The German language program introduces German asa modern foreign language to some of our youngest students at Huamei School.As early as grade 4, the students start to learn German as a foreign language.The program starts by making students comfortable with German pronunciation andintonation and enabling them to introduce themselves to others in German.

As our German classes progress in their languagelearning the students of grade 4, class 3 are now, after only 2 months, capableof expressing themselves about their and others’ hobbies and free-timeinterests.

The teacher leads them through severalexercises, first on a purely oral basis, through audio-visual methods, all theway to orthographical correct writing.

Here our student Coco,figured out which pronoun and conjugated verb-form fit with the name card shewas given earlier. One by one several students of the class were asked by theteacher to combine the cards with pronouns, verb-forms and names and to putthem correctly on the blackboard.

Later on during the class the students weresupposed to exercise their reading and writing skills, as they were given apaper with specific questions, which they learned before. The students’ taskwas it to analyze and understand the question, so that they can write down thecorrect answers. After the allotted time passed, the teacher and studentscorrected the writing together. Selected students had to present their answersorally.

The final step of this learning stage will be,that students can not only answer questions, but will be able to ask questionsabout hobbies on their own.

After completing this learning stage by themiddle of November, the grade 4 students will progress towards learningexpressing themselves about their family and family members, and being able tocombine this new knowledge with the things they have learned already. By thisthey will successively be more and more able to recognize and use a wider rangeof German language.