PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR A MOBILITY VISIT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
TEMPUS LAC 2000
Svetlana Yordanova - Shoumen University
“The purpose of introducing an additional language into our educational system is to allow communication with the rest of the world.” (Dubin, Fraida and Elite Olstain. 1986: 24). This statement of objectives reflects overall societal goals for a country which needs to promote contacts with other communities.
With the new changes in the social and economic life in Bulgaria, learning a foreign language became a necessity. Within the European framework teaching FL requires fundamental changes in the existing Bulgarian foreign language curricula. This is what the LAC 2000 Project aims at, as it is stated in the main document of the LAC 2000 Project (Shopov 1.1): “Instituting a change in language education programs through curricular innovation has become an essentiality. The outcomes achieved and conclusions reached will be of interest to all language learners, teachers, teacher trainers, course designers and administrators in this country”.
The European Dimension is a central area of focus in the activities of all Bulgarian Universities. It is concerned with taking part in teacher and student exchange programs as well as actively creating educational networks with foreign partner universities.
“The Finnish academic teachers' programs attempt to offer a more general and global experience of classroom teaching, because the continuously arising practical problems vary in kind and complexity to such an extent that it is unrealistic to be able to anticipate them all. In this sense, the teacher's profession sharply differs from vocational skills that are required in craftsmanship, for example. Consequently, it is justified to regard teacher education as educating and shaping intellectual capabilities and skills, rather than as training merely a limited set of more or less mechanical techniques and skills.” (http://www.helsinki.fi)
The Helsinki University Department of FLT Education is well known with its social task to produce and disseminate educational knowledge and, in particular, to train teachers for all levels of education from pre-school (kindergarten) to adult training, which makes it similar to the English Language Department at Shoumen University. Visiting University of Helsinki and its Language Center will provide me with some more information about the teacher education system in Finland and the research-based academic aspects of teacher education.
I would like to know how do our colleagues plan curricula and programs, how do they:
I would like to observe how does the Helsinki curriculum in teacher education combine practice and theory, and how individual modules intended for foreign students are designed. And I would like to learn about their classroom assessments and assessment practices:
Instructional materials constitute a major concern for teachers, teacher trainers, course designers and curriculum developers because of the powerful influence they wield over what is learned, how it is learned and at which stage the learning takes place. It will be interesting for me to become acquainted with Helsinki colleagues’ principles of materials design, evaluation and adaptation of instructional materials, special purpose materials design, self-directed materials design, student-generated materials, the role of materials in curriculum innovation and renewal.
I am also interested in the way the Department of Teacher Education familiarizes its teachers and researchers with the existing technical facilities and with the educational perspectives provided by and accessed through modern communication and information technologies.
I would like to see University of Helsinki’s achievements in developing and arranging distance and media education in the Department of Teacher Education.
Part of the European Dimension is closely associated with cross-cultural studies, multi-cultural co-operation and how it might affect second language learning and teaching, social factors which influence how people use and learn language, sociolinguistic variation in English and the implications for notions of correctness and appropriateness, standard and non-standard English , and an enhanced awareness of and respect for other people's values.
REFERENCES
Svetlana Yordanova
Lecturer
Department of English and German
Shoumen
10th February, 2000