Authentic Englishes.nrw –

Production of digital teaching/learning materials for NRW on English varieties

The curriculum for grammar and comprehensive schools in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) explicitly calls for greater awareness of English varieties in teacher training. This includes the ability of future teachers to embed different varieties of English into their lessons. Especially for university teaching, however, hardly any suitable materials are currently available.

For this reason, researchers at the Universities of Paderborn, Bielefeld and Münster are developing innovative teaching and learning materials on varieties of English using digital media. The focus of the joint project Authentic Englishes.nrw is on the three areas of competence that are essential for future teachers with regard to the core curriculum in schools and that promote their knowledge of varieties in general: 'Understand', 'Describe' and ‘Teach’.

Project aims

In addition to British and American English, the more traditional varieties taught in schools, linguistic materials on various English varieties, especially Nigerian, will be collected and edited in the form of podcasts, audio examples, digital lectures, screencasts and explanatory videos, among other things, in a way that is appropriate for the target group and up-to-date. In a first step, the newly created teaching/learning materials will be tested and evaluated at the participating universities and in a second step made available for teaching at universities throughout NRW.

Duration of the project

The project is funded by the OERContent.nrw line of funding of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Culture and Science (MKW) (October 2020 to September 2022).

Consortium leader and partners

Consortium leader: University of Paderborn (Contact person: Prof. Dr. Ilka Mindt)

Involved: Bielefeld University (Contact persons: Prof. Dr. Anne Schröder, Dr. Peter Schildhauer), University of Münster (Contact person: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gut)