Background of the class

In about a week, school starts back and I will start teaching English (amongst other subjects such as German, Maths, Music, Sports and Religion&Culture) to a sixth grade primary class.

Last Christmas I had the chance to work in this particular class as relief teacher and I was warned, that the English level was not high at all. I have to admit, it was even lower than I expected. Two years ago, when the class was taken over by their new teachers, there were issues way more important such as German and Maths that they had to ketch up with. So there really wasn't a lot of focus on English, which I completely understand.

Here are just a few things I noticed last winter:

• The kids are not used to getting their orders in English and do demand that they are spoken German with
• They often reply in German as well
• Lots of basic vocabulary is not internalised
• Neither are basic grammatical rules
• A few kids really enjoy speaking and don't mind being wrong (which is wonderful!) but most don't really like to speak at all

So, I cannot really go along with the teaching material and expect them to learn new vocabulary when the basics are still missing... Back then I already told the teacher that I would love to try the Birkenbihl-Method of Language-learning with this class. I'm positive that if they understand every single word of a text and then listen to it passively over and over again to internalise it, they would automatically cover the basics too. But this means that they rather just work with one or two texts out of each Unit thoroughly than touch on all the texts and issues without engrossing them.

But with only 4 lessons to teach, introducing a whole new method would not have made sense. What fortunate coincidence that I now get the chance to teach exactly this class for a whole year!