English as one of the working languages - how did that come about?

In the last post of this series, I talked about my love for the Netherlands, why I decided to learn Dutch, and how it became one of my working languages as an interpreter. But I also offer interpretation services in the language combination German<>English. How did that happen?

Well, as German is my native tongue it is a given that I combine all foreign working languages with it. I doubt further info is needed. So, I’d like to focus on the English language and why I work with it.

The shortest possible version of this post probably goes like this: We all had to learn English in school.This is true, but I also learned French for 6 years and Spanish for 3 while in school, and those languages you will not find on my website. So, there must be something about English. And there is.

In order to explain how I came to work with the English language I’ll have to walk you through my time in primary and secondary education and that will require a short explanation of the German educational system. Sidenote: I am not an expert in any other educational systems than the one I came up in. I’ll try to make comparisons to English and American schools as I seem to understand how they work.

Germany knows primary and secondary education before university. One starts primary school at the age of six (generally) in the first grade. In this first grade children start to learn how to read and write, addition, subtraction, etc. The basics are taught. That’s why Germans start counting years/grades here and not beforehand in kindergarden.Primary school (Grundschule=basic school) lasts for four years. At about age 10 children graduate and look for secondary schools. The counting simply continues on upward, so one starts in year 1 and finishes primary school by age 10in year four. After the school switch one continues in year 5. Secondary schooling in Germany is rather complicated as there are a total of four different kinds of schools one can attend. These are Hautpschule, Realschule, Gymnasium and Gesamtschule, the latter is basically a combination of the other three. Hauptschule and Realschule both continue education through year 10 (age 16), while Gymnasium continues until year 12 (when I went to school there a was a year 13 that has since been struck).

The quickest and easiest way to explain the difference between the three schools is to look at what they prepare pupils for. Hauptschule assumes that the student will go into skilled crafts and trades, Gymnasium assumes that pupils will pursue academics and Realschule prepares pupils for either of the two routes. Gymnasium does not relate to sports or P.E. in any way in German, we’ve just chosen that word for our academic prep schools. If I understand American schools correctly, most High Schools are rather like German Gesamtschule where pupils can then decide to take Academic Prep classes. In Germany one chooses an Academic Prep school instead. In the UK one does academic prep at colleges. German Gymnasiums are basically secondary schools with Colleges included.There also are schools that very closely resemble British Colleges in that they offer Academic Prep only for years 11 and 12. They exist because graduates of Hauptschule and Realschule are welcome to pursue academics but need the extra 2-3 years in order to qualify for university. So, they either apply to a German College or to a Gymnasium.The diploma that one acquires after successfully graduating from any academic prep school is the Abitur. Germans have to choose 4 subject in which to take Abitur exams. These are sort of equivalent to SATs or A-Levels, though the procedure and process is different, but I shan’t bore you with that.

As you can see form the title of this post I did acquire an Abitur and did indeed go to a Gymnsasium – an all-girls school at that. Those are not very common in Germany but when get to make a call on where to go to school at age 9/10 no boys seems amazing. 3-5 years later you may question that decision (if you’re straight) but it was what it was. Apart from being an all-girls school Bischhöfliches Mädchengymnasium Marienschule Münster was also special because it offered a bilingual Abitur or bilingual graduation. Bilingual meaning two-languages, the school offered pupils the opportunity to graduate with additional knowledge and classes in English. At a year 5 level that meant 2 more English classes a week than regular forms would take at that age and it would turn into entire subjects being taught in English rather than in German.

The goal is additional language skills. Becoming more or less proficient in English by the time one graduates at 18/19.

I specifically remember the two extra classes of English that I was taught in year 5 and 6 as they took place on Fridays and were usually called “fun and games”. By playing, singing, or crafting we expanded our vocabulary and grew more comfortable with the foreign language. I also recall my very first ever English lesson, in which our teacher entered the room and simply started talking English to us. After his introduction he waited a beat and then repeated everything he said in German adding, that he was going to keep talking English to us, so we’d develop an ear for the language. As soon as we were able to string sentences together he expected us to at least try and answer or ask questions in English. You were only allowed to switch to German after you had proven that you’d tried in the other language.While this was terrifying and stressful it also led to us learning very quickly and it helped us getting over the fear of making mistakes when talking. This fear is very real when speaking in a classroom but much worse when talking to someone whose native tongue is English. Getting over it early on, really proved fruitful.

One of my favourite things we ever did during those fun and games lessons was translating Harry Potter. Born in 1994 I was 4 when the first novel made its way to Germany and 7 when the first film hit cinemas. My mother saw her chance to get me into reading and told me I was only allowed to watch the film after I had read through the first book. As I was 7 and had just mastered my ABC’s, she agreed to read the book to me. But I was instantly hooked. Like many kids of my generation I couldn’t wait for the next book and my youth was shaped by Harry Potter.

When I was 13 in 2007 year 8 took a class trip to Oxford and London where we a) stayed in host families and had to prove that we had gotten over the aforementioned fear of talking English to nativespeakers and b) stormed the very first bookstore we came across with 60 girls to read the end of freshly published Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. Never have I seen so many girls run that quickly…Roughly one and a half years prior we got to translate the first pages of Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince. The book was published in the summer in English but Germans had to wait until October for the translation. So, it was an absolute strike of genius of our English teacher to bring in the first chapter in English for us to translate. This was not homework. This was a mission. Motivation at its best.

Bilingual forms took two more lessons of English a week (when compared to the regular forms) for two years because year 7 brought Bio Bi – also known as Biology Bilingually. Biology was taught in English. Entirely new concepts were explained in English, not German. In the beginning we also got vocablulary lists each week but I quickly decided not to learn the German terms as I would never be tested in German. To this day I can explain certain biological phenomena and processes in English – but not for the life of me in German. In year 8 Geography Bi was added to the list of subjects and I kept my strategy of not learning the German words. It worked splendidly, year 9 saw me take Political Education Bi and year 11 History Bi.As far as I can tell, all of these classes focused on language acquisition –  on reading and listening comprehension not just in simple situations but also in complex processes and facts – rather than perfect vocabulary or grammar. English class was for that. And any mistake was marked in exams, but I felt that all of the teachers wanted for us to feel comfortable really using and speaking the language, which I think we did.

The class trip I mentioned earlier was aiming at the same sort of thing. We didn’t stay in a hotel or hostel but instead spend five days and four nights with host families. In groups of two, three or four we moved in with British families for one short week. The lady I stayed with, together with one of my best friends, was called Margaret, 71 years old and had decorated her entire house with cows in all sizes, materials and colours. She lived alone and didn’t speak a single word of German. We had to talk to her in English. Not only because she cooked for us and needed to know about any allergies and dislikes, but also because she walked us to and from the bus each day and both of us were (and are) passionate chatters. Margaret taught me how to properly drink tea like a real English woman and the word sweetcorn (which in German is Mais). We kept writing her Christmas cards until graduation four years later.

But this post is about the bilingual Abitur, not the lovely Margaret. In year 12 we had to choose our Abitur exam subjects. I will spare you the details of what exactly is happening when taking these exams, suffice to know that every pupil chooses four Abitur subjects. Three of these will be tested in written exams and one in an oral examination. All other subjects that the pupil takes will be normally tested in year 12 and the first half of year 13. In the second half of year 13 all non-Abi-subjects are oral subjects, so you don’t have to write exams.I chose English, French, Biology Bilingual and History Bilingual as my Abi subjects. You have to choose at least one language, one science and one social study. But I managed to make all of those about language.

During the eight years I was a pupil at Marienschule, I was taught English for eight years, Bio Bi for six, Geography Bi for two, Politics Bi for one and History Bi for three years. After graduation I decided to study in the Netherlands (which we’ll touch on in a different post) where English language films and TV shows are not dubbed (as common in Germany) but kept in English with added subtitles. This meant that I kept hearing English every day. Different dialects and accents were constantly surrounding me. Even if I had tried to forget the language I wouldn’t have.

So, the reason I also work in the language combo German<>English is that I’ve only ever not spoken English for the first ten years of my life and I still love the language and constantly keep improving it. The base for this love was created with the choice for the Bilingual Abitur but I reckon the Harry Potter Hype during my childhood and youth helped as well.