Precerpt from My 20th Language: L6, German - High School

 


High School German

My German study started in high school, my junior year. I transferred schools in order to get a third language, having already studied two years of Latin and a year of French, the latter of which at that time in history I could study at any high school in Maine or New Hampshire (and I did take two more years at the new school).

My two years of German differed in the extreme. The first year was taught be a proficiency-oriented teacher—before communicative orientations toward language teaching had taken hold. Young and excited about German culture, she had spent the previous year in Germany and did her best to transfer her enthusiasm and experiences to us. We learned songs that I remember to this day. I think we learned some grammar, too, but I don’t remember that part.

German II was taught by my 8th grade English teacher, a stickler for grammar—and I bless him to this day. All those diagramming of sentences in English class have stood me in good stead for understanding linguistic systems and have, for certain, made me a better writer. They provided as well a good skeleton for succeeding in his German class. On the other hand, those students who had not been prepared for looking at language through a linguistic lens fared poorly in his class, with fewer and fewer openly participating. He did not force participation, so I got a lot more chance to “practice,” given my intense interest in the grammatical system. I did, after all, become a linguist. I was also one of the few students of language who are able to move from a strict grammatical acquisition to actually being able to use the language easily in writing and speaking. Most students find that kind of transfer awkward.

One of the two years, I do not remember which now—or why, I received the German Consulate award for something or other. It must have had to do with literature because they gave me a copy of a thick book of German fairy tales. That book still sits on my bookshelf although I have weeded out hundreds off books from my shelves over time. On some subconscious level, it clearly represents something of value to me. The purpose as I recall was to encourage further study of German. Not a problem. I studied German a lot more and went to Germany and used the language in a variety of ways. 

For more precerpts from My 20th Language, click HERE.

For more posts about language learning, click HERE.


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