Since the beginning of my
teaching career during the A-LM era of the '60s, several significant shifts in
foreign language acquisition theory have occurred. To what extent have these
changes in theory translated into changes in what we do in our classrooms or
what goes into our textbooks?
My interest in this area
has led me to trace the changes in and interrelationships between a) language
acquisition theory; b) teaching methodology; c) classroom activities; and d)
textbooks. Here are some of my presentations and publications in these areas:
PRESENTATIONS:
"Maximizing Language Acquisition on a Four-Week
Study-Abroad Program." American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Annual Convention and World Languages Expo.
"Teaching Listening and Speaking Skills in a Distance Education Course for Beginning
German." ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Annual
Meeting 2007.
"A Comparison of Speaking
Activities in Beginning German Classes Taught In and Outside Germany Based on
Classroom Observations," in the session "Maintaining Professional Growth Through
Action Research." AATG at AATG/ACTFL 2006 (Joint Annual
Meeting of the American Association of Teachers of German and the American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages).
"Cultural Misunderstandings
Gleaned from Student Journals on Study Abroad Trips: Students Learning from
Students," in the session "Building a Dynamic Learning Environment for Cultural
Literacy." ACTFL at AATG/ACTFL 2006 (Joint Annual Meeting of
the American Association of Teachers of German and the American Council on the
Teaching of Foreign Languages).
"Internationalizing the Curriculum
with German for Distance Education Students." Atlantic Universities' Teaching
Showcase: From Vision to Voice: The New Story of Teaching and Learning.
"The Winning Team of
Technology and Travel: Using Technology to Prepare for Study Abroad." IALLT (International Association of Language Learning Technology)
Annual Meeting.
"Intermediate German Web
Courses with Study-abroad Component." AATG/ACTFL 2000 (Joint
Annual Meeting of the American Association of Teachers of German and the
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages).
"Solving
Problems with On-line Tutorials." NEALL (North East
Association of Language Learning Technology) Annual Meeting.
"Maximizing Student Access with
On-line Tutorials." Web Days '98, Faculty Seminar,
"Enhancing On-Campus Learning Using
On-line Resources." Faculty Seminar, Faculty of
Business Administration,
"Using
Computers to Teach." Faculty Seminar,
"The
Internet and the World Wide Web as Means of Allowing Students to Immerse
Themselves in the German Language." CAUTG Annual Meeting,
"Teaching
Students to Use the Web for Assignments." Faculty of Arts Workshop: Computers
and Teaching in Plain English,
"How Communicative Are Our
Foreign Language Classes? An International Collaborative
Research Project." ACTFL '96 (American Council on the
Teaching of Foreign Languages Annual Meeting).
[This project is an expansion of the
1976 and
1993 studies. Whereas the earlier studies involved high school German
classes in one school system, the current study expands those parameters to
French, German, Japanese, ESL, and Spanish university classes in diverse
geographical regions.]
"A Comprehensive Computing
Policy: What You Need and How to Get It." NEALL (North East Association for
Learning Laboratories) 1994 Annual Meeting: "The Information Superhighway: How
to Get into the Fast Lane."
"Ideology and Modern
Language Instruction: The Teaching of Modern Languages in
PUBLICATIONS
"Three German Web Courses
With a Study Abroad Component." Intercultural Literacies and German in the
Classroom. Interkulturelle Kompetenzen im
Frendsprachenunterricht. Festschrift fuer Manfred
Prokop zum 65sten Geburtstag. Ed. John Plews, Chris Lorey, and Caroline Rieger. Tuebingen: Gunter Narr Verlag
(Giessener Beitraege zur Fremdsprachendidaktik), 2007. 161-181.
"Easy, No-fail Keypalling
for Novices." Virtual Connections: Online Activities & Projects for
Networking Language Learners. Edited by Mark
Warschauer.
[This article outlines an email
activity to bring language students into regular contact with native
speakers.]
"The
Communicative Language Teaching 'Revolution' Tested. A Comparison of Two
Classroom Studies: 1976 and 1993." Foreign Language
Annals 27/2(Summer 1994), 221-239.
[The article compares and analyzes
two empirical studies on the types and quantity of language used in first-year
German instruction. Whereas judgments regarding the impact of the communicative
language teaching approach rely largely on anecdotal evidence, this study
measures empirically whether beginning FL classes are more communicative now
than they were seventeen years ago. The data, based on classroom observations,
derive from my M.A. thesis on "Artificial versus Real Communication in
Elementary Foreign Lang uage Classes (1977)" and a comprehensive follow-up study
in 1993.]
"Slattery, John Luke."
Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 13:
1901-1910.
[My section of this article
co-authored with H.Rollmann interprets Slattery's role in furthering higher
education in Newfoundland, including foreign language study, and is a side
product of my research on the history of the teaching of German in
Newfoundland."]
"Der Angeklagte: A Dramatic
Approach to Getting Acquainted at the Intermediate Level." Die
Unterrichtspraxis, 26/2(1993), 194-95.
[The article depicts an activity
that uses drama to get students talking.]
"Die schwarze Zaubertasche:
Magical Cure for the Adjective-ending Woes." Die
Unterrichtspraxis 25/2 (Fall 1992), 188-190.
[The article suggests an oral
activity using props to help students master this notoriously difficult aspect
of German language learning.]
Book Review: Widmaier,
Fritz and Widmaier, Rosemarie. Treffpunkt Deutsch.
WEB
PAGES:
1996: In the fall of 1996 I
created the web pages for the Department of German and Russian, with the help of
a student assistant David Cantwell, and served as webmaster until October
2007, when the pages were redesigned to follow MUN's general template.
There were initially two motivating factors
in developing these pages: to house useful internet "links" for easy access by
students, in particular the site for acquiring German penpals and for
subscribing to the German-English discussion group RIBO, and also to house
information about
our Department and where we are located, since the following spring (May 1997)
we were to host the CAUTG Annual Meeting as part of the Learned Societies
Conference.
Since the initial launching
of the departmental web pages, I have added the following useful
sites:
German
Tutorials
1998: I developed the
tutorials with audio files when we adopted a new text book for our first- and
second-year language courses and needed to revamp our oral exams and oral review
materials. For the previous textbook I had prepared audiotaped review materials
for each term's work, which were made available to students at the end of the
term. I have organized the audio materials now available on the Internet chapter
by chapter, so that students may choose what they want to review and may
practise at any time during the term, avoiding last-minute
cramming.
Format of the tutorials:
Konversation. Here
students are challenged by conversational phrases and questions they should be
able to answer after mastering the chapter. Students may practise by reading the
question, asking themselves how they would answer, then
clicking on Answer to find appropriate answers. They may also hear how
the questions and answers are pronounced by clicking on the ear icon. Kultur. A cultural summary is also provided for each
chapter. Links.Related links on cultural topics addressed in each chapter
are provided. Since these review materials are located on the Internet, students
may access them from anywhere and at any time, and are not limited to class and
lab times.
Another
useful aspect of the tutorials is the information provided by the readers about
themselves. Each reader of the questions and answers has provided personal
information, an audio (as well as written) introduction, found under
Konversation for each chapter. These mini-autobiographies provide
excellent reading and listening materials of the "real communication" variety,
since students cannot find out who these "real" people are and how they became
fluent in German any way other than by understanding the German written or
spoken text.
German Web Courses
1999: I developed and delivered three German web courses for the first time
in Spring 1999. I taught these courses annually from spring 1999 through spring 2007. My aim in designing these web courses
was to enable more students to afford a study-abroad experience. By combining an
August study-abroad component with three courses in a web format, students
could
finance the trip by working full-time up until August, since they did not
have to
attend classes, or by student loans, since they were enrolled as full-time
students. The web portion prepared the students linguistically and
culturally to
get the most out of the trip. 15-22 students enrolled in the courses each
year. Returning students were enthusiastic about the program and
provided the most effective encouragement for others to
participate.
CAUTG Enrolment Reports
1999: I became the CAUTG surveyor for the year 1999-2000,
a post I continued in through 2009-2010, jumping in again for the 2011-2012 Special Fiftieth Anniversary Report. This involved soliciting
course-specific enrolment figures from all university German departments in
German Distance Education
Courses
2006: In 2006
I designed the first beginning foreign language course to be offered online by
CAUTG Archive
2009--:The CAUTG Archive preserves the history of the organization since its inception. This rich collection of
documents begins with the Minutes of the Organizational Meeting of the Canadian University Teachers of Germanics, held on June 14th, 1961, at 8:15pm at the University of Montreal
(in conjunction with the Conference of Learned Societies), and includes Executive Meeting Minutes, Annual Business Meeting Minutes, financial reports, enrolment reports,
correspondence, even some photo albums, and much more from 1961 to the present, as well as books from the old publication series and a copy of each Newsletter, Bulletin, and Directory.
The previous archivist resigned in 2006 but no new archivist could be found until the entire collection was shipped to me in 2009. As archivist I have been updating the Archive anually and
in 2016 completed the task of digitizing the Archive, which contains over 28 000 pages in more than 9 000 documents, divided into 300+ folders.
The German-speaking
Moravian missionaries to
My research on the
Moravians in
Here are some of my
publications and presentations in this area:
PUBLICATIONS:
"Bourquin, Heinrich
Theodor." Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol.
14: 1911-1920.
[The article reconstructs and
interprets the life and work of this German grammarian of the Labrador Inuit
language. It relies on hitherto unused German sources, including his German
autobiography.]
"The Role
of Language in the Moravian Missions to Eighteenth-Century
[The article reconstructs the
eighteenth-century linguistic contribution of German Moravians in
PRESENTATIONS:
"The German Language Among the Native Peoples of
"Johann Christian Erhardt
and Jens Haven: Two Voyages to the Coast of
"Coping
with Inuktitut: the German Moravians in Eighteenth-Century
"From Herrnhut to
Hoffenthal: Moravian lexicographic and linguistic contributions to
eighteenth-century Inuktitut." Presentation to Canadian Society for
Eighteenth-Century Studies,