Hi Torsten,
I’d like to update you on the last English sessions (Wednesday through Friday) in AFI Delitzsch. I am quite satisfied with the group, and due to this special classroom I think we can learn much better than in the other rooms of the school. There is a good group balance and sense of cohesiveness in spite of the heterogeneous character of the group.
On Wednesday I used my own hands-out, since I didn’t have the book provided by AFI. We repeated the basics you had practised with them, i.e., the verb to be, personal pronouns, the simple present, the verb to be etc. As usually, I had everyone introduce himself or herself (name, age, profession, origin, nationality, hobbies etc. ). I tried to clarify what it is important to learn English or generally any other language in the world, of course I focused the lesson on the basic rules to learn English:
What is English? Why do we need English? I actually found out that they are motivated and regard English as an important language in Germany and worldwide. I stressed the existence of false friends (handy, smoking, wife is not Weib, car is not Karre), gave them some rules and tricks to convert German words into English and vice versa. Also, they learnt about anglicisms in the German language (here in small letters): car sharing, outlet, public viewing (attention!!! doesn’t have often the same meaning), clean, hardware, software, marketing, top, hit, subway, family, kids etc.
We spent enough time classifying the English vocabulary of the first lessons into the different categories found in the conventional grammar: verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, idioms and expressions and others.
The sentence structure was explained and the basics of the word position in an English sentence.
On Wednesday we learned the lyrics of Wind of Change late in the afternoon. The several words in the song were classified into nouns, verbs (also modal verbs), prepositions, important grammatical and lexical endings (such as: -s, -ing, -er etc…)
" Title: Scorpions - Wind of Change lyrics - This song originated in Han(n)over (Lower Saxony) and its lyrics celebrate the political changes in Eastern Europe in 1990-1991.
I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park (This was surely interesting not only for our Russian participant Igor Igushin, I think)
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change
The world closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close,like brothers
The future’s in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change
Chorus:
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change
Walking down the street
Distant memories
Are buried in the past forever
I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change
The wind of change blows straight
Into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring
The freedom bell for peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change
On Thursday, in addition to the repetition of some known vocabulary + grammar in form of exercises, we continued to discover new associations with the old vocabulary. Furthermore, we discussed some efficient memory tricks to learn vocabulary, expressions etc. The usage of the business vocabulary in the English handbook (and more) were first explained and then practised: outlet, company, department, revenue, share, subsidiary, advertising, production, items, etc.
In order to avoid monotony in the class, I came up with interesting facts in the international (English) world: English-speaking countries in the world, EU-countries (how many?), EFTA-countries, some important international, British and USA corporations or companies such as IKEA (Sweden), Toyota (Japan), Microsoft (USA), BMW (USA), Siemens (Germany), Tesco (GB), MacDonalds (USA), Wal-Mart (USA);
famous personalities and billionaires in the world (Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, Van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, Al Pacino, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, William Gates, Carlos Slim, Theo Albrecht etc. ).
I’ll summarize the rest of the covered aspects (Thursday and Friday):
- how much / how many: mass, volume, units; singular and plural
- do/does, don’t, doesn’t: exceptions of the usage of this auxiliary verb.
- modal verbs and the prep. to.: I can come tomorrow
- general basic vocab: time expression, telling the time, days of the week, months, seasons of the year; different parts of a house, objects found in a room/office
- possessive pronouns: my, your etc.
- regular and some irregular plural forms; geese, feet, teeth, mice, women, men
- the verb “to have”
- giving a talk or making a presentation
- spelling and pronunciation exercises
- numbers
- the three sectors of economy: primary, secondary and tertiary sector; agriculture, raw materials, industry, manufacturing and production, services, education etc.
On Thursday we listened to the song “Unchain my heart” by Joe Cocker late in the afternoon too.
Have a nice weekend and regards,
Roberto