"SCIENCE AND EDUCATION IN THE MODERN WORLD:
CHALLENGES OF THE XXI CENTURY"
NUR-SULTAN, KAZAKHSTAN, JULY 2019
223
complete the project week successfully, the students have to come up with a product or service,
assessed by the teacher or a group of teachers.
As for the English and German project week group, there are two mentors (a teacher of
English and German and a teacher of English and Slovene) and approximately 24 students. The
main goal of this project week group is to get to know a new geographical area (e.g. Vienna,
Austria) in a student-friendly way, by researching the tourism-related features of that area
(general, social, cultural, historic) in English and/or German language online, preparingtheir
own written material for the speech in front of the camera on the spot (e.g. Vienna, Austria),
learning most of the text by heart in order to be more natural and confident in front of the
camera, compiling paragraphs/texts and visual material into a written English report that results
in a published booklet, and finally, by recording short video clips with a camera on the spot and
editing them into a twenty-minute-long video of the whole project week content.
Since we cover different tourist destinations (domestic and foreign), students get a
theoretical insight into the usage of proper standard and professional terminology in English
and German, which can be tested beforehand in front of the camera in a classroom, thus paying
attention to the proper diction, pronunciation and intonation during the speech as well as the
right position or steady movement of the camera and the body language of the person in front of
it.
The role of mentors in the whole project week is of vital importance. Ziwoya and
Falconer (2018, p. 534) claim that a mentor should be someone who has the expertise to help
the student develop and conduct the project. The student and mentor talk about specific
expectations on tasks, amount of time devoted to the project, and other aspects of the project to
ensure there is good mutual understanding. Acknowledging the latter statement, both mentors
provide students with and lead them into a proper introduction that consists of a group work
definition, personal introduction of all participants as well as the meaning and importance of
teamwork. Furthermore, the project week group discusses the aims of the chosen topic, the core
concept and day-by-day structural analysis of activities that later result in the practical part as
the preparation for the actual implementation of the speech in front of the camera in a specific
tourist destination. Additionally, mentors provide guidance and technical and language support
when recording and filming on the spot as well as when organizing the texts into a written
report. Finally, it is both mentors‘ obligation to check all the reports and recorded material
before and while being edited and to assess the final products of the English and German
project week group with the proper feedback.
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