OJUP1011 Creative and Intercultural Language Development (5 cr)
Description
Creative and Intercultural Language Development explores the opportunities for ‘joy, playfulness and creativity’ in language education as emphasized in the Finnish National Core Curriculum. This course orients students to critically consider what it means for children in the lower school to develop as students of language and to reflect on their own experiences of language learning. This course introduces students to foundational concepts in language education and explores what it means to approach language education in a holistic way. For future teachers, this course is intended to help them express themselves with greater ease and confidence so as to be able to create supportive learning environments for younger language learners.
Competence development:
This course specifically promotes aesthetic competence as language learning is reconceived as a holistic experience, pedagogical competence with regard to different approaches that can be used to support language development and communicative and interactional competence through the use of language in different settings with learners of different ages.
Learning outcomes
Upon completing this course, students should be able to:
- critically reflect on their own experience of being a foreign or additional language learner
- holistically approach language education to promote joy, creativity and playfulness in language Education
- critically consider what different kinds of activities, approaches and forms of language offer as opportunities for language learning and development
Additional information
This course uses a variety of individual and small group activities, readings and a written assignment.
Study materials
Are available in the Moodle learning platform for the course. In addition to articles, the key course text is:
Pinter, A. (2006). Teaching young language learners. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0-19-442207-9.
Bland, J. (Ed.). (2015). Teaching English to young learners: critical issues in language teaching with 3-12 year olds. Bloomsbury Publishing.