Lumpi ist mein Hund: German for no particular purpose
I’ve just been preparing for an EAP event in Zürich on 27 September and it got me thinking about my own experiences of learning German; not altogether successfully.
My first contact with German was at secondary school where I
studied it for a year around the age of 13. This was back in the days of the
audio lingual method and we used a course called Vorwärts which involved
watching a slideshow about an apparently typical German family, the Schaudis,
and their supposed day-to-day life. We watched the slides, listened to the
audio (presumably on tape) then repeated. It was successful in the sense that I
can still remember many of the sentences we learnt verbatim to this day.
Unfortunately, they weren’t always particularly useful - here’s a selection of
the ones that stick in my mind (apologies for the spelling, as far as I
remember, we only drilled them orally):
Der Hase ist tot.
(The rabbit is dead.)
Hilfe, hilfe, mein Bein ist gebrochen. Hast du eine Hansaplast?
(Help, help, my leg is broken. Have you got a sticking plaster?)
Hilfe, hilfe, mein Bein ist gebrochen. Hast du eine Hansaplast?
(Help, help, my leg is broken. Have you got a sticking plaster?)
After a bit of googling, I found somewhat of a cult following for the Schaudi family – Mr and Mrs Schaudi, their son Hans, his ‘friend’ Lieselotte and not forgetting Lumpi the dog - which has backed up many of my recollections of the slightly obscure language input - although not admittedly the bit about the plaster!
Some years later, when I finished university, I spent 6
months in Basel working as an au pair and thought I’d better try and learn
something more useful, so I enrolled for weekly German classes at the local
Micros Klubschule. I really enjoyed the classes. There was a fascinating mix of
different nationalities and we had a really nice young teacher. Looking back,
he did a fantastic job with such a diverse mix of complete beginners and was
actually part of my inspiration for becoming a language teacher in the first
place. And from what I remember of the course, I think it was mostly useful
stuff, with lots of basic everyday phrases and vocabulary.
The only slight drawback was that the course taught High German (standard German, if you like, as spoken in Germany), but the language I was surrounded by in Basel was mostly Swiss German, a different dialect with a very different accent and quite a few completely different words and phrases. This was quite confusing, especially because, as a beginner, I had no feel for what was High German and what was Swiss German, so I ended up speaking a rather odd mix of the two. This didn’t matter too much while I was in Switzerland as people mostly got the gist of what I was trying to say (albeit at a very basic level). However, when, at the end of my stay, I travelled back through Germany, I got quite a different reaction. Some people just looked at me a bit puzzled and took a while to work out what I wanted, but I remember one guy in a cafe who couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. I don’t think he was being mean, but clearly my dodgy accent and odd hybrid dialect did just sound rather comical. As a result, it was many many years before I risked speaking even a few words of German in public again.
The only slight drawback was that the course taught High German (standard German, if you like, as spoken in Germany), but the language I was surrounded by in Basel was mostly Swiss German, a different dialect with a very different accent and quite a few completely different words and phrases. This was quite confusing, especially because, as a beginner, I had no feel for what was High German and what was Swiss German, so I ended up speaking a rather odd mix of the two. This didn’t matter too much while I was in Switzerland as people mostly got the gist of what I was trying to say (albeit at a very basic level). However, when, at the end of my stay, I travelled back through Germany, I got quite a different reaction. Some people just looked at me a bit puzzled and took a while to work out what I wanted, but I remember one guy in a cafe who couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. I don’t think he was being mean, but clearly my dodgy accent and odd hybrid dialect did just sound rather comical. As a result, it was many many years before I risked speaking even a few words of German in public again.
The point being that for any language learner it’s important
to understand what they’re learning, why and how they can use it. In English
for Academic Purposes (EAP), the purpose, as the name suggests, should be
obvious, but that isn’t always the case. Over the past 10 years of working in
EAP as a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer, I’ve discovered that
different students, teachers and institutions can all have quite different
expectations about what learning academic English should involve. And when
students’ expectations don’t seem to match what they’re being taught, they
easily become demotivated and disenchanted, switching off at best and at worst,
being openly hostile.
In my session in Zürich, I’ll be talking about how we can deal
with students’ expectations and keep them on side by making the rationale for
what we do in class clearer; by explaining to students exactly what we’re doing,
why and how it fits in with their own academic studies.
I’m looking forward to visiting Zürich, meeting teachers and
finding out what teaching EAP in Switzerland is like. You never know, I might
even be brave enough to try out a little bit of German …
If you’re in the area and would like to come along, you can
find out more information and register for the event here (it’s free, you just
need to sign up).
Labels: EAP, German, language learning, Oxford EAP, Zurich
3 Comments:
If I remember rightly, it ran: "Ach schade! Mein bein es tut weh! Es ist vielleicht gebrochen.
I find it hard to believe that there aren't more comments on this blog. I spent much of my youth going "oo" between sentences when speaking to friends.
Wir suchen Diamanten. Vergessen Sie die Socken nicht! This was another great phrase I've never used. I have fond memories of this course though.
Haha. I too learned German for a short time at school in the 80s and we had this course. I think it was because we were learning a second foreign language and so we got the (even then) ancient Vorwarts (apologies for the missing umlaut)course which played on an old fashioned spool tape recorder. I believe this line was delivered by the squeeky and awful Klaus, Hans's friend. I just found this because I am currently enjoying Duolingo Spanish and was laughing with a friend about some of the silly phrases they offer as the wrong (and sometimes the correct) answer and I wanted to show that there were worse examples. Apart from how to ask a dog for help when you've (ahem) 'broken' your leg, I remeber how to ask how to get to the cinema and that there was an esso campaign 'pack den tiger in den tank' and that's about it, sadly. Oh well, maybe German after Spanish
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