 3 week (21 Sept—12 Oct) immersion and study experience in Noumea led by ILEP and TPDL staff. Accommodation will be with a family, study time will be divided between school observations, intercultural inquiry and formal language classes at the University of Noumea. 13 places are available in 2013. Deadline for applications is 29 March 2013, 5pm. Please go to the ILEP website for more information.

STANZA Immersion Weekend 2013 is taking place in March. Have a look here for more information.

Advisory Support National Advisers for Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish provide language specific support and can also offer advice about foreign language assistants and scholarship and immersion opportunities for each language.

National Coordinators for Learning Languages, Secondary Student Achievement Contract, focus on effective implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum and the NCEA realigned achievement standards as well as the development of literacy and language practices.  

Northern & Central Regions please contact: Dee Edwards.

Southern & Central South Regions please contact: Jo Guthrie

NZALT The New Zealand Association of Language Teachers offers a nationwide network to support language teachers, including regional meetings, professional development, awards, newsletters, conferences and advocacy on key issues.

Professional Development Opportunities TPDL (Teacher Professional Development Languages) is a Ministry of Education funded programme aimed at developing teacher language proficiency and second language teaching capabilities in order to improve student language learning outcomes. TPDL is available to beginners as well as language experts.

ILEP (International Languages Exchanges and Pathways) supports schools and teachers to implement the Learning Languages curriculum area, particularly at Years 7 and 8.

Language Immersion Awards are provided by the Ministry of Education for teachers of languages to undertake immersion experiences overseas. Further details are available at the AFS website.

Don't forget! Check out the Learning Languages Website for regular updates and more information.