English as a medium of instruction in biology

In the course of teaching biology in English I realized that the role of the teacher is necessarily expanded. One especially important task is the selecting of an appropriate (manageable, interesting) material and to facilitate the students’ difficulties with a range of new specific terms. For me there has been a great difficulty in making a compromise between my requirements and approaches as a content teacher and at the same time being sensitized to my students’ language needs. What followed was a systematic planning of instruction through a variety of strategies and techniques. Another difficulty was the need for the development of appropriate materials. I realized that the teaching in content-based instruction has to be much more student-centred to make up for the deficit in understanding. Moreover, the fear of the students of getting bad marks in exams due to poor English knowledge has to be taken and the relationship between the teacher and the students must be a friendly one. Having been faced with many new challenges I gladly seized the opportunity to enrole in the PFL-Lehrgang ”Englisch als Arbeitssprache” and I hoped to get a lot of advice and support for my future content-based teaching.

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Autor/in: Martina Matzer
Durchführende Institution/en: Bundesgymnasium und Bundesrealgymnasium Bruck an der Leitha (307016)
Fach/Fächer: Biologie, Englisch
Schulstufe/n: 10. Schulstufe

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Dateien: Langfassung