Teaching Cosmopolitanism through Transnational Literature in English

The book introduces a teaching approach that seeks to prepare students in multicultural EFL-classrooms for their role as world citizens. The study unfolds the construct cosmopolitan communicative competence to provide a tool for the empirical assessment of students' competences. This tool serves to evaluate the potentials of the teaching approach.

The book deals with the question how students in multicultural EFL-classrooms can be prepared for their role as world citizens. The author shows that teaching English offers important potentials for cosmopolitan education due to its role as a «lingua franca». The study develops the construct cosmopolitan communicative competence as a theoretical framework. It also presents a teaching approach that combines students' life-writing with the discussion of literary texts to advance the associated knowledge, skills and attitudes. The potentials of this approach are evaluated through the assessment of students' competence development.

Autorentext

Mirja Beutel is a lecturer in teacher education at the Ruhr-University Bochum. She holds a PhD and has longstanding teaching experience in secondary schools. Her research interests are transcultural language learning, learning with digital media and Content and Language Integrated Learning.

Inhalt

Cosmopolitanism in education Approaches to cultural learning in the EFL-classroom Advancing cosmopolitan communicative competence in a life-writing approach to transnational literature in English Teaching and assessing cosmopolitan communicative competence Findings of empirical assessment