This paper outlines the rationale for and the purpose of designing a thematic project based on themes of history of Greek philosophy for bilingual students in Greek primary education. More specifically, it presents a descriptive account of a thematic project to be introduced with the aim to develop not only L2 skills of immigrant children attending Greek primary schools but also their knowledge about the history of Greek philosophy within a multimodal context. The importance of such a project stems from the growing number of bilingual students in Greek primary education because of the fact that Greece has been an immigrant receiving country for the last two decades. The proposed project aims at promoting aspects of the history of the Greek philosophy and developing the language skills of bilingual students in Greek as a second language through their participation in various inquiry and creative writing activities as well as in activities of intergroup conversation and oral presentations. Given the fact that most of the content-based practices in Greece focus on a combination of language development with a typical school subject, this project is suggested to include themes of Greek philosophy and more specifically some of the most representative Philosophers so that bilingual students can raise their awareness of the era of philosophical research in Greece. For the evaluation of the effectiveness and feasibility of this thematic project, the researchers propose three methodological tools; a) a pre- and post- test to examine the language development progress and students’ knowledge about the history of Greek philosophy, b) teacher’s/researcher’s journals and c) students’ portfolios.
Altrichter, H., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (1993) Teachers Investigate their Work. An Introduction to the Methods of Action Research. London: Routledge.
Arnold, J. (1999). Affect in Language Learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.
Brown, J. O. (2002). Know thyself: the impact of portfolio development on adult learning. Adult Education Quarterly, 52(3), 228-245.
Griva, E., & Chostelidou, D. (2012). Additive bilingualism of immigrant children: introducing a multisensory project in kindergarten. In H. Switzer D. Foulker (Eds) Kindergartens: Teaching Methods, Expectations and Current Challenges, 83-104. USA: Nova Science publishers.
Griva, E., & Semoglou, ?. (2013). Foreign language and Games: Implementing Physical activities of creativity at early years (In Greek). Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis Editions.
Griva, E., Chostelidou, D., & Panteli, P. (2014). ?nsider views of CLIL in primary education: challenges and experiences of EFL teachers. International journal for innovation, education and research, 2 (8).
Hudelson, S. (1991). EFL teaching and children: a topic-based approach. English Teaching Forum.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in second language learning and acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.
Linares, A., & Whitaker, R. (2007) Talking and writing in a Foreign Language in CLIL contexts: a linguistic analysis of secondary school learners of geography and history. Revista española de lingüística aplicada, Monographic 1, 83-91.
Mehisto, P., & Asser, H. (2007). Stakeholder perspectives: CLIL programme management in Estonia. Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10(5), 683-701.
Nunan, D. (2002). The Teachers and Educators. SIG Newsletter, 3, 22-3.
Papadopoulos, I., & Griva, E. (2014). Learning in the traces of Greek Culture:a CLIL project for raising cultural awareness and developing L2 skills. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research. 8 (1), 76-92.
Papadopoulos, I., & Peiou, V. (2014). The foreign language development of students in a language and traditional dance integrated context: An implementation of a task-based learning project. Aspects Today Journal of English Language Teachers.
Papadopoulos, I. (2014). The dramatization of children literature books for the development of the second/foreign language: An implementation of a drama-based project to students of primary school. Journal of Study in English Language Teaching, 2(2).
Papadopoulos, I. & Griva, E. (2015). My “other” country through its tales: developing Greek language and cultural awareness of bilingual preschool children. Panhellenic Language Conference on the first language and multilingualism.
Richards, J., & Lockhart, C. (1994), Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 16 -17.
Stoller, F. (2004). Content-based instruction: Perspectives on curriculum planning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 261-283.
Tomlinson, B. (2000). A Multi-dimensional Approach. The Language Teacher, 23, 25-27.
Wade, R. C., & Yarbrough, D. B. (1996). “Portfolios: A Tool for Reflective Thinking in Teacher Education?”. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63-79.
Young, J. (2002). “Creating Online Portfolios Can Help Students See 'Big Picture,' Colleges Say”. Chronicle of Higher Education.
In-Text Citation: (Papadopoulos & Kalafati, 2016)
To Cite this Article: Papadopoulos, I. M., & Kalafati, A. (2016). Greek Language Development and awareness of Ancient Greek Philosophy: Introducing a Content-based Project to Immigrant Students. Multilingual Academic Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 4(1), 85–95.
Copyright: © 2016 The Author(s)
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
