Barbara Schmenk – författare

‘Traditional’ language teaching has come to be equated with old, dysfunctional, outdated, or backward pedagogies. But is that really all there is to it? This book breaks through the disinterest in tradition and challenges taken-for-granted assumptions about the realm of the traditional in language education, gradually revealing that the common and dismissal of traditional language teaching is inadequate and flawed – a fabrication. To disrupt this fabrication of traditional language teaching, The Fabrication of Traditional Language Teaching argues for the reclaiming and reframing of tradition as a crucial concept in language education and scholarship. It provides an in-depth investigation of applied linguistics scholarship and the knowledge that it has produced about traditions, relates this to interdisciplinary perspectives on tradition that have been advanced in the social sciences, philosophy, education, and cultural studies. By tracing the ways in which traditional language education has been, and continues to be, fabricated, it reveals how this fabrication affects and impedes our understanding of language education and research.

Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies is a collection of essays by Canadian and international scholars on the topic of why and how the curriculum for post-secondary German studies should evolve. Its twenty chapters, written by international experts in the field of German as a foreign or second language, explore new perspectives on and orientations in the curriculum. In light of shifts in the linguistic and intercultural needs of today's global citizens, these scholars in German studies question the foundations and motivations of common curriculum goals, traditional program content, standard syllabus design, and long-standing classroom practice. Several chapters draw on a range of contemporary theories - from critical applied linguistics, second-language acquisition, curriculum theory, and cultural studies - to propose and encourage new curriculum thinking and reflective practice related to the translingual and cross-cultural subjectivities of speakers, learners, and teachers of German. Other chapters describe and analyze specific examples of emerging trends in curriculum practice for learners as users of German. This volume will be invaluable to university and college faculty working in the discipline of German studies as well as in other modern languages and second-language education in general. Its combination of theoretical and descriptive explorations will help readers develop a critical awareness and understanding of curriculum for teaching German and to implement new approaches in the interests of their students.

This volume focuses (self-)critically on sloganization as an emergent phenomenon in language education discourse. Motivated by an increasing uneasiness with a number of widespread concepts in current language education research that have become sloganized, this volume comprises a collection of chapters by international scholars that scrutinize the discourse of language education, identify popular slogans and reconstruct the sloganization processes. It promotes critical self-reflection of scholars and professionals in the field of language education – a field that has widely been dominated by the need to develop innovative approaches and practices, at the expense of self-critical work that attempts to situate the field and its approaches within wider historical, cultural and conceptual contexts.

This volume focuses (self-)critically on sloganization as an emergent phenomenon in language education discourse. Motivated by an increasing uneasiness with a number of widespread concepts in current language education research that have become sloganized, this volume comprises a collection of chapters by international scholars that scrutinize the discourse of language education, identify popular slogans and reconstruct the sloganization processes. It promotes critical self-reflection of scholars and professionals in the field of language education – a field that has widely been dominated by the need to develop innovative approaches and practices, at the expense of self-critical work that attempts to situate the field and its approaches within wider historical, cultural and conceptual contexts.