Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 6 2016 | Page 31

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2016 Newsletter

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------strange thing Vietnamese people are really proud
of. A young student told me one day, “You have to
be self-confident to cross a street” (and please
never wait for the traffic lights to turn green).
Unfortunately I did not manage to learn the
Vietnamese language though I studied a lot,
Vietnamese is a tonal language and very hard to
learn in case you did not grow up in a Vietnamese
family.
My job
During the last four years I taught German as a
foreign language in different kinds of schools, in
primary schools, in private schools and state
schools, in high schools and I even taught
university students in a volunteer course. First
questions in school (and elsewhere, even in a taxi)
“How old are you?” “Are you married?“ “Have you
eaten already?” – the answers to these summarize
the most important information you need to know
about another person.

Students are students everywhere, there are very
enthusiastic hard-working ones, lazy ones, very
active boys and girls and also some who are always
late and always tired and anyway, all Vietnamese
students need their nap after lunch. Special about
Vietnamese students is their openness to new
topics and to silly games, their desire to learn, to
improve themselves and their amazement when
they realize Germany is not like paradise, not even
a perfect place.
The last two years in Hanoi I was mainly teaching in
Viet Duc high school, a well-known high school in
the city centre. There is already a long tradition to
open two German classes each year at Viet Duc
high school. Important to know: while in Germany
and all over the western world there are less
children every year, the Vietnamese population is

still growing. This is one of the reasons the size of
classes in Vietnamese schools is about 45 up to 60
students, which means 95% chalk and talk
teaching. Teachers talk and fill the board, students
copy everything into their notebooks and memorize
it for the upcoming exams.
German classes should be different, therefore we
only teach half of the students in one group. This is
to guarantee modern and effective