Málfríður - 15.05.2002, Side 31

The third thing is to make the pupils
aware of their own progress — and of
course see to it that they make some kind
of progress in every lesson. When you do
not have the opportunity to exercise your
knowledge outside the classroom you can
easily get the feeling of no progress and,
like a lot of pedagogical phenomena, this
one tends to be self-fulfilling. So make it
clear to the pupils that they have learned
something new every day. The easiest
thing is to learn from the teaching of
mathematics: Make teaching task-orien-
tated. Give the pupils tasks and see to it
that they can solve the tasks in the lan-
guage. — But there are other ways, for
instance introducing autonomy.
The fourth thing is to make the coun-
try of the language real to the pupils.They
have to experience authentic material
from the country which in some way
makes them curious about its ways. It is
crucial to the teaching of another lan-
guage than English to demonstrate to the
pupils that through it they get access to
things different from the global, English,
world culture.
Things you cannot do
Two things are not possible in teaching
“less widely used languages”. You cannot
use grammar except in very small doses at
a time. It seems that progress in grammar
does not count as progress in mastering
the language.
The other thing is that you cannot
motivate pupils to learn the language by
referring to goals not interesting at the
time of teaching. For instance by saying
that the pupils might need to go to
Denmark for further education. — They
will not believe you.
The changed role of Danish in
Iceland
This concludes my paper.The example of
the role of Danish in Iceland shows a
decline from “the language of power and
culture” to a “less widely spoken” lan-
guage.There is nothing sad about that, and
it is my belief that the same thing is hap-
pening here and now to German and
French. My thesis is that this has implica-
tions for the methods we use in teaching
these languages and that the relative suc-
cess in recent years of teaching Danish in
Iceland shows awareness of implications
we have to think of if we want to improve
our teaching.
References
Karen Risager: Globalisering og internationaliser-
ing — venner eller fjender? Sprogforum nr. 13,
vol. 5,1999, s. 7-11.
Pétur Rasmussen: De skandinaviske sprogs kommu-
nikationsflade pá Island. Undervisning i skandi-
naviske sprák pá Island, Færoyene og Gronland.
Nordisk Spráksekretariats Rapporter 8. Oslo
1988 s. 6-15. (Revideret udgave: Nyt fra Island
1988/1 s. 8-12.)
Pétur Rasmussen: Ledelsespraksis og undervisnings-
former. En sporgeskemaundersogelse af
danskundervisningens praksis pá Island. Islands
Universitet, Reykjavík (1984) 1987.
J. Normann Jorgensen (red.): Det danske sprogs sta-
tus ár 2001 — er dansk et truet sprog?
Danmarks Lærerhojskole, Kobenhavn 1991.
A version in Danish of this paper is printed in
Fransk Nyt 225 • Árhus 2000.
Pétur Rasmussen
aðstoðarskólameistari
Menntaskólans v/Sund
It is crucial to
the teaching of
another lan-
guage than
English to
demonstrate to
the pupils that
through it they
get access to
things different
from the global,
English, world
culture.
31