Rapid advances in digital technology have affected all areas of modern life, including education. Thus, active, constructive, and critical engagement with digital media is essential for the development of foreign language competencies in the 21st century classroom.

By allowing course-participants to instruct actual language learners from German schools*, this course will focus on the implementation of theoretical concepts into teaching practice and hence provide a valuable addition to the Grundkurs “Introduction to TEFL”. The controlled teaching environment will further offer insights into essential aspects of teaching such as lesson planning, classroom practice, peer observation, and peer feedback.

Thematically, this course will explore the concepts of digital literacy and information literacy as well as their significance for foreign language teaching by, for example, analyzing selected instances of “fake news” and their cultural implications.

Regular attendance and active participation are required. This involves designing teaching materials, contributing to critical debates in class, and continuously engaging with the contents of the seminar. The topic of the term paper (“Hausarbeit”) can either be taken from the “Grundkurs”, or from this course, i.e. the “Proseminar”. The paper is to be handed in after successful completion of both the “Grundkurs” and “Proseminar”.

Focus areas: The course is part of a research project (by Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung of the BMBF-project “K2Teach-Know how to teach”). Participants will get a chance to explore theory, plan real teaching instructions and explore these instruction plans with real language learners and reflect upon these experiences twice throughout the term.

Literature: Selected literature will be provided by the course instructor B. Opitz and will be made accessible on Blackboard.

Course structure: group work, work in tandem-pairs, preparing learning materials and various tasks for the Teaching Lab, mini-lectures, microteaching units, post-Teaching Lab-reflective discussions.

*Due to current circumstances, teaching labs with actual students could be replaced by simulations with course participants.