Comenius School Partnerships Project 2010 - 2012 · evaluating a multilingual presentation in a professional context. During the Comenius project weeks these phases were tested, revised

Comenius School Partnerships Project

2010 - 2012

The development and testing of a teaching module with the topic

„Multilingual presentations“

2012-July-27

Partnerschools:

Technisch Instituut Sint Paulus Mol Belgium

Stredná priemyselná škola Komarno Slovakia

IES Felo Monzon Grau – Basses Las Palmas Spain

Berufskolleg Niederberg Velbert Germany

Berufskolleg Niederberg ‐ Europaschule Seite 1

Concept for a teaching module with the topic

"Multilingual presentations"

Contents

Page

Foreword 2

1. Definition of "Multilingual presentations" 3

2. Learning groups, educational programs 3

3. The Process - The teaching methods 4

4. Chronological sequence of the series of lessons 11

5. Learning situations and possible presentations 12

6. Evaluation 14

7. Conclusion 14

Appendix 15


Foreword

The following series of lessons - called “teaching module” – was developed, tested and evaluated by four schools from Belgium, Slovakia, Spain and Germany within the framework of a Comenius School Partnership project from 2010 to 2012.

Belgium: Technisch Instituut Sint Paulus in Mol Slovakia: Stredná priemyselná škola in Komarno Spain: IES Felo Monzon Grau – Bassas in

Las Palmas (Gran Canaria) Germany: Berufskolleg Niederberg in Velbert

In each participating country a project week with students of partner schools was conducted. The preliminary plans were developed in the schools between the project weeks. The plans were carried out with heterogeneous learning groups and the experience gained from the project weeks was incorporated into the planning of the following week.

The cultural diversity and the different native languages of the students in our Comenius project were ideal for our project.

We would like to thank the participating schools, especially the national agencies that have not only accepted but supported the project as consultants.

We are also grateful to Peter Raab, who has contributed to this project scientifically and has written a degree thesis about our project as a prospective teacher.

Thanks to all students involved in the project, who have worked very hard and creatively and also to their parents, who have accommodated a student from another European country for a week.

This document has been prepared educationally ideology-free, without taking into account current national educational priorities of the participating countries.

The goal was to create a series of lessons which is easy to understand and use for all interested readers. All contents and ideas are resulting from the experience of the Comenius project. Excerpts were taken from the degree thesis written by Peter Raab.

Project teachers


1. Definition: "Multilingual presentations"

The aim of the teaching module is to combine presentation skills with a multilingual competence.

Presentations can be: digital presentations (for example: PowerPoint)

films

posters

verbal presentations (e.g. lectures, songs)

combinations of the above points.

By the term "multilingualism" we mean the use of at least two languages. "Multilingual presentations" are, if... ...the verbal presentation is carried out in two or more languages.

…two or more languages appear in a presentation medium.

…the selected presentation medium is made in at least one

language that is not the same as the language of the verbal

presentation.

2. Learning groups - training courses

The teaching module can be applied in slightly modulated form in all educational programs at secondary level – from the age of 12 to 19. Here are two examples: a) The students of secondary schools with a school leaving exam will need the skills of making "Multilingual presentations" during their studies and their professional activity in almost all professions. No matter they are working in our interconnected economy world at a global player or at a medium-sized export companies. If their language skills are relatively good, the students can learn and work in a group according to our module. b) Our module can be used even in lower level educational programs, e.g. when a school leaving certificate is obtained later.


Several goals can be achieved:

- Students with a migration background have the opportunity to present their home country and culture and also demonstrate their additional language skills. This promotes self-confidence, motivation and integration.

- Pupils without a migration background learn about their classmates, reduce prejudice, get to know Europe more to develop acceptance and tolerance and also recognize the advantages of multilingualism.

The accompanying teacher, however, before each phase of the module should show examples of good presentations, or just make a presentation themselves to make the process of students’ activity begin promptly and to have no phases of quandary.

3. The Process - The teaching methods

The described sequence of actions consists of several phases, that the students pass to learn the competence of creating, presenting and evaluating a multilingual presentation in a professional context. During the Comenius project weeks these phases were tested, revised and optimized for this work.

In each stage, the students are put in concrete (learning) situations in which they have to create and conduct multilingual presentations under certain specified conditions. In chapter 5, learning situations and potential presentation topics are briefly described.

Phase I: Characteristics of a good presentation

The first phase of the module is devoted to the construction of basic presentation skills of students. We recommend to create an initial learning situation in which the students will be granted the utmost freedom. It should only be a few guidelines: while making their first presentation students have to…

…take into account the criterion of multilingualism.

…stick to the scheduled time of the preparation and the presentation (to ensure organizational viability).

…choose from the given range of topics in accordance with their professional needs.

Students decide, therefore, how and to what extent they incorporate foreign languages into their presentations. They also have free choice


regarding the media, their design and do not have to care about the particular presentation techniques.

The presentations are created in groups or pairs. Group work is useful, because otherwise the subsequent presentations would take too much time.

After working on the presentations, all of the group members will present them in front of their classmates and teachers. The audience have the task to observe the presentations in terms of certain qualitative criteria and document the observation in an evaluation form. An example of evaluation form is in appendix A5.

After all presentations are held, they are followed by analysis. Teachers and students together should discuss what aspects of the individual presentations have pleased them, and what should be revised. Based on this discussion quality criteria for good presentations are created and a list of criteria on which students can focus during the creation of additional presentations will be developed. Our developed criteria can be read in A1 to A4.

Alternatively, in this first stage of the module, it is possible to hand out the criteria catalogue directly to the students, but there are two arguments in favour of the approach taken here:

Firstly, this orientation allows a more precise analysis of the learning state of students. The teachers are possibly familiar with the learning performance of the affected group of students and may be even with their presentation skills from the normal curriculum, but it is assumed that these are not systematically observed. If we give the instructions about certain quality criteria, it might be very difficult to determine the learning progress through the module.

Secondly, the students would be using the quality criteria without having internalized them and not knowing why they should be taken into account. When students develop a list of criteria on their own, they become aware of the benefits of using these criteria of quality.

Proposal for action:

In the first step of the module the students should develop a list of criteria with

features of good presentations. In order to reach this goal the students have to

create, maintain and analyze their first multilingual presentations in group or

pair work and find new ways of improving the applied techniques of

presentation.


Phase II: Expanding the repertoire of presentation media

The presentations in the first Comenius project week showed the clear trend towards the use of digital media presentations, especially PowerPoint. Of course one can argue that this orientation is up to date and an important factor in an increasingly digitalized world of work and should not be contradicted.

However, by focusing only on PowerPoint the students neglect the skills of using alternative media presentations (verbal presentations, posters, films, songs, etc.). In the second step of our module this one-sided orientation should be counteracted. The second phase of the learning module has got therefore the aim to broaden the students’ repertoire of presentation media.

As in the first step of the module, students are again placed in learning situations in which a multilingual presentation about a professional issue must be created and presented.

But now the specifications will be changed in two points. On the one hand, the students should take into account the criteria catalogue developed in step 1 and on the other hand, digital media such as PowerPoint presentations are forbidden to use. If the students are strongly hampered by this limitation, it may be necessary to give them an overview of alternative media presentations.

As in the first phase, the presentations will be worked out in groups and presented to the class. In the analysis, the focus is placed differently: The shown presentations will be examined in terms of professional applications. What situations make it necessary, for example, not to use digital media presentations, but a classic poster or a flip chart? It is important to sensitize the students that many companies lack the technical infrastructure of a large industrial group, or that many topics are not suitable for a PowerPoint presentation. It is therefore necessary to prepare the pupils for such a working life situation.

At the end of the second phase the criteria catalogue for good presentations will be extended with the new findings.


In the second step of the module, the students expand their repertoire of

presentation media. For this purpose, students, working in groups or in pairs,

create and maintain multilingual presentations and evaluate the potential

applications of alternative media presentations.


Phase III: Coordination of multilingualism, target audience and content

In the first two phases of the learning module multilingualism plays a minor role. So there is in each case the requirement to take it into account in the presentation, but this is not made the main subject of the analysis. The aim of this approach is to reduce the inhibitions of the students. Thus, achieving the audience's attention needed for a presentation is already a special situation for the students. If the issue is now expanded to multilingualism, then the excitement of the students will increase. During the first two steps of the module, the students become already familiar with this unusual task without discussing the choice and use of their languages.

In the third phase of the module the issue of multilingualism is now playing the central role. The goal is not the perfect mastery of the language but the appropriateness of the situation. When planning the use of language, the following questions must be answered:

Which languages should be used for the presentations?

What languages should be visualized (e.g. as subtitles)?

What languages should be spoken?

These questions can only be answered, if you know the target audience. In the case of an international corporation, the audience should at least be given the opportunity to follow the presentation in English. During a sales presentation abroad the language of the customer and the customer’s personality should be considered decisive as far as possible.

Therefore, the requirements for the preparation of the presentation are much more concrete than in the previous phases of the learning module. The students create and give a presentation in groups or pairs with the following qualities:

the use of the list of criteria for good presentations has been taken into account,

the selection of the presentation media is justified and also the applicability of non-digital presentation media is checked,

the use of the language depends on the content and the target group.

In the evaluation of the presentations at this stage of the module the focus is on the adequacy of the design language for the application situation. It is checked whether the appropriate decision was made regarding the choice of the spoken and written language in this specific situation and whether there are reasonable alternatives.


Phase IV: A complete multilingual presentation in a professional context to an audience

The goal of the fourth and final phase of the learning module is to bring together the previously learned aspects of a multilingual presentation. Therefore, the students create and perform an individual presentation,

....which takes into account the criteria developed in the first step to make a good presentation,

....for which a suitable presentation medium is selected, in which the application potential of digital and analogue media are tested, and a reasonable decision is made,

....in which the spoken and written language is adapted to the target group and the content,

....in which the content is designed according to the purpose of the presentation.

A good multilingual presentation considers these aspects and also the relationship of these factors with each other.

In the evaluation of the presentations thus not only one aspect will be chosen, but we evaluate the full presentation. This includes the analysis of the individual factors of a multilingual presentation.

In the fourth step of the module the students show their competence of creating and evaluating a multilingual presentation in a professional field. If necessary it would be possible to compare the first presentations with the final one to determine the learning progress.


In the third step of the module students learn to make the (multi) language

design of their presentation considering the content and the audience.

Therefore, they create and give a multilingual presentation in a group or in pairs

for a concrete situation and evaluate the appropriateness of the chosen

language in speech and in writing.


Another challenge can be created for the students when they have to perform in front of a bigger audience. It can involve students of other courses or even company representatives. Since students in the first stages of the presentations work in a small group which they could get used to, we create a new situation by expanding the audience, a situation that represents a new challenge for the students, what could be the situation when they make a multilingual presentation on their work.


In the fourth step of the module the students create and present an

individual multilingual presentation in which they respect the criteria of a

good presentation, they explain their decision and choose the appropriate

media and language concept. In the analysis, they evaluate the full

presentation.


Summary of the structure of the module After students have completed the four phases of the module, they should be able to create, present and evaluate a multilingual presentation. The following table summarizes the possible sequence of the module Phase of the module

content / target

Preparatory

Planning and documentation of the teaching module for multilingual presentations in a professional field.

Step 1

Development of a catalogue of the criteria for a good presentation

Step 2 Expansion of the repertoire of the presentation media, in particular non-digital media.

Step 3

To build up a speech concept, regarding the selection and the use of languages in speech and writing.

Step 4

Creating, presenting and evaluating a multilingual presentation in a professional field, taking into account all the developed criteria.

Evaluation

Evaluation of the module in terms of the results of students.


4. Chronological sequence of the series of lessons

In the Comenius project mainly cultural and historical topics were proposed and selected for the presentations (see chapter 5).

In carrying out the described series of lessons we recommend job-related topics.

Series of lessons (examples):

Content/ possible topics Media

1. Phase 1

"Multilingual presentations" without requirements: ‐

‐ Task 1: "You go with your boss to a company abroad to build a future cooperation. Create for your new client a short multilingual presentation about your company. The presentation should last about 10 minutes, the fictitious company should be your school."

‐ Alternative task 1: "Create in your group a multilingual presentation on your class trip. The presentation should last approximately 10 minutes and will be presented at the parents’ evening. "

‐ Homework: finish and practice the presentation

‐ flipcharts ‐ computer, printer ‐ projector ‐ possibly photos

2. Phase 1

"Introduction to multilingual presentations and development of the criteria for a good presentation"

‐ Discussion and evaluation ‐ Students work out the criteria for good

presentations in groups ‐ The criteria are presented and organized ‐ See Appendix A1 to A4

‐ flipcharts ‐ computer, printer ‐ projector

3. Phase 2

"Alternative ways of multilingual presentations" ‐ Task 2: "You participate in a student

exchange program with Spain, and the given task is to create a multilingual presentation about your city. You are not allowed to use PowerPoint and the presentation should take max. 10 minutes."


‐ video camera ‐ camera ‐ pin‐board ‐ computer ‐ projector


4. Phase 2

"Introduction of the new presentations and expansion of the list of criteria"

‐ Discussion and evaluation ‐ Expansion of the list of criteria

‐ Flipcharts ‐ computer, printer ‐ projector

5. Phase 3

"Special selection and the use of languages in audience‐related, multilingual presentations."

‐ Task 3: "You work in a company that produces hardware and software for 3‐D copying. Create a bilingual presentation that explains 3‐D copying for inexperienced clients, and attracts their attention to this technology. "


‐ computer ‐ flipcharts ‐ and others

6 Phase 3

"Introduction of the new presentation" ‐ Discussion on the use of spoken and

written languages ‐ Criteria for the appropriate use of the

spoken and written languages


7. Phase 4

"Perform a multilingual presentation alone" Task 4: "You work in a large company and your boss sends you to a customer in order to present a new product. The headquarters of the customer is in England, therefore English people work in managerial positions. This means for you that your presentation must be prepared and performed in two languages. "

‐ Get information about the audience ‐ Create a presentation on your product ‐ Present your product.

‐ computer ‐ flipcharts ‐ and others

8 Phase 4

Performing of the presentations ‐ Evaluation of the presentations ‐ Comparison of the last and the first

presentation is possible ‐ Grading is possible

‐ flipcharts ‐ computer, printer ‐ projector

9 Assessment of skills can be possible: Creating an individual multilingual presentation on a single profession‐related topic

‐ Doing it for homework ‐ Performing of the presentation and

evaluation



5. Learning situations and possible presentations

The presentations are based on the students‘ future professions or the subjects in which this teaching module is used. Cross-curricular and career-related topics are the best to be chosen because they are motivating for the students. In our Comenius project weeks regionally typical cultural issues were selected in order to bring the guests closer to the host country. Here are some topics:

Velbert - Germany: Life in a German family Companies in Velbert The history of Velbert The Niederbergische region The structural transformation of the Ruhr The lock industry in Velbert The Vocational College - Berufskolleg Niedernberg Arts in Velbert The city of Velbert

Mol – Belgium:

Presenting my partner The town of Mol Technisch Instituut St. Paulus The capitol of Belgium „Bruxelles“ The European Parliament The Comenius week

Komarno - Slovakia:

The history of the town Komarno Famous personalities from Komarno The history of the fortress of Komarno Sightseeing in Bratislava Documentation of the Comenius week The Danube power plant "Gabcikovo" The technique of 3-D copying


Las Palmas – Gran Canaria – Spanien

“Doramas`” legend Canarian home cooking and living Vulcanology of Gran Canaria Folk dances Canarian folk sports Canarian festivals Tourism on Gran Canaria The beautiful Gran Canaria

In the last phase of the module, the learning situations necessarily correspond to a complex, professional field and provide a complete professional problem situation.

6. Evaluation

During the presentations the students and teachers should have and fill in evaluation forms. This gives the presenter a feedback on their performance and we can develop criteria to be included in the presentations of the following teaching periods. Examples of evaluation forms can be found in Appendix A5 and A6.

7. Conclusion

All schools that have participated in the development of this teaching module will try to incorporate the present series of lessons in their curricula in the near future.

The series of lessons can be applied to any subject or to develop interdisciplinary contents. We recommend the use of interdisciplinary contents and different languages, so that students consider it usual to make an interdisciplinary presentation in several languages.

Especially international student exchange programs encourage language learning and the acceptance of the importance of making and performing multilingual presentations. At the same time the competence of digital communication is improved.


Appendix

Content:

A1 The principles of a good presentation

A2 Starting point for good presentations

A3 Successful PowerPoint presentations

A4 Successful oral presentation

A5 Evaluation for teachers 1

A6 Evaluation for students (German)


A1

The principles of a good presentation

The organisation of the presented information

The presentation is logical and clearly arranged. Easy to follow and understandable. Varied with interesting elements (questions directed to the audience, a formal survey).

The knowledge of the student

The student is able to demonstrate his/her knowledge fully. When answering any questions he is relaxed, self-confident and persuasive. He/She is able to explain the topic to his/her mates in details and on a high standard.

The language of the presentation.

The student can use the appropriate terminology. He/She has a rich vocabulary.

The way of communication

The presentation is fluent. After an interruption he is able to continue talking easily. His speech is clear and understandable. He doesn’t have any problems with the loudness. His explanation is suggestive. He/She always faces the audience.


A2

Plakat:


A3

Plakat:


A4

Plakat:


A5

Evaluation for teachers 1:

Assesment rubrics for oral presentation

Topic:

excelent good acceptable weak

The organisation of the presented information

The presentation is logical and clearly arranged.

Easy to follow and understandable.

Varied with interesting elements

The knowledge of the students

Were able to demonstrate their knowledge

During the explanation their were relaxed, self-confident and persuasive

Were able to explain the topic to their mates in details and on a high standard

The language of the presentation

They can use the appropriate terminology

They have a rich vocabulary

The way of communication

The presentation is fluent.

The speech is clear and understandable.

They didn’t have any problems with the loudness.

Their explanation was suggestive.

They were always faces the audience.

After an interruption they were able to continue talking easily.


A6

Evaluation for students

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Comenius School Partnerships Project 2010 - 2012 · evaluating a multilingual presentation in a professional context. During the Comenius project weeks these phases were tested, revised