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Would you like to learn more German?
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- Category: German learning methods
You could be at home, you could be in a park, you could be on your own balcony. Every place is a good place to learn a bit of German. Here are three new ways you can learn a bit of German in any of those places.
1. eine Wortsuche
A word search is a good way to engage with German over a bit of time, but it's not so much energy that you can't get started or keep focused.
In fact, that's exactly what one client said about the newest word search activity:
"The word search was so entertaining and educational. Finding the words made the time fly by. Perfect pastime..."
The theme of that particular word search is »die schönsten Sachen im Leben« and it has 38 words in it.
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Heads-up: this is a rant post.
A long time ago I used a German book for both classes and lessons that wasn’t a good fit for either population. I didn’t like the layout, I didn’t like the cartoons, the instructions weren’t always clear, and sometimes the workbook exercises differed from what was in the chapter.
That made teaching with this book difficult, and it created an excessive amount of prep work, which caused me a lot of stress, because it also didn’t answer my students’ many questions. But that wasn’t even the worst part.
das Schlimmste ~ The Worst Part
The worst part was: often, the book would give beginning German students trick questions. At first I thought it had been a mistake, that somebody hadn’t properly checked and a few wrong answers went into the answer key, because I couldn’t understand asking trick questions of a beginner who could barely say “I’d like a coffee, please,” or “Yesterday I went to the bakery and bought two loaves of bread.”
It was mind-boggling.
And then it happened again. And again. And again.
We talked about it in the German class I was teaching then and my students and I realized trick questions were the norm for this book.
I was appalled.
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das Firmenjubiläum = company anniversary
Being an entrepreneur means you have a different view of how things should work, that things should develop quickly because things needn't stand in your way, and also that you can create what I call the culture of your business. The culture of my business is very different than other German classes and lessons and that starts with making this a professional venture.
Here I want people to learn to speak German, not just talk about it. Week after week, month after month I hear story after story of people who learned to read German literature in college but they can't hold a conversation in German. Folks show up for tutoring who are in a beginning German class and they're being asked to learn something that's actually at an intermediate level. Das macht mich wahnsinnig! If you are paying your good, hard-earned money (or your valuable student loan money!) to take a German class, you better darn well be acquiring skills for communicating in German.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
HERZLICHEN DANK FÜR ALLES!
~Ihre Frau Warner
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This is an email that I received from a client this summer after she had her Swiss Citizenship Interview. In addition to practicing speaking in German, we spent several lessons discussing the Swiss governmental system and how to prepare mentally for such an exam. Our final lesson before her interview was a practice interview. Here’s what she had to say.
N.B. This email has been edited for privacy, clarity and formatting.
Hello Nicole!
I did make it through my German language test in Switzerland over the summer. I believe it went well. My tester was great in that she spoke high German, and went very slowly…so in the end, I believe I understood all of the questions, and managed a response for each. I even managed to joke a bit about knowing that my German is “nicht fantastich” but that I was absolutely continuing with my learning and understood the importance of that.
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If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I have been working on an official certification for teaching German as a Foreign Language. I started at the end of 2015 and got really behind so I ended up spending much of last summer sitting at my computer, working through all the information. It was a tough slog.
Sechs Module - Six Modules
The course has 6 different modules and each module was the equivalent of a 120-page book plus exercises. The exercises ranged from simple reflection to mind maps to in-depth matching exercises. At the end of each module I had to design and execute a project that used one of the techniques in the book or something closely related to the material in the book. My clients were incredibly helpful and were happy to take part in the projects and give me feedback on the projects and worksheets I designed.
One project we did will actually become a little project for you, so when you see a challenge or a special Sprechseminar on vocabulary, you'll know where that project came from! :)
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