More about school

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After being in the school for one week, I finally sorta know my schedule. I will mostly be working with a 5th grade class of 23 students. They have English lessons twice a week for 90 minutes.

Rolf told the students that I don't speak any German to motivate them to speak to me in English. It was so cute, because when they heard that, some of them got out their books and started looking up what they wanted to ask me. They have already had english for 2 years, so they can ask basic questions and form simple sentences. In the classroom, I usually work with small groups of students (3-5 at a time) on pronunciation. They read short dialogues or vocabulary lists for me and I make sure they say everything correctly.

Common Mistakes when Germans learn English:

• pronouncing ie/ei is difficult, because the word tie in German phonics is pronounced like tee.
• the sound th is difficult because it does not exist in German. They usually replace it with s-. So when they are "thinking" they would say "sinking"
• trouble with r- at the beginning of words, replacing it with w-
• switching of w- and v- sounds

A few observations:

• Being around middle schoolers makes me wear more deodorant
• Some of the children are MUCH better than others, but I'm sure that's true anywhere
• German keyboards are difficult for me to type on because some letters are switched as well as all the punctuation marks.


I would never tell her this, but a girl named Marie is my favorite. She found out that I was a dancer and told me that she does ballet. When we went to the gym today for Sport class, she pointed to things and started teaching me German words for them! :o)


PS - some of you may have missed the last entry, about my new apartment. There were more technical problems with the website and email alerts. Here are some more pictures from the apartment on facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32602487&l=2b8d94dde1&id=28304250

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