Suggested Methods and Materials for Teaching German in Elementary Schools

Abstract

The introduction of foreign language study into the curriculum of some elementary schools in the past few years has been most encouraging and deserves the wholehearted support of all teachers of foreign languages. Those interested in starting French or Spanish on this level are fortunate in that there are a number of established successful programs to which they can turn for information and materials, but in German our experience is much more limited. Consequently, anyone planning to set up a German program in an elementary school is handicapped by a lack of knowledge of methods, materials and realia, as well as by a lack of teachers trained for the job. There are, however, two programs in Germany from which it seems to me we can obtain worthwhile ideas and materials: namely, the teaching of English as a foreign language in the German Gymnasium, and secondly the teaching of German in the American Dependents Schools. The first two years in the Gymnasium are comparable to our fifth and sixth grades, so it would seem logical that at least some of the tried and proved methods of teaching a foreign language to children in German schools might be adapted to the teaching of German to our American children. We might learn something also from the kinds of exercises and reading material they use. From the now well established German program in the American Dependents Schools in Germany, where German is taught to thousands of children from the first grade on, we can likewise derive helpful information as to teachers' guides, methods and materials. Thus, when it was my good fortune to be able to spend the 1954-55 school year in Germany, I also looked into the possibilities just mentioned, and I should like to present here the results of my observations and to describe the materials I have collected, in the hope that they will add to our common pool of information and be helpful to anyone considering the teaching of German in an elementary school. To get as complete a picture as possible of the teaching of English in a German school, I visited different classes on the same level