Why should we teach children elements of European geography?
“It is a foremost the young that the Union was created for and it is the young that will be called upon to give the proper shape to its future.”
A portrait of Our Europe p. 5.
The present diploma paper deals with the issue of using elements of European geography in the process of teaching English as a foreign language. Teaching and learning about Europe is considered to be an educational priority. The idea of developing the European dimensions in the curricula of secondary schools has been introduced in order to strengthen in young people a sense of European identity. They need to be prepared to live in a multicultural community of the future.
So far the European aspect has been neglected in Polish schools. The attitude should be changed because of the fact that in a few years Poland will become a member of the European Union, which will hopefully give us security, free access to the world's political and economic stage as well as improvement of the living and working conditions. The borders between countries are becoming less significant and Poland is already beginning to have more and more in common with the world. Therefore, the knowledge about Europe in its widest spectrum will come in useful for Polish citizens. “ Learning and studying about Europe, its people, cultures, geography and business habits will inevitably help future generations to conduct their business operations more efficiently and successfully within the European context.” ( Sibley, p.2 ). More attention ought to be paid to making students familiar with European issues. They will become more conscious tourists and appreciate the values of the other countries while travelling. The importance of the understanding of European landscape and the principal differences and similarities of the physical environment and lifestyles are as important as the rich diversity of Europe's cultural heritage.” ( Shennan, p.36 ). It is a foregone conclusion that the knowledge about other countries will raise one's level of cultivation. Acquiring the knowledge about Europe is undoubtedly of young people's interest and should turn out very useful. A lot of students have relatives or friends abroad, so they should be motivated to learn in what ways the life is a particular country differs from our own and to become familiar with the places worth visiting.
Tackling certain European issues might be a good reason to develop affirmative skills such as showing tolerance, sympathy and general international understanding as well.
There were established two main bodies: The Council of Europe and Commission of the European Communities. Their aim is to strengthen the sense of the European identity among young European citizens. In view of the fact, some member countries have already implemented that component in their national curricula. For example, in some Danish schools not only are communicative skills taught, but also cultural competence plays a significant role. The students are expected to read a map of the London underground, to take part in small talk on current issues in Germany and to order a meal from a French menu. In Germany, in turn, language learning in primary schools serves as an introduction to culture rather than to producing correct sentences. Children are given information about the other's way of life by means of songs, poems and some important rituals of culture.
Owing to such programmes as Socrates or Tempus, Poland has already been involved in teaching about Europe. Furthermore, a novel reform of the system of education was introduced in 1999 and the European element would not be neglected any more. Although there still is not a subject devoted to the European dimension in the national curricula, there are certain issues of European community discussed during so called “educational paths”.
Among extensive perspectives of teaching about Europe, the author chose to familiarise the students with some elements of the European geography. There are good reasons for the study of the subject. According to what one of the eminent English geographers said: “Geography, ... is about how we view the world, how we see people in places.... One of the great strengths of geography, indeed its essential core, is that we study real people in real landscapes.”( Rogers, p.25 ). The elements of European geography provide a framework within which many economic, cultural and social activities take place and develop the students' images of the place and country, and at the same time, present the complexity of Europe as a physical and human environment.
The textbooks used in Polish schools provide the teachers with little help in teaching about Europe. The project will certainly supply the teachers with some useful tips as to how to conduct such lessons and also with ready materials and activities designed to develop and practise all four skills. The knowledge acquired during the course will provide students with some important information about European countries so that they can communicate freely in various situations, while travelling around Europe and the whole world.
Taking all the arguments into consideration, the author prepared a course in European geography. The whole paper is divided into eight 45-minute lessons and one 90-minute block, which is to be taught consecutively. Each lesson is meant to be conducted once a week. The last tenth lesson is devoted to the revision covering the material from the previous nine lessons. By the end of the course the students should be able to recognise places and describe certain physical features of Europe as well as characterise the biggest European cities. Moreover, they are expected to be able to comment on the agricultural, industrial and economic situation of some European countries as well as enumerate some tourist attractions of those countries. Furthermore, they are expected to be able to pronounce geographical names correctly.
The author prepared a course for the secondary school students, for the second graders. The target learners are between the ages of 15-16. Since they have completed a three-year course in English at primary school and one year at their secondary school, the level of their English should be intermediate. Therefore, the teacher hardly needs to use the native language unless there is a term which is difficult to explain in English. Moreover, the students have already completed a five-year course in geography in their mother tongue so they should have developed skills such as using atlases, globes, reading maps, working on statistics and discussing global issues. Ideally, the group should consist of 16 students.
The paper proposes a account cross-curricular project involving geography, art. Teachers of English are in charge of an event called “ We are part of Europe”. The event is celebrated after the students have completed the course. They together with a teacher of art are to prepare the classrooms. On that day the school is decorated with emblems and symbols connected with European Countries. Completing the project encourages the students to think about themselves and their personal identity in a national and international context. The project aims at highlighting geographical and cultural diversity within Europe as a whole and individual country. The teacher's task while organising the event is to explore the ways of establishing working relationships with schools in other European countries. They should see that such relationships could be made exciting and fruitful. In order to obtain a true and broad picture of the students' skills the teacher uses a variety of assessment tools in the project. One of the techniques is the technique of continues assessment because it enables the teacher to assess over the period of weeks those aspects of the students' performance of the foreign language. The teacher observing how the students use the target language among themselves in order to achieve certain goals can best measure oral language, essentially a communicative activity. By using the method of assessment the teacher examines spontaneous conversation of the students and gets information about their fluency and communicative abilities. The students remain unaware of the assessment taking place the whole situation is informal and relaxed, but efficient at the same time. After the lesson the students are informed about the performance together with meaningful comments and recommendation about the areas they still need to work on. The students will be given a number of homework assignments among which only some will be checked during the classes following the ones in which the homework was assigned.