TEFL | Universität Tübingen

Getting to Know... Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language as the teaching-related part of the study programme presents and applies theories, models and concepts of teaching language, literature and media as well as empirical research in the field of education.

Below you can find a teaser for the topics and concerns of TEFL.

Food for Thought: Thinking and Teaching about Food

For various key topics in the EFL classroom, the teacher can use nutrition and food as a cross-cutting theme. Food offers many starting points for personal and individual reflection and association. It also relates to issues in the curriculum, such as food, health, leisure time, and the environment. Food and nutrition are relevant to the discussion of leisure behavior, e.g. cooking, animal husbandry, gardening, and sports. Furthermore, the discussion of several cultural practices is directly or indirectly related to food traditions, as bank holidays can exemplify (Christmas meal, Thanksgiving dinner, traditional breakfast, wedding). Social, cultural, and economic topics, which the teacher can illustrate with the help of nutrition, represent other opportunities (social differences, international food companies, globalization or food production).

The subsequent lesson should draw the pupils’ attention to certain questions and perspectives related to nutrition and raise awareness of their own habits and behavior in this respect. To refrain from using exhausted topics, the students examine excerpts from current texts. The texts are authentic and non-fictional and belong to the genre of Creative Non-Fiction. In an entertaining way and on the basis of creative text procedures, the students briefly present current facts, which are enriched by their own personal experiences.

Please read the following suggestions for a lesson on the topic "Food for Thought – Thinking and Teaching about Food."

Lesson Plan

pre-reading activity	The students try to remember the ingredients of their last breakfast and then work in pairs and brainstorm on the origin of the products.
while-reading activity I	The teacher familiarizes the students with the food pyramid (fig. 1) and the students learn about the food groups and their characteristics. With the help of informational texts, the students study the different diets (omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, fasting) and discuss possible reasons for these dietary choices.
while-reading activity II	The teacher hands out excerpts from two authentic creative non-fictional texts: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007) by Barbara Kingsolver and "Dining Room" (2010) by Bill Bryson (fig. 2). The students first read the texts, make sure that they know all the words, sum up the gist of the extracts and discuss it with the class. They familiarize themselves with the 'locavorism' diet and the vitamin content in food and supplements. By working with the excerpts, they learn how to skim a text in order to identify key ideas and also how to obtain specific information, that is to say how to scan a text.
post-reading activity	In order to inform their customers about the quality and origins of the ingredients of McDonald’s products, the fast food chain started a campaign in 2014 which they named "Our Food, Your Questions" (fig. 3) In video clips and online postings, McDonald’s replied to the questions asked by their customers. The teacher introduces the campaign to the students and asks them to come up with their own questions for McDonald’s with the help of the texts from the while-reading phase. Then the students watch the commercial for the campaign Our Food, Your Questions and visit the official website for the campaign launched by McDonald’s Canada. After having watched the commercial and accessed the website, the students compare their own questions with the ones in the commercial and on the website. The students then reflect on the strategy behind "Our Food, Your Questions" and evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign.

Fig. 2. Worksheets for While-Reading Phase

It's Your Turn Now!

True or False?

Please read the following statements about lesson planning in general and the lesson plan presented above in specific very carefully and then decide whether or not the statements are true or false.

Once your have made up your mind, simply click on the statement to reveal the correct answer and additional information.

One main purpose of a pre-reading task is to activate students' prior knowledge and prepare them for the reading.

TRUE.

Generally, the pre-reading phase may serve several purposes; for instance, to enhance students’ motivation, to activate relevant schemata, and to help learners anticipate the topic, vocabulary, and possibly important grammar structures in the texts (cf. Grimm et al. 2015, 188). The pre-reading activity in the lesson plan posted above is designed to prepare students for the topic of the lesson by drawing on their own experiences and linguistic repertoires, thereby triggering their motivation. Here, the teacher encourages the students to share and reflect on their own personal experiences with food. Students are then provided with authentic texts to receive new input and are introduced to the main topics of the lesson.

_{Grimm, Nancy; Meyer, Michael; Volkmann, Laurenz (2015): Teaching English, Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.}

Authentic texts are too difficult for language learners to comprehend due to their contextual and cultural complexity.

FALSE.

There are several arguments to counter the claim that authentic texts are too demanding for all but the most advanced of second language learners. On the one hand, authentic texts provide the students with everyday use of language and experiences in the target language. On the other hand, if supported by reasonable task designs and concrete ways of scaffolding (cf. task design of worksheets 1-3), students can adequately learn strategies and techniques to foster their reading comprehension (e.g. skimming, scanning etc.). Thus, authentic materials are among the most important tools teachers can and must use in class in order for their teaching to be effective and to transmit the necessary knowledge to and foster competences of all of their students.

Ads and commercials are useless for the English as a Foreign Language classroom because they are just pop cultural junk.

FALSE.

Ads and commercials can be motivating ways for students to engage with authentic materials from the popular cultures of English-speaking countries. According to Ute Massler, their potential for the classroom can be divided into two main areas: exploiting the language of ads and commercials for purposes of practicing comprehension (e.g. audio-visual comprehension) and exploiting their different dimensions in terms of meaning-making strategies, the economic perspective as well as the artistic perspective (cf. Massler 2006). In the post-reading phase of the lesson plan posted above, students learn to connect the issue of food awareness to the most recent advertising strategies of the fast food giant McDonald’s. As a result, students are encouraged to further develop their communicative as well as their reflective competences.

_{Massler, Ute (2006): "Adidas, Nike und Pepsi: Football Commercials im Netz und im Fremdsprachenunterricht." Ed. Thaler, Engelbert: Fußball – Fremdsprachen – Forschung, Aachen: Shaker. 135-147.}