Educational Linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin

This page grew out of two master seminars in Educational Linguistics held at the English department of the Freie Universität in the winter terms of 2014/15 and 2015/16. During discussions in class, it emerged that German teaching candidates did not as a rule want to consider themselves linguists and that many did not see how linguistic knowledge might be profitable to them in teaching English. It was suggested that linguists, rather than be frustrated by this, needed to make their research results more easily accessible to teachers, preferably in the shape of ready-to-use teaching materials, since teaching candidates didn’t think they had the time, desire or capability to acquire linguistic knowledge and/or think about its implications for language teaching.

The papers collected here are counterexamples. It is my hope that they will inspire other students and (prospective) teachers to take a more active role in lesson planning and spark a discussion about linguistics and its implications for teaching among them, thus helping bridge the research gap between the university and the school. Contributions about any aspect of how linguistics can be relevant for language teaching, preferably with explicit suggestions and/or materials for teaching, are very welcome.

So far, no (former) student has volunteered to manage the page. I really think this ought to be a(n) (ex-)student project, so if anyone is interested in adopting the blog, or has any suggestions for improvement, please get in touch!

All papers are made available with the explicit permission of their authors.