[etni] Fw: re: History in English
- From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:27:53 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: Mitzi Geffen - mitzi1002001@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [etni] fw: History in English
I think this thread is very interesting. Do you all remember the topic of
the composition for the 5 point bagrut a year ago? The kids were asked to
express their opinion about a suggestion from the ministry to have different
subjects taught in English. I marked about 1000 exams, and every single one
was opposed to the idea! Most of the kids said that the subject teachers
didn't know enough English to teach in English and the English teachers
didn't know enough about the subject to teach the subject. Another reason
that was frequently given was that subjects taught in Hebrew raises the
Hebrew level of the students and that would be lost if those subjects were
taught in English.
I have to say that I agree with the kids. Though I think general knowledge
is improved through much of what we do in English class - especially through
the projects, I am strongly against testing subject matter in English. We
should not be testing knowledge about History or any other subject, we
should be testing fluency and accuracy in English. I think it's not fair for
success on an English test to depend on knowledge of History.
Wishing everyone an interesting and successful new school year.
Mitzi
Nehama wrote:
>I have thought of a similar idea for a few years now.
>In order to make our teaching relevant to the pupils
>what is better than making it part of the curriculum of
>other subjects. In this way there is no more "there is
>nothing to study for the English exam" excuse.
>My vision is teaching parallel to other subjects, part
>of the material or supplementary to it. For instance,
>one month we teach about the industrial revolution at
>the same time as the History teacher does. The month after
>that, we teach about rain forests with the geography
>teacher. etc.
>The pupils are tested at the same time on what they learnt
>in the Hebrew and English classes - content wise. Of course
>in the English class we use the texts we teach also for
>teaching English as we always do i.e. grammar, vocab, writing etc.
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