Sunday, May 25, 2014

Playing with words... in German


Almost two weeks before the C1 German exams and I thought we should relax a bit and listen to some music, play with words, create poetry....
Some people will just say: "WHAT? Are you CRAZY? What are you doing? You have two weeks! TWO weeks!! Do some tests!! Work on Grammar!!And more tests!!!!"""
But I will not do that.... OK, yes, tests and compositions as homework, yes, comment on the written work, yes, talk on the guidelines, but , NO, I will refuse to get stressed...
My way? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't....
But believe me, a few more tests will not "save" the student, if they don't actually care about the language, if they don't take a book or a newspaper, magazine and read, if they don't watch a film, if they don't listen to a song, actually listen and try to understand what it means. That goes for all languages...
I said it in the Pecha Kucha in TESOL Macedonia Convention  and I will say it again: Our goal is to be able to produce language, not get a certificate and forget everything afterwards. If you can do that, then yes , you will probably pass the exam as well.

Especially with the German language, we have to try harder, since it is not a language you come across the whole time like English...

So what did we do today?
I have found a wonderful site created by Goethe Institut, USA. It covers various fields, like culture, music and football, called "Step into German"
Every month they have a new song with worksheet and exercises on the song.

This month's song was called "Einmal um die Welt" by an artist called Cro.



Well, my student Katerina and I went beyond the suggested activities that included questions to initiate conversations and mix&match exercises, we also wrote a poem with rimed words from the song-text.
And here is the result:

Ich bin wirlkich tot,

Gib mir ein bisschen Brot.

Ich brauche eine Hand.

So brechen wir die Wand.

Ich wasche mire die Haare mit Shampoo

und erinnere mich and deine Handkuss.

Ich habe kein Geld,

was auch mir nicht gefällt.

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