This article investigates the different types of language classes for Uralic languages in higher education contexts to derive principles in course planning for minority language teaching. As a micro-level example, a foreign language class for South Estonian, aimed at a general audience at LMU Munich, is analysed and informs the discussion of…

The Grammar Gang blog has now passed its fourth anniversary as a borderless, non-proprietary language and learning online classroom. It gives wing to the aspirations of academic staff from four universities to explore language and learning across hemispheres. The Blog's recent birthday provides a timely opportunity to explore how this…

One of the early forms of intercultural education was the upbringing of children by foreign governesses, who appeared on the European labour market during the seventeenth century. In Germany families of the gentry and the wealthy middle-classes began, since the eighteenth century, to copy the upbringing of princely children. They too wanted their…

This article surmises the "position" and "ambition" of a nonnative speaker/teacher of a European language and literature as an ostensible facilitator of cultural difference in the U.S. foreign-language classroom. The paper opens a space to think through pedagogical conceptuality and the practice of assisting and guiding…

In recent years, public discourse about German national identity has increasingly focussed on the large foreign population within Germany's borders. Whilst right-wing politicians such as Edmund Stoiber foster fears of identity loss ("Uberfremdung"), more liberal observers, and indeed the ruling red-green coalition, acknowledge that…

Investigates how the various categories of the German spelling reform proposal will affect the acquisition of German spelling by native speakers of English. The article provides a history of the reform movement in Germany and discusses the pedagogical implications of the movement. (25 references) (Author/CK)

This paper describes an ambitious educational program uniting the efforts of Swiss, German, and French business associations, corporations, government agencies, and regional school boards in the Upper Rhine Valley, where economy and culture transcend national borders. The objectives of the program are to promote bilingualism, to teach the young…

This paper shows how the opportunity to encounter the other culture "in my backyard" (IMBY) can be used in landeskunde. This approach moves away from landeskunde as piecemeal factual background information toward developing own-culture and foreign/target culture awareness in mixed groups of native language students. (Contains 15…

Numerous reports and articles have decried the mediocrity of U.S. students' foreign language skills and have called for improved language education. One study that looked at foreign language education in 19 countries suggests several characteristics of successful foreign language programs: starting early, providing an articulated framework,…