For those of you wondering, I teach German when I'm not blogging or dissertating or otherwise engaged. And it can be a wonderful experience -- like today, in 102, when the students really seemed to GET it and have fun. Or it can be kind of a downer, like tonight in my adult conversational German course .... We're 7 weeks in to a 10 week course, and I just wanted to check in to make sure they felt the course was going well, or how we might change things up. Especially in a class like this, you want to be sure students are getting the information they want, because time is so limited. Well, they want more "signs" -- i.e. signs one might encounter in driving or in stores, etc. And they want more phrases. Oh, and they want me to make them answer in complete sentences.
It's not like I haven't done any of those things. It's not as if everything I do isn't based on learning stock phrases and then learning how to change them up just a touch to suit their needs (today we focused on Ich suche -- I'm looking for... and Ich trage -- I'm wearing. The vocab were common everyday items and articles of clothing ---lots of pictures). And we've used basic little dialogues to learn phrases they might encounter and how to respond to them.
Ugh. It's painful to think that I'm just not getting through to them....
Enough whining, already -- it's late on the Monday after the end of Daylight Savings, and I haven't eaten yet, so I'm a little punchy. There are of course ways to include more signs, and make the signs more explicit; and there are all kinds of "learn German in 30 days" books full of the phrases they crave. And I can be a stickler about full sentences without too much difficulty as well.
Time for some pasta (Mueller's Tri Color Rotini "America's Favorite") and a steaming cup of Moroccan Mint tea -- very yummy.
Addendum ... ok, I really was having a long, bad day and I hadn't eaten; and they're all very nice people and one of my favorite classes ever. Truly. In spite of or including this particular day. And can I point out that my sleep schedule had been messed up by all of that daylight savings time business? I don't do well when the government randomly steals an hour of my sleep. I ended up making all of the changes they suggested, and the rest of the semester was fun, especially the day we met at Joe Muggs'.
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2 comments:
Sounds like they are a bunch of whiners. Maybe you should make them start speaking in complete sentences in English, too. Correct grammar in every language and see how much fun it can be :).
Sigh. I know the feeling. If my students ask for one more date in history (which I explicitly told them I don't care about), I'm going to scream. Hang in there.
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