What relevance does speaking have in primary schools and is the ‘Teilrahmenplan‘ aligned to meet the needs of speaking skills?

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,3, University of Koblenz-Landau (Institut für Anglistik und Romanistik), course: Teaching and Learning English at Primary Level, language: English, abstract: As in many other countries English is an important lingua franca in Germany. Before 2001, it was only learned from class five or in some states from class three. Since 2001, English or another foreign language is an obligatory subject in the primary school from class one to four. The ability to communicate in a foreign language should be supported. Speaking skills are necessary for achieving this goal. As a consequence, speaking tasks should occupy an important place in everyday school live. The ‘Unterrichtsorganisation Grundschule‘ allocates teaching time to all subjects and the foreign language acquisition got the fewest time of all primary school subjects. This term paper elaborates this problem and gives a brief overview about possibilities on how a teacher could handle this situation.