3 Weeks in Mönchengladbach
I’ve just returned from 3 weeks in Mönchengladbach, and I would like to share my experiences on the forum. I’ve been meaning to post this for the last fortnight, but found myself adding more and more, so I do hope that everyone finds it helpful.
I was teaching at WBS Mönchengladbach , and found them to be a wonderful organisation to work with, and they were all extremely welcoming and helpful. They insisted that I join them for coffee every morning and we shared tips and stories.
The students were great, and had a keenness and devotion to learning that I very much admired and respected. Like many of these assignments, the classes are populated by those who have sadly found themselves out of a job, mainly due to corporate downsizing, and also sometimes the bankruptcy of their employer.
They certainly want to re-enter the workforce in as suitable a capacity as possible, and while their future employment prospects might not even include a regular need to speak English, their English ability might become the “icing on the cake” (an idiom which I used regularly with them).
Their desire to find employment formed the basis of their devotion to their lessons, and, as a teacher, I cannot overstate the delight I feel in this type of attitude. I previously taught at an Australian university, and those lessons took a delightfully interactive, spontaneous direction at times, and the students certainly responded well to that. While giving private English lessons, particularly to children whose parents are essentially forcing the lessons upon them, that desire to learn and better their abilities is often absent, leading to a somewhat unsatisfactory experience for both teacher and student.
I was also informed that such an ongoing interaction with a native English speaker was a rarity for them, and so to speak English for such extended periods of time was something that they were not used to. There was some evidence of this in the first few days, but they all performed admirably, and there was a noticeable level of improvement over the 3 short weeks.
The class size was quite compact, only 9 students, which is certainly helpful, as you can be as generous with one on one work as needed, without disrupting the direction of the lesson.
Of the 9 students, there were varying levels of ability, which was slightly problematic sometimes, as some aspects of the curriculum were extremely challenging for some students, and were perhaps too remedial for other students.
I made a point of having regular group discussion sessions, using predetermined topics, and having students with greater abilities in spoken English certainly helped. They allowed the conversation to flow, and helped those with less confidence in their abilities to keep up. I found that when speaking English, and trying to vocalise a complex thought or idea, they would say it to themselves first in their own language, before phrasing it in English. This certainly helped all students to understand. I find that I do the same when attempting German.
As far as actual in class activities went, there was a fairly exhaustive curriculum set by WBS, which still allowed plenty of room for additional exercises, activities and discussions. Incidentally, I found that as someone from New Zealand who also lived for 10 years in Australia, there was never a shortage of discussion topics, as there seems to be a German fascination with that part of the world, and my students bombarded me with questions about every aspect of life down under, which I answered to the best of my abilities, although I must say that questions wondering what actual subspecies of marsupial a koala is, as opposed to a possum, were beyond me…
One of the first items covered was the use of tenses; present simple, perfect and continuous, past simple, perfect and continuous, and of course future simple, perfect and continuous.
I found that there was much confusion with the correct usage of “have” vs. “has been ,” and that there were also multiple errors when using continuous tense, regardless of whether it was past, present or future. I was able to take more time for exercises to practise these areas, which were necessary before we could move onto other areas.
I began to start both the morning and afternoon sessions with some spelling and vocabulary building exercises, in which I would select 15 words suitable for a pre-intermediate level and would test them on spelling and comprehension of these words. This was a successful way of expanding their vocabularies, and I was delighted to see them learn new words and then to almost immediately (and correctly!) incorporate them into their spoken English.
I did intensive work on the correct use of tenses by undertaking a number of activities in which they would need to speak about themselves in all tenses (their background, what they hope to get from the class, what their hobbies and interests are and also their plans for the future). I expanded on this by having them write 5 questions that could feasibly asked in a job interview, and then interview each other.
Also, for implementing their work on tenses, I wrote down a fairly generic job title on a piece of paper and handed one to each class member. The class then had to guess the job by asking each student a series of questions that could only be answered by yes or no (“Do you work with machines?” “Did you have to go to university for this job?” etc.).
In the subsequent week I expanded on this, by giving them each a piece of paper with the name of a public figure written on it, therefore requiring them to ask more complex questions, and to be quite precise with the type of information requested. The public figures varied widely (Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, Napoleon, etc.) and this activity proved extremely popular.
Despite the fact that their previous interactions with the English language were quite minimal, they could quickly grasp the concept of the pronoun and the reflexive pronoun, and the method of giving a sentence depth and clarity by the addition of an adverb.
We also covered the idea of using comparative and superlative adjectives for more complex sentence construction.
I also found myself teaching them a great number of colloquialisms, phrasal verbs and idioms. We had great fun dissecting the literal meanings of the standalone sentences, and then the idiomatic understanding by the greater English speaking world. They were able to correctly use a huge number of idioms, largely from their exposure to English language films and television programmes viewed without dubbing.
On my last few days with them, the spelling and vocabulary lists I tested them on were comprised almost entirely of homophones and homonyms, and we all enjoyed looking at the often vastly different meanings of words that sound and/or are spelt the same.
One of the last activities I had with the group was a fairly advanced practise of their written and spoken English. I divided the class into 2 groups, and then explained the general premise of a formal academic debate. I assigned one team as the affirmative and the other as the negative. I gave them a very generalised discussion topic (“Angela Merkel is doing a good job”), and had them workshop the idea in their groups (using only English) and formulating an argument dependent on whether they were in the affirmative or negative team. I observed the progress of their process, moving between the groups, listening to them work through their ideas and convert them to written form. After sufficient preparation time, I had them debate, and was immensely pleased by both the complexity of their ideas, and their ability to articulate them in English. Despite the enforced opposite viewpoints, the general consensus was that Angela Merkel is not, in fact, doing a good job. I told them that this demonstrated the difficulty in having to argue a point of view that you were not in agreement with.
It was a wonderful, rewarding teaching experience, and I would go back to Mönchengladbach without thinking twice. I was extremely gratified when, on my last day, a number of students told me how much they had enjoyed my lessons. Great students make it so much more pleasurable to teach, and I can say with certainty that, if they keep up their practice, they’ll all go very far with their English.
-Oliver Johnston