This ethnographic study of a beginning‐level German course at an Australian university examined the student experience of learning second language (L2) grammar in a flipped classroom. Students accessed explicit grammar instruction and completed grammar exercises prior to attending face‐to‐face classes; during class, the structures were briefly reviewed by the students and then applied in interactive task‐based activities focused on meaningful use of the L2. In surveys and interviews, learners reported that the opportunity to manage the pace and depth of their interaction with online grammar modules facilitated their learning and increased their confidence. Linking these outcomes to research that has shown that flipped teaching models reduce or assist in the management of cognitive load, the study presents a compelling case for flipping the L2 classroom.
Research into study abroad students’ intercultural learning has demonstrated a need to provide pedagogical support before, during and after the study abroad experience. This article reports on the authors’ efforts to support the in-country learning of Australian study abroad students through an online guided reflection exercise (blog) with a peer-learning component. Our findings suggest that exposing students to theories of intercultural learning prior to the study abroad experience opens them to the possibility of such learning occurring. However, the unanticipated discovery that the students’ most significant intercultural learning stemmed from the processes of social drinking rather than online interaction emphasizes that participation in an unfamiliar culture is an embodied and social experience, and suggests that concentration of pedagogical efforts in familiar and disembodied online spaces may disconnect students from the very experiences on which we wish them to reflect. We therefore recommend that instructors design opportunities for peer learning through embodied social interactions between outgoing and incoming study abroad students, framed by explicit discussion of concepts in intercultural learning. Such scaffolding is likely to be more sustainable in the current Australian fiscal environment than the intensive in-country instructor intervention that is common in the North American context.
In 2004, eight formerly communist East Central European states acceded to the European Union, an event which was celebrated as the final overcoming of the post-war division of Europe into East and West and the ‘return to Europe’ of those states which had been ‘kidnapped’ by the Soviet Union. To mark the accession, an Austrian film production company commissioned five East Central European directors to make short documentary films under the collective title Über die Grenze: Fünf Ansichten von Nachbarn ( Across the Border: Five Views From Neighbours). Drawing on geopolitical analysis of the dichotomy of Europe and Eastern Europe which underpinned the European Union enlargement discourse, this paper examines the Czech episode České Velenice Evropské as a film which explores the ways in which borders have been conceptualized and identities (re)framed in the context of European Union enlargement. At the moment when the Central European states’ symbolic ‘return to Europe’ is being realized, director Jan Gogola reflects on the meaning of European Union accession for Central Europeans, on shifting borders and their implications for the construction and understanding of identities of self and other, and on the dynamics of openness and closure in Europe.
As Andrew Barker has observed (2010), Joseph Roth’s Tarabas: Ein Gast auf dieser Erde (1934) ‘appears to support the traditional view of Roth as a writer who, when confronted by a cruel present, retreats into a comforting fiction’ about the past. Against this view I argue that this tale of sin and penance is a parable of Germany in 1933. Tarabas’s redemption suggests the possibility of an end to the history of anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution, of which the Third Reich’s nascent reign of terror is but the latest instalment. And yet, in the final chapter of the novel, written from the perspective of 1933, it is the cyclical view of history as eternal return which predominates. In the end, as much as it is a parable of redemption, Tarabas is also simultaneously a novel of warning.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.