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A Dutch Language Course with a Difference

by Mme Roosen, Liège, Belgium
translated by Nadine Logghe, English teacher,
I. E.P.S.C.F.-Uccle, Belgium

( Editorial note: This article gives a flavour of  SGAV  methodology's human dimension.
   For more more theoretical thinking , see Multilingualism : its methodological Aspects )

It is the end of the course…A tall, young man enters the classroom, he is coming back from a "treasure hunt" in the schoolyard. I am chatting with his teacher , and he comes up to me : 
«  do you think the course is interesting ? » 
Before answering I tell him I am surprised he has spoken to me in  French , His mother tongue, because I have just spent 2 hours with this mixed (heterogeneous)  group of students and I haven’t heard a word of French ; the students have spoken Dutch, the target language or to be more accurate they have been thinking in Dutch , they have been « watching » Dutch, I would be tempted to say we have moved, breathed  in Dutch…

My first impression ? I have not attended a course but I have lived a part of someone’s life with a group of 15 students who want to communicate  and in order to do so they have to invent and have fun. 

Their teacher tells me that they are youngsters and adults – between 19 and 40 years old  - coming from very different horizons: a Polish housewife, a Moroccan worker, a student , a waiter . 

And the teacher? Well, the teacher is Julie Lecomte, vivid and elegant, sportily dressed; we immediately feel she is not there FOR her students but WITH  them .  The language learning situations (arranging an appointment, showing some one the way to the town hall… ) she is sharing, living these situations with the students, her eyes follow them when they are looking for the way, she supports them when they are speaking; she slips behind them to help with a missing verb…
I am also told that these « beginners » in Dutch have only been following the course for 3 weeks. But this new language is already driving them, they are « feeling « it in their bodies as well as in the words they use, even if the aspirated  « g » is still somewhat of a problem… And above all, they  are thinking in Dutch ( the specialists ‘wish’,  but few practitioners give them the means to achieve it …)

Do you want some examples of activities? Many of you will find them banal  (« I do this too »…). But animated, transcended by what one has to call a kind of  « educational fervor » those activities become so efficient they astonish the spectator and surprise the students too. 

Role-play games 
“Hallo,met…”
 The phone rings, a dialogue starts between 2 students
        -Julie speaking. Hello Jeff, how are you ? What are you doing today ? 
        -Hello Julie . I am watching a football game. 
“In het café”   In a pub.
  Each student becomes an imaginary character who is going to a pub and orders something to drink. 

Games with a visual prop
“De weg wijzen naar...”
- Drawings on slides show a certain situation : a passer-by asks a policeman for some information; in turns students will act the policeman and the passer-by; they will ask the  policeman about a place to find on a map; they will ask for directions…
- In groups of 2, the students will ask for the best way to go home after the lesson…

Games with an audio prop
Relaxation with a musical background, we listen to a comprehension passage, the students will take over this dialogue and  use it in another  situation…

Games with a written prop
Each student gets a self-adhesive label stuck on his back; on this label a word, an action that will have to be explained before filling in, in groups of 2 or 3, a text with blanks which describes all the actions, their authors and their meaning. This game is the first  approach to writing;  before that, the students have only expressed themselves orally. 

A round-up game 
One  last exercise on the course this morning: the students, in little groups, are given an itinerary to follow, this “treasure hunt” allows them to put into practice and once again use in a playful and functional way, what they  have learned. 
Throughout this activity, the students are active individually and in the group: solidarity is born and is developing, nobody shies away from a difficulty, they try to find a solution together .
Must we conclude ?
Some may think it is a way-out mode of teaching, very demanding and  difficult to follow all  through the year.
Mrs Lecomte answers that the profession is interesting for her only if she lives it happily and that happiness is no burden. 

                                                         Article written by Madame Roosen and first published 
                                                        in “éducation formation” revue trimestrielle n° 260
                                                                                                                Décembre 2000
                                                         HLT thanks EF for permsion to re-publish this piece.