Semiotics and Translation in support of mother tongue teaching

This paper includes a number of observations which derive from an interdisciplinary approach to teaching Greek as a mother tongue using the course books recommended by the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Semiotics, translation and teaching are studied comparatively, perhaps for the first time in Greece, in an attempt to record the effectiveness of multi-semiotic texts in the teaching and learning of mother tongue in primary schools

Digital Storytelling for Teaching EFL Process Reading and Writing

A 6-month action research carried out with two classes of 6 th Graders in a state primary school in Greece investigated whether the telling of stories in electronic form Reinders 2011 p 2 could enhance young EFL learners reading and writing skills in terms of the Waystage A2 criteria of language competence specified by the State Certificate of Language Proficiency The control group was taught through the official textbook whereas the experimental group engaged in interactive reading and computer-assisted collaborative process writing with a view to producing the script for their digital narrations The research findings verified the researchers initial assumptions concerning the favorable impact of digital storytelling on the reading and writing skills of the experimental group Their significance lies in that they offer EFL teachers more options to enhance their learners reading and writing skill

The Development of Speaking Skills using the Immersion Teaching Model: A Case Study of a 5th Grade Greek Primary Class in an EFL Context

This paper investigates the development of students’ speaking skills, using the Immersion Teaching Model (ITM) as a form of process differentiation. It aims to explore whether the ITM intervention in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context will have an impact on the students’ speech development and motivation, and will furthermore investigate its feasibility as a teaching approach. A 5th Grade class of a Greek state Primary school was used and action research was implemented. The research findings revealed enhancement of the speaking skills for the students that have at least an initial level of language speaking competence, but no difference was detected for the students of no speaking competence, indicating the need for further differentiation. However, the ITM intervention was proven feasible to use in the EFL classroom and highly affective to student motivation. The implications of the present research for the EFL context have shown that the ITM is flexible enough to accommodate the diverse educational needs, and benefit meaningful speech production if appropriately applied