In this post we hear from Bee, an IWLP German Stage 3 student. Students on the German Stage 3 module complete a short research project as part of their Spring term assessment, which includes the opportunity to interview to German native speakers. Students prepare in classes beforehand and then use the interviews to feed into their findings for the project. This is a great opportunity for students to really use and develop their language skills authentically.
Hi everyone! My name is Bee and I’m excited to have got the opportunity to write this blog post. I’m a first year studying Creative Writing & Film, however I am currently taking a German module due to a general interest in learning languages and the fact that I took German for both GCSE and A-Level. I hope to do my best in learning as many languages as I can in the future, but German seemed like a great place to start. I definitely needed to brush up on it as I spent the year I took out before uni not using it at all.
As a part of the module, we got the opportunity to interview some native German speakers in preparation for a project that we have to write. It was a really interesting experience – although I have to admit I was a little nervous for it as I’ve never had to utilise my skills in German in front of those who speak it natively. I’ve met a few native German speakers before, but have always been so scared to speak it to them.
Throughout the experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I got through it with mostly no issues! I’m sure my German wasn’t perfect due to nerves, but I feel like that’s something that is bound to happen in a situation like that. Learning a new language can be really scary, but I feel like you’ll never get anywhere with it if you don’t put a little bit of trust in yourself, and this is something the experience with the native speakers taught me. It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you recognise them, correct them and are ready for further learning. Overall, I can say that the experience was very beneficial and I felt very accomplished afterwards.
See below for some pictures from the interviews:
