Learning Languages, Learning Life Skills (eBook)

CONTENTS 6
Acknowledgements 9
1 INTRODUCTION 11
1.1 Purpose of the study 11
1.2 Theoretical and methodological foundations of the study 15
1.3 How the research theme was developed 18
1.4 Lived experience and theoretical knowledge intertwined – a way of approaching this study 22
2 PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A TEACHER – autobiographical approach to teaching and education 24
2.1 Studying one’s own teaching 25
2.2 Concepts used in autobiographical research 27
2.3 Knowing in teaching and education 29
2.4 Nature of experiential autobiographical knowledge 34
2.5 Modes of autobiographical knowledge in teaching and education 35
2.6 I as the auto/biographical I 37
2.7 Possibilities and limits of knowing about oneself 40
3 A PARADIGM OF MEANING, LANGUAGE AND “ SILENCE” 44
3.1 Research orientation based on a holistic conception of man 44
3.2 Meaning, a paradigm of meaning, and a meaning relationship 48
3.3 Experience, meaning, and language 51
3.4 Metaphor and the capacity of language to create new meanings 53
4 EXPLICATING METHODOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS 56
5 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REFLEXIVE APPROACH IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHING LANGUAGE AND CULTURE FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES 62
5.1 Goals of professionally oriented language education 62
5.2 Principles of curriculum design 64
5.3 Integration of topics, activities, and experience 68
5.4 Significance of studying language and encountering skills 73
6 EXPLORING AND IMPLEMENTING THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REFLEXIVE APPROACH 80
6.1 Learning a foreign language as learning life-skills – classroom work promoting autobiographical reflexive being- in- the- world 80
6.2 Being and activities planned beforehand – the open- ended tasks promoting the ownership of foreign language learning 84
6.3 Being and activities in the course not planned beforehand 109
6.4 A session in the autobiographical language class – studying the topic of Being elderly 138
7 THREE STORIES EXPLORING WHAT A GOOD FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING IS 155
7.1 Persons and their voices – learning from personal stories 155
7.2 Three students, three learning processes 157
7.3 What do the three personal stories tell us about good foreign language learning? 185
7.4 Personal stories as a pedagogic activity in foreign language learning 187
8 EPILOGUE: TEACHING AS HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION 190
REFERENCES 197
SUBJECT INDEX 224
AUTHOR INDEX 229