Author: Anne-Lise, Bécavin
Date of Publication: February 2014
Series Title: Scottish Languages Review
Notes: Issues 27
About a year ago, I arrived in Edinburgh to work as a French language assistant for nine months. Without any specific training but with a true interest in educational issues, I got the best practice I could ask for: working with small groups of teenagers every week to teach them my native language. Convinced that teaching languages was more effective through cross-curricular activities and collaborative learning, I built up most of my work as an assistant on those two concepts. This is how drama, music, dance, and arts became tools, if not the basis, of most of my projects. It is a blend of feelings and reflections on how artistic expression is a key to the pupils’ academic and personal actualisation. This article introduces some of the activities that I employed during my assistantship.
Keywords: Foreign Language Assistants; artistic expression, cross-curricular activities, collaborative learning; self-actualisation