My German 101 class needs some help. Not only do we speak way too much English in class, but some students can't even write out declarative sentences. I'm kinda pissed about this, so I decide today to give them a shock: What would it be like if we spoke absolutely no English?
It would be a complete waste of my time.
I started out with a simple game: Satzfangen. I start a sentence, then throw the ball to another student and he or she must finish the sentence. Ok, it took me ten minutes to even explain how we were playing the game. I think there were only two or three students who actually understood what a Satz (sentence) was. This word should be in their vocabulary from week one.
Then, we played Jeopardy. But with a class schedule. So (in German of course): George has (blank) on Monday. They look on the board and respond with: What is Math? Ok, this game went a little better. We were practicing expressions of time: on Monday, at twelve o'clock, every day, etc.
But then, I move on to separable verbs, like "to arrive". In German, they use a preposition with an already established verb to make a new verb like arrive. So, arrive is "ankommen" kommen means to come and is used on its own and an means at or on. So, if you think about it: I come at... sure, that could mean arrive. They are really struggling with this. And I'm unsure if my methods are working. But I couldn't think of another way to get the rule across, that when you conjugate, the preposition "an" comes after conjugating "kommen": Ich komme an = I arrive.
Wow, it was dismal. And I did not want to use English. At the end of class, I said in English: This was a shock day! This shows you how dependent you are on English, on your books. I told them that we want them to speak German from their heads, not from a book. But I'm not sure how I can teach them that when it's four weeks in and they're already so depedent on the book. Maybe I'll tell them from now on, in my classes, no books are allowed. But that's a bit extreme. Seriously, they had looks of relief on their faces when I said, Ok let's open our books to page 70. I don't like that. German has to be forced on them, not given to them softly and they decide what's important. No, it should become so ingrained that they just automatically respond and react to German.
I am so determined to get there, it's not even funny. I'm just so mad that they would be that dependent, but that reflects the teaching. So, I'm so reayd to revamp my style and force them to eat their words.... literally.