Emoji writing in German Studies

Introduction

Alexandra Ludewig (The University of Western Australia), in collaboration with her colleague Alisa Tellmann from Northern Italy, explores strategies relating to “Creativity and Energizers in DaF and DaZ Teaching”. For a number of years now, they have been experimenting with energisers in their respective foreign language classrooms.

Assessment

This is a formative exercise used as an in-class exercise to practice with the contents taught.

Rationale

Designed as little interventions, they are meant to loosen things up, e.g. as an introduction, or to provide an impulse when energy levels and attention drop, or even to say goodbye to everyone with a laugh. They are suitable for use both in online settings as well as in face-to-face teaching and encourage students’ engagement and motivation.

In the process, Ludewig and Tellmann have formed their own little community of practice as they share their experiences with one another across continents and time zones.

Such energizers can be non-verbal (such as the request to summarise the text, film or topic of class discussion entirely in emojis) or hyper-verbal (such as the request to come up with the longest, grammatically correct sentence that summarises the text, film or topic of class discussion in 2 minutes).