"English Teachers in the Limelight" is an opportunity to meet and chat with English language practitioners. As we have established and nurtured a strong relationship with many practitioners in various fields of English Language Teaching, we found that it is time to give them a stage and a voice. We see this as a great opportunity to listen to experienced English language teachers speaking about their day-to-day experiences in schools, to ask questions and gain new perspectives.
English Teachers in the Limelight – gone digital!
After an understandably longer break, the second event of English Teachers in the Limelight took place on May 5th 2021 in a virtual setting.
Together with 20 interested students from our department, we discussed the pressing issue of digitally supported English teaching and digital education in ELT (“Digital unterstützter Englischunterricht und Medienbildung im Literaturunterricht”). We invited Dr Monika Greiner, an experienced English teacher at MS Strebersdorf and mentor at KPH Wien as well as four Master students from our Department to talk about these topics.
Dr Monika Greiner elaborated on her experiences of digitally supported English Language Teaching and shared a practitioner’s view on the changes that Covid brought – from its outbreak until now. She described various challenges related to the use of digital tools and the necessary equipment from her own and her learners’ perspectives.
In the realm of digital education, four students presented their ELT projects on the combination of digital education and literary learning. How can digital education be integrated into the subject of English? All student projects illustrated how subject-specific teaching can promote both media literacy and digital education and be enriched through the use of digital tools and media. Julia Aigner and Barbara Pöckl demonstrated the use of poetry in individual and collaborative writing activities in their projects, while Lisa Fussi focused on the specific form of Haikus poems and how learners can learn to enjoy and produce them with the help of a digital guessing game. Finally, Petra Bauer’s project aimed at teaching critical media literacy in the context of online news reporting.
The evening finished off with a friendly virtual gathering and opportunities for an exchange of experiences and ideas. We are already looking forward to our next event on “Zauber und Herausforderung des Berufseinstiegs” on June 8th 6 pm via Zoom – hopefully with you!