The last Danish Lesson - the best Danish Lesson.:-)

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the last Danish lesson as it wasn't based on speaking but on creating a poster with traditional recipes. Me and Katka worked in group with Viki and we created a Goulash poster as goulash is popular both in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
This activity was really great but a bit time-consuming. Each group created the poster in its own style and therefore each poster is very creative and original.
The Danish teacher was very nice and friendly, though a bit confused as she thought that we had one more Danish lesson next week.
In the evening there was Czech-Polish-Norwegian night in Student's Cafe. We prepared traditional Czech refreshment called "Jednohubky", one version with cheese and garlic spread, one with fish and onion spread and all people liked it. Norwegian girls baked great waffles and Polish girls had 2 funny games (eating apples in pairs without using hands) and feeding a person, while the feeding person is blindfolded. We all enjoyed it a lot.

Danish and European stereotypes

Jete Lauren's classes are always very well prepared and interesting. And Jete is such a great teacher - always in a good mood, helpful and really interested in our problems and worries. We were talking about stereotypes - how they work, why people think in stereotypes and so on.
Before I came to Denmark, I thought that Denmark is quite an expensive countryk, Danish people are quite calm and reserved and that Danish school system is on a very high level. I would say that these ideas are quite true, although Danish people I've met so far were rather friendly and hearty. I didn't have any prejudices against Denmark and I really like this country. Maybe I thought that Danish people are more "green" and environmentally friendly. But I would say that the opposite is true. They seem not to recycle as there are no containers for recycled garbage /paper, glass, plastics. Also at school they waste paper - they use just one side of a paper sheet.
We played an interesting game with Jete. We were supposed to introduce ourselves in stereotypes. You can tell I'm Czech because...

• I drink beer a lot
• I love company and being with friends
• I am quite skilful
• I don't like rules and am quite good at breaking rules
• I often complain about things I do not like
  

Danish, Aesthetic learning processes, Globalisation and citizenship

First of all, I would like to say that here in Denmark there is a big difference in how each class is done. Some of them are lecture-like (Aesthetic learning processes, Globalisation and citizenship), some require our activity. I have to say that I prefer the latter because it's virtually impossible to pay attention to what teacher is saying for three hours, although there are some breaks.
Our Danish teacher tries to make her classes active - we worked in pairs, made circles and practised the Danish phrases, and played a game with a ball. It was all quite fine. But a big problem is that we do not know how to pronounce the phrases correctly. We repeat after the teacher, but the class is too big and I cannot hear her properly. We also repeat just twice, which is not enough. She also said that some activites we do are boring. In my opinion the teacher should never say anything like this because the moment he/she says it, the pupils lose their attention because they do not want to do anything that is boring. I also wish we learned some basic phrases like Good Morning, Thank you, etc... Because when I come to a supermarket, I really do not know what to say.

Aesthetic learning processes had a very promising begining. We played some ice-breaker games and we really got the right mood for studying. However, after the wonderful beggining an extremely boring lecture began. I don't even know how the matter of the lecture could be used in a classroom. If we had done only some useful games and activities like in the first part of the lesson, it would have been much better.

The first part of Globalisation and citizenship was also like a lecture. We learned why it is important to learn about citizenship. Then we worked in groups. We were given a sheet of paper with thoughts of different historians, philosophers and scholars. Our task was to discuss these ideas in groups and choose 3 statements we like and give some arguments and find 1 that we do not agree with. It was quite a good activity but the ideas were really complicated, written in very advanced English and I think that they weren't understandable for everybody. It was difficult even for me, although I study English. But the teacher was very nice and I quite liked this class.

I'm also getting used to Iben Jensen's teaching style. She's a little bit crazy (in a good way), funny and energetic. When she enters the class she's like a huricane and everybody has to pay attention to what she's saying. This time we discussed how to start classes and how to motivate students and we also worked in groups of 3 people and talked about different pictures and tried to find how they could be used at school.

Language and Identity & History

On Tuesday 9th we had Language and Indentity and History seminars. The aim of the first one was to make us aware of our perceiving languages. We drew our language portrait (we placed foreing languages into a picture of a human body and had to explain why we placed them like that). Then we worked in groups and discussed how different nations understand the meaning of different colours. We found out that for some people black colour is a symbol of death and darkness, for some it might be a positive colour. On the other hand, whereas white colour represents wedding and happiness, for someone it's a picture of the death. Also pink colour is perceived differently - some people love it, some cannot stand it. I enjoyed this seminar a lot. The only problem was that the teacher spoke too much, but she prepared her lesson carefully and we did a great number of different activities, such as drawing, creating a poem, reading, discussing, etc.
The History lesson was focused on some key events from Danish history and on the fact that European countries have a lot in common. Unfortunately, this lesson was a bit boring, although the teacher is very nice. In the end, the teacher livened it up because he asked us to sing our national anthems. So we did it and it was fun.

Studying in Denmarkfor more than a week I'm feeling that some teachers here make basic pedagogical mistakes - they speak too much, speak while they are facing the whiteboard and often aren't willing to lead a dialogue with students. They also do not use activating methods and there lessons seem to be scarcely prepared. They just enter the room, play a film or speak and speak and then go away. They do not want students to be active. Their aim seems to be just kill time they have for the class.

Storytellers - Danish literature and film

We had 2 seminars of this name - one on Friday 5th, one on Monday 8th. The first one was dedicated to Karen Blixen - a prominent Danish writer. We watched a documentary film on her life. Moreover, there is quite a famous film about her which is called "Out of Africa" with Meryl Strepp and Robert Redford starring. The film was interesting but too long and it was quite difficult to concentrate on it. In the second part of this lesson we divided into groups and prepared presentations which were supposed to introduce our country to others but we had to include a story in it.

On Monday we presented our presentations to other students. Some presentations were very well prepared but some students presented factual information, not a story. Our Czech group decided to tell others o tale of the Astronomical Clock in Prague. We used some extracts from "Goat Movie" and our presentation was quite successful.
It's interesting how different nations presented their countries in many different ways.

Spanish girls used just music, pictures and text and didn't say a word. Turkish girls had a nice presentation but they didn't know what some of pictures used in the presentation depict and their speech was sometimes a bit chaotic.
On Monday we also talked about Hans Christian Andersen and watched a film about his life. The film wasn't bad but it was too long - more than 3 hours. It would have been definitely a better idea if we had watched it at home. Watching films is not a really good idea because students got bored after a while and they do not pay attention!

Impressions of Our Courses

First day at school we had a kind of introductory seminar. On Tuesday we had a computer lesson and we learned how to keep a weblog and how to update it. The afternoon lesson was canceled because the teacher couldn't arrive because of the snow.
On Wednesday we had a Danish lesson and I was really loking forward to it as I wanted to learn some basic phrases. Unfortunately, this lesson was a big disappointment. Although the teacher used a good excercise as motivation (we had to guess at the meaning of Danish words which are common in other languages, too), otherwise she broke nearly all didactic rules concerning language teaching.
Although we didn't know how to pronounce phrases correctly, we had to practice them and repeat 3 phrases them in circles. No matter that everybody pronounced it differently. Moreover, she shot questions at us afterwards and wanted us to answer in a flash.
She also refused to transcribe the phrases on the blackboard so that we could pronounce them correctly and didn't even know how to write the Czech Republic and Czech.
The art lesson in the afternoon was much better. We tried to draw ourselves and we've done a lot of different techniques. We drew ourselves without looking at the paper, we measured our faces with a pencil, we also tried drawing with a white crayon. The teacher was really nice and friendly and I'm looking forward to seeing her again. You can view my self-portrait and judge how successful I was.:-)