The 'flipped classroom' approach in the German beginner context

‘Flipped learning’ (Bergmann and Sams, 2012) has gained popularity since the mid-2000s. It has been defined as a ‘pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning spaces to the individual learning spaces’ (Flipped Learning Network, 2014). The classroom is thereby transformed into a space in which more dynamic interactions can take place to facilitate higher-level learning.
In recent years, the flipped classroom has been widely adopted in Higher Education as a key pedagogy, and many UK institutions actively encourage their staff to implement this approach in their teaching practice. The flipped classroom is usually associated with online resources, particularly videos and other web-based applications. While this is undoubtedly the case, the concept behind the approach predates new learning technologies and many key ideas of this approach have always been an essential part of language learning and teaching.
The aim of this article is to reduce the perceived barriers to ‘flipping’ the language classroom. The chapter will give a brief overview of flipped learning as a framework and provide examples of the application of the flipped learning approach in ab initio language teaching. This is followed by a critical evaluation of methods and materials for flipping the classroom, based on experience with ab initio learners of German.