Ein Lieblingstier in Deutschland: der Igel?

Versteht ihr, warum der Igel (hedgehog) in Deutschland so sehr beliebt ist?

Was verstehst du von dem Leben eines Igels? --What (do) you understand from the life of a hedgehog?

NKHS German Has Top-Ranked Students

North Kingstown High School junior Margaret Bender (from left) and freshman Sadie Haun pose in German teacher Ruthann Baker's classroom recently. Both students finished top in the state and in the 90th percentile in the country in a national German exam. Haun will be leaving for a three-week study program in Germany this summer after winning an all-expense-paid trip from the American Association of Teachers of German that was given to 43 other students across the country. (Photo by Chris Church) NORTH KINGSTOWN — Sadie Haun, a high school freshman, will be spending three weeks in Germany this summer after she was awarded an all-expense-paid study trip by the American Association of Teachers of German ENTIRE NORTH EAST INDEPENDENT ARTICLE IS LINKED HERE “I couldn’t stop giggling,” she said when asked what her reaction was when she learned she was selected. The study trip includes round-trip airfare from New York to Germany, housing with a host family and “excursions to places of cultural and historical significance.” Haun is the first student from Rhode Island in a decade to be selected for the award, which is made possible through a grant from the Federal Republic of Germany. Ruthann Baker, who teaches German at the high school, said she wasn’t surprised that Haun was selected and called her one of the “beacons” for her other students. Haun and Margaret Bender, a junior, both recently scored in the 90th percentile of the 2012 National German Exam, which was taken by nearly 23,000 students in the country. They both also ranked No. 1 in the state in their respective levels – Haun is a Level 2 student and Bender is a Level 3. After qualifying with a high score on the National German Exam, a further qualification involved submitting responses to several short essay questions in German and in English and being interviewed by German professors from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island. “They are both so determined,” Baker said of Haun and Bender. “They are the type of kids that every teacher dreams to have as students.” Founded in 1926, the AATG represents German teachers at all levels of instruction and is dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the teaching of language, literature and culture of the German-speaking countries. “This program gives students the chance to experience Germany firsthand by living with a German family and attending school,” said Keith Cothrun, executive director of the AATG. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Haun, who spent time living in Germany when she was much younger because her father was in the U.S. Air Force, said she is most looking forward to meeting new people during the trip. She leaves on June 27 and returns on July 21, but other than that, she doesn’t know many details about the trip. Bender, who studied in Germany last year as a foreign exchange student, offered this advice for Haun. “Just keep an open mind with everything and don’t be afraid of trying different foods, even if they might look or smell funny,” she said.

Welche Superkräfte hättest DU am Liebsten?

Die Berliner Morgenpost fragte 50 Leute. Hier gibt es ihre Antworten: Und jetzt was möchtest du machen können? Willst du -- deine eigene Welt zaubern ? - magically create own world -- unsichtbar sein = to be invisible -- eine Zeitmaschine haben = to have a time machine -- über das Meer fliegen = to fly over the sea Wärst du gern sehr cool sein? =Would you like to be cool Möchtest du -- sehen was im Himmel vor sich geht? = to see what is happening in heaven? -- ein Gerät, das durch die Mauern gucken kann? = a device that can see through walls Glaubst du auch, dass es langweilig wäre, eine Superkraft permanent einzusetzen (to use) ? Wie reagierten die Leute zuerst? -- How did people express their first reaction? Was sagten sie beim Abschied? -- What expressions did people use at the end -- when saying goodbye?

HOW to Choose Which World Language to Study

FOX NEWS It is common in other parts of the world for people to speak English in addition to their native tongue, so some people shrug off the idea of learning another language. But there are many reasons to learn a foreign language, from being able to communicate better with loved ones to understanding a new culture. Here are four tips for learning a new language: Choose a language you want to learn If you love French cinema and dream of living in Paris, don't forgo learning French in order study Mandarin Chinese. If you know you want to learn a new language but don't know which ones to choose, start by checking the availability of resources and classes in your area. You will have more options if you decide to learn the language on your own, but if you want to take classes, see which ones fit into your schedule. Some colleges and universities require you to have a certain number of credits or reach a certain level of proficiency to graduate. If you tried to learn Spanish in school but hated it, maybe you will want to start from the beginning and learn a new language. Another factor to consider is the usefulness of the language. Being bilingual may make you a more appealing candidate for a job.

Dedicate yourself You will get out what you put in, and it takes a lot of hard work and practice for a new language to click. Take an active approach to learning. You will not absorb new vocabulary by showing up to class and daydreaming for an hour. Set aside time to practice daily. Listen and read the language every day. Making flashcards and quizzing yourself with them is arguably the most effective and efficient way of learning new vocabulary. If you are learning Portuguese, practice by starting with the English word and naming its Portuguese equivalent. Do a little bit each day, rather than telling yourself that you will sit down all day on Sunday and study German. Have realistic expectations Although degrees of difficulty are all relative, some languages are generally more challenging for English speakers to learn than others. Languages that do not use the Latin alphabet like Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, provide additional hurdles from the get-go. Romance languages are often taught in schools in the United States, and may be easier to learn. If you have studied French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese in the past, you may have less trouble picking up another Romance language. Some languages are harder to speak but may have easier grammar, while others can flow more naturally for an English speaker but be challenging to read and write. Accept from the beginning that every language has its own set of grammar rules. Do not go into your studies thinking you can apply English grammar and punctuation universally. Expose yourself to native speakers Look at immersion programs that require you to only speak the foreign language while participating. You will be amazed how quickly your language skills improve when you cannot communicate any other way. Take advantage of study abroad and travel opportunities. You can practice the generic way to ask for help at a supermarket in a language class, but there is no script when you are conversing with an actual Italian storekeeper. Have fun learning your new language and grow accustomed to hearing it spoken. Watch television shows or the news in the language you are studying. Listen to music from a country that speaks the language. Check out websites in other languages and set your social networking websites to the language you are learning. You can also download free podcasts and listen to them on the go. You will see your skills improve before you know it.

Gotham City Adds Latin -- Again

Published May 7, 2012 GOTHAMSchools.ORG by Rose O'Souza City students at selective public and elite private schools have long had the option to study Latin. Now several schools with less affluent students are breathing new life into the long-dead language by requiring all students to study it. At a panel discussion on Friday organized by the New York Classical Club, educators from across the city spoke optimistically about the revival of Latin at their public schools. “A lot of schools are pushing to go back to what works, to what they know produces intellectuals and thinkers. Latin is a return to norms that once were,” said Kathleen Durkin, one of two Latin teachers at Maspeth High School, which opened in Queens this year. Educators on the panel said one attraction of Latin instruction is the idea that it could help fuel academic achievement in other subjects. “I chose it because of the timelessness of it. When in doubt, go to Latin. You can’t go wrong with it,” said Lester Long, executive director of the South Bronx Classical Charter School, where students start taking Latin in third grade. “We want students to use Latin to understand what they read in English. That’s our big driver.” Durkin said, “People feel overwhelmingly — although there isn’t a ton of research to support it — that Latin is beneficial and students score highly on standardized tests.” But it’s not always about the test scores for some students. Solveig Gold, a junior at the private Nightingale-Bamford School, said she learned Latin as a fun way of improving her theater skills. “I love to act and sing. Performing is my thing,” the 17-year-old said. She initially learned to recite Latin by listening to a CD and last month won a college-level Latin recitation contest held at Columbia University. Maspeth and South Bronx Classical are two of several schools to open in recent years that make the study of Latin part of their backbone. The Brooklyn Latin School, for example, opened in 2006 as the newest specialized high school, admitting students using the same exam as Stuyvesant High School and requiring all students to take four years of Latin courses. At Brooklyn Latin, nearly two-thirds of students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. That number is even higher at some of the other schools that require students to study Latin. South Bronx Classical, for example, serves the poorest congressional district in the country. At Williamsburg Charter High School, the city’s largest school where all students take Latin, 72 percent of the student body comes from low-income families. “The kids love the school. The school is a secure environment. The biggest problems for parents are gangs and violence. We are a haven above all,” said Ron Janoff, Williamsburg Charter’s curriculum director. “The Upper East Side doesn’t need more people teaching. They have everything in the world. Our serious deficiency is letting the bottom part of our education system go to pieces,” Janoff added. “They need it more than anything.” Williamsburg Charter’s founder and CEO was indicted last month on charges of tax fraud and misappropriating school funds, and the city is trying to shut the school down. (Another hearing in the legal saga is set for Tuesday.) But Janoff said the ongoing fight for survival had not hampered the school’s Latin language instruction. “As long as Williamsburg survives, there’ll be at least 600 to 700 students a year studying Latin,” Dr. Janoff said. “It would be a very big loss to the classics community if Williamsburg was shut down.”

PhD in German in 4 Years ?!

--a proposal from Inside Higher Education Humanities Ph.D. in 4 YearsMay 2, 2012 - 3:00am By Mitch Smith Let’s say a first-year Ph.D. student in German studies teaches a freshman seminar. By the time that German student earns his degree, pre-med majors in that long-ago seminar might also be called "Doctor." Few believe the current model – in which humanities students often study for 8 or 10 years only to enter an uncertain academic job market – is smart or sustainable. While that conclusion isn’t a new one, the traditional blueprint has persisted. Now the University of Colorado at Boulder is offering an alternative. Beginning next fall, students there can earn a Ph.D. in German studies in about half the time it might take to earn that degree elsewhere. The program has been approved by campus administrators and the Board of Regents and is likely to be finalized at the state higher education commission’s meeting this week. The goal is to have students in and out in four years, Professor Ann Schmiesing said. Colorado’s program, which has been in development for almost half a decade, will admit two students a year and pair them with faculty mentors. Students will spend two years focused on classwork, one year doing research (perhaps in Germany) and the final year writing their dissertation. Candidates will be encouraged to take on internships during summers to prepare for careers inside and outside of academe. Students might be steered toward "less onerous" dissertation topics or pursue digital publication, professors say, but the writing will adhere to university guidelines on length and rigor. The difference is in a lighter teaching burden and one-on-one mentoring, allowing more focus on classroom work earlier on in the program and more guidance on research and the dissertation. Colorado administrators and others believe the program could be a model elsewhere, both in German and other humanities disciplines. But the fact that this program is in German is especially interesting, since Colorado ditched its doctorate in the subject back in 1996. Since doing away with that first Ph.D. program, Colorado has seen undergraduate enrollment in its German department boom. When student interest and faculty expertise suggested it might be time to reintroduce a doctoral degree, it was done with the very explicit goal of not mimicking what had already failed. “What’s being eliminated are traditional German programs,” said John Stevenson, dean of Colorado’s graduate school. “We had one of those. We eliminated it. We want to reimagine what advanced graduate work in Germanic studies might be and I think [Colorado professors] have come up with it.” David Barclay, executive director of the German Studies Association and a history professor at Kalamazoo College, is similarly optimistic. Colleges should be able to deliver quality doctoral programs in a reasonable timeframe, he said. “It’s crazy for people to be extended forever,” Barclay said, adding that he was speaking for himself and not the German Studies Association. “That’s just nuts. At some point somebody had to say something about that. And if the University of Colorado is doing that, then more power to them.” Stephen Brockmann, the German Studies Association’s president and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, likes the idea behind Colorado’s program. He’s curious to see, however, whether students will be able to finish within such an ambitious timeframe. “The four-year thing strikes me as awfully fast,” Brockmann said. “That’s the ideal, right? You want your students to go through quicker rather than slower. I just wonder if they can really do that in four years.” Colorado professors are confident they can, and say there’s plenty of demand in business, government and NGOs for holders of high-level German degrees. But when students don’t earn a Ph.D. until after their 30th birthday, such careers might seem less attainable. Carol Lynch is the senior scholar in residence at the Council of Graduate Schools, an organization that has pushed for a greater focus on non-academic careers. Lynch was also Colorado’s graduate dean for 12 years, ending in 2004. Plans were already in place to phase out the German doctoral program when Lynch took over her post in Boulder. Lynch said Colorado’s German department has always been focused on realistic career options for its students, perhaps the reason for its enrollment spike in recent years. The four-year Ph.D. is a logical next step in that direction, said Lynch, who generally rejects the argument that students need the better part of a decade to be worthy of a doctorate. “One would ask what those students are doing in the ninth or tenth year,” she said. “A lot of science and engineering students finish in four years, and they’re not shabby degrees.” Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, agrees. The MLA has called for foreign language programs to move beyond language and literature and to embrace broad study of cultures, including politics, economics, social movements and more. A past president of her organization has advocated for shorter Ph.D. programs designed to prepare students for a variety of careers. To see such a program proposed at Colorado is encouraging, Feal said. Of course, some humanities students finish their degrees well before Year 10. Schmiesing earned hers in three and a half years, and fellow Colorado professor Helmut Muller-Sievers received his after four years. But the consensus at Colorado is it’s well past time to make that the norm rather than the exception. “It’s an effort on our part to shape the market,” Muller-Sievers said. “We hope students will see that as an alternative. We think that many graduate students in these long programs may not want to be there; they just see no alternative. I’ve met these students. You just could not counsel them because there was no possibility of doing this.” Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/02/proposed-phd-german-colorado-aims-halve-time-degree#ixzz1uJD25Jsg Inside Higher Ed

Using Technology in School to Learn Languages

Winter Haven Florida (The Ledger.com)

Alyson Essex, 17, a Winter Haven High School junior, uses headphones to connect with her partner in the school's language lab. Photo PAUL CRATE | LEDGER MEDIA GROUP By Merissa Green THE LEDGER Published: Monday, May 7, 2012 at 9:28 p.m. WINTER HAVEN | Foreign language has gone high tech at Winter Haven High School. It is the first school in the Polk County School District to have a technology-based world language lab. The four world language teachers have 120 students each. The students are taught Spanish, French or German. The lab includes a projector, a foreign language system and headsets that are lowered to students from an electronic tray from the ceiling. The headphones tune out noises and the students can either hear their teacher or a student they are paired up with for exercises from the teacher's laptop. As they participate in exercises, students are recorded so teachers can evaluate their responses. The system allows individual study of pronunciation, grammar and comprehension through the digital device, said Mary Thomson-Marin, chair of the foreign language lab. "They really feel like they are getting personal attention," she said of the students. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held last week to celebrate the lab's opening. A pilot program using similar technology is under way at Bartow High School's International Baccalaureate, said Tamara Salgado, the district's senior curriculum coordinator of world languages. Joseph Martin, Winter Haven High's French teacher, said the electronic system will allow students to hear themselves and make corrections. "That will give the students confidence," he said. "A lot of students won't speak in public but when they're behind a microphone, it's an individual experience."