Meet David S. and Gain Insights into a Mentor & German Teacher’s Experiences

Introduction:

David, with a BA in German Studies and an MA in Applied Linguistics, has been a German teacher since 2010 and specializes in adult education, focusing on intercultural communication. David designs his lessons to be interactive and goal-oriented. He has gathered extensive international experience by teaching on three different continents. David enjoys accompanying his students on their language journey and seeing their progress.

MOTIVATION

What motivated you to teach German on three different continents, and how has it influenced your teaching methods?

I believe every opportunity should be seized to live and work abroad for a while. So far, I’ve taught in Europe (Germany), North America (Mexico), and Asia (Kazakhstan). Each culture, along with its students and teaching environment, offers so much and teaches you a lot, changing you consciously or unconsciously and shaping your teaching style. The attentive reader has noticed ‘so far’ for a good reason: I definitely want to continue gaining such experiences and teach in other countries in the future. When I have students from different countries in a class, I can adapt much better because I can better assess their histories and learning experiences.

How do you make your teaching both entertaining and educational? Do you have any specific techniques or approaches?

From my perspective, the key is engaging with the students. Probably everyone knows from their own experience: if you’re learning something even though you’re not enjoying it, then you don’t want to continue voluntarily. Therefore, the opinions and wishes of my students regarding topics and focal points are crucial for successful teaching. Once students are involved not just in the lessons but also in some parts of the planning, everything focuses more on them rather than the teacher or the language. This makes students more motivated and the lessons more entertaining because it addresses what most of the class is interested in.

PATIENCE

You mention that one does not always have to understand everything immediately. How do you integrate this principle into your teaching, and how do students react?

If I have to admit during a lesson that I don’t have an answer to a very specific question, then the students see that I am only human and don’t know everything. I momentarily step out of my teacher role and stand before them as a learner, like the class itself, still needing to learn. Of course, I always look for an answer after class and, if possible, also an exercise on the topic so that I can provide an explanation in the next lesson. Then the students see that I am serious and that I am not just their teacher during class time but also invest time in their questions and issues afterward.

DIGITAL TOOLS

How has the experience of developing digital teaching materials influenced your approach to language teaching?

Digital media should, in my opinion, also be used in face-to-face teaching. It can make the lessons more lively and interesting. Developing digital teaching materials has helped me better and more quickly identify which tools and websites I want to use and which are likely to be successful. The vast amount on the internet is huge but not everything that exists and costs money is good.

Can you share examples of how you successfully use digital tools in German teaching?

The teaching at the German Online Institute is 100% online, so everything from Google Classroom to Google Meet and Google Docs is used. Besides that, the vast internet is available, and I am constantly searching for websites that can design small teaching units, like https://wordwall.net/. It’s important to know your limits and always question the pedagogical sense of an exercise. Using a new website or app just because it’s ‘cool’ isn’t as good as using an ‘outdated’ site to do something truly meaningful for the lesson.

Which technologies or digital platforms do you find most effective for language teaching, and why?

How do you measure success in your teaching, and which indicators are particularly important to you? Success for me is when students feel comfortable and make progress at a personal level. Fortunately, language teaching is usually not comparable to regular school teaching, so we don’t have to do a graded test every week. This (performance) pressure takes the fun out of teaching. Of course, it’s also clear that not everyone can master everything perfectly at the end of a chapter. But most topics in foreign language teaching repeat themselves over and over, and if at least the basics are there next time and you can build on them, then that’s already a success for me. Many topics are also so complex and layered that they cannot be dealt with in just a few lessons. I’m just thinking of the accusative and dative, the prepositions, etc. Making this success and progress clearly visible to students plays at least as important a role. If a student feels they are not learning and not improving, then they rightly question why they are even coming to class. A before-and-after comparison is very helpful here, although it’s not always easy to make visible. One possibility would be to have the student redo the same exercise they didn’t do well at the beginning of a learning package at the end. This often opens their eyes because the exercise then becomes much easier and hopefully fewer mistakes happen.

What is your stance on using AI for written homework? Are there situations where AI can indeed be useful?

AI is certainly a great tool when you know how to use it. However, once AI starts doing the homework, it renders the homework pointless. If it’s used to show and explain errors, it helps students to better formulate their written texts and learn from their own mistakes. Unfortunately, I also receive perfectly written texts from beginners, which clearly involve AI or Google’s text correction. In such cases, I always ask the students about the meaning of individual words. If they know them, I’m pleased because they haven’t just copied something but have taken the time to translate what’s really written. Unfortunately, it also happens that the students have no idea what the text actually says. I use this as an example to explain why it’s not interesting for me as a teacher to ‘correct’ a text written by AI and why it doesn’t help the students’ progress. Most understand this, but that doesn’t mean they stop using AI.

MENTORING

As a teacher mentor at GOI, you have supervised many teachers. What common challenges have you observed, and how have you addressed them?

Each teacher, like each student, has different background knowledge and approaches to topics and problems. What is immediately clear to some takes a bit longer for others. A commonality, however, is that a new challenge can initially be unfamiliar and even frightening. Here, it is important to come together even closer and take away the fear. Patience and a new approach to explanation are key. Good training, or a warm welcome in the classroom, minimizes later failures and shows colleagues and students that they can come to me again later.

What advice would you give to new German teachers just starting their careers?

Don’t pretend, because students see right through that immediately. Find your way, but don’t stubbornly stick to it; adapt to your students and be open to new teaching methods and technologies.

What was the biggest lesson you learned as a mentor, and how has it influenced your own teaching?

Probably the realization that we all remain students throughout our lives. Teachers are students too, only the topics and content have shifted. Just as a teacher can get upset that students haven’t learned the vocabulary or done their homework, teachers sometimes ‘forget’ to complete tasks assigned to them on time. For this reason, I can’t be too hard on my students, because I don’t always do everything perfectly and sometimes have less desire for certain things or just let them sit.

TEACHING METHODS

How do you assess the importance of humor in language teaching, and how do you implement it in your classes?

If humor develops between teacher and student, it means nothing less than that the individuals understand each other very well. This can happen even at a beginner level. And since fun, trust, and mutual respect are extremely important for good teaching, this is more or less a prerequisite. Of course, it doesn’t have to go so far that people finish each other’s sentences, but I also like to get to know a bit about my students’ private lives (through stories) to better respond to them and their wishes. If I know what the student is doing, I understand him or her better and can then decide whether a joke is appropriate or not, or whether I can use irony and sarcasm in that lesson.

How do you deal with different learning speeds and styles in multicultural classes?

This is a very difficult issue. On the one hand, you have to progress with all students, but on the other hand, you don’t want to leave anyone behind. In principle, I believe that more exercises are good for everyone, even for those who believe they already understand the topic. At some point, however, the moment may come when I will not present a topic again for the whole class. In this case, I would ask the respective person to come to me after class or before the next lesson to address the questions and problems specifically one-on-one. I would also look to assign this person more detailed and step-by-step homework so they can continue learning the topic. And then, very importantly, keep asking and checking how they are progressing with the topic. This can also be done during class time, for example, during group work, and I think the time is better used talking to that person about the specific topic. If I as a teacher stay on it, then the student will too.

What was one of the most unusual or surprising experiences you had while teaching internationally?

The teacher-student relationship is very different in Latin American countries than in Germany, for example. There, it regularly happens that students applaud at the end of class and thank the teacher as they leave the classroom. Whether this is always sincere and serious can be debated. But just the fact that it happens shows a positive attitude towards the topic of school in general. A nice story that always comes to mind in this context is that in my first year in Mexico I wanted to start the lesson, but a student interrupted me and said that today is her birthday. I just looked at her puzzled and wished her all the best. Then she got up, came to me, and asked if she could get a birthday hug. Of course, as a teacher, you always have to be careful not to cross any boundaries, but in such a rather relaxed atmosphere, teaching is more fun and that’s what I try to bring into my classes.

TRENDS

What future trends in language teaching do you see as particularly promising or important?

I believe that language teaching will continue to play a significant role in society for many years to come. Of course, there are now many apps that you can use to understand what’s on the menu in a restaurant or how many yen one euro is. But on the one hand, such apps do not cover communication, and on the other hand, they do not let you understand the culture. Face-to-face communication works best when people can communicate without an app and spontaneously. If spoken language first has to be translated, then a small part is always lost in the target language. Nevertheless, apps or AI will also play an increasingly important role in language teaching. Whether it’s to train pronunciation, to personalize listening comprehension even more by not just listening to audios but interacting with them through questions, or to help with text correction and error detection. It’s important here that teachers do not fall behind and understand the technologies and know how to apply them in teaching.

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