Tag: <span>Berlin</span>

In this week’s blog post, current German and Linguistics student, Emma Davis, talks about her time in Berlin, a recent trip funded by her college. Over to you, Emma!

Thanks to the travel, research and study grant available at my college (St Hilda’s), I had the opportunity to spend a jam-packed 5 days in Berlin over the Easter vacation to supplement my German degree. This funding highlights that studying languages at Oxford University is about more than just passing your exams, but about gaining linguistic proficiency, confidence in foreign countries and a rich cultural understanding that widens your view of the world. Travel grants are available, often with priority placed on languages students, at many of the Oxford colleges so it is important to research on your college’s website to see what is offered and how to apply.

In my opinion, there are four must-dos if you are planning a trip to Berlin… Firstly, make the most of the tours on offer. On the second morning of the trip, we embarked on a 3-hour walking tour which allowed us to get our bearings and helped me to link all the historical and architectural facts I have learnt about Berlin across the course of my German studies. Visiting the Reichstag building is another non-negotiable. Seeing the glass dome, the inscription above the entrance (‘Dem deutschen Volke’) and the artwork inside (‘der Bevölkerung’) was both interesting and powerful as these features symbolise the importance of democracy to Germany today. My favourite day of the trip was spent just 45 minutes outside of the city centre, in Potsdam. Sanssouci Palace – the summer residence of Prussian King Friedrich the Great – was stunning in the sunshine and provided excellent German audio guides with a long but clear explanation about each room which was enjoyable to listen to. Furthermore, techno clubs are seen as an integral part of Berlin’s cultural scene, to the point that some DJs have campaigned for them to receive Unesco World Heritage Status. After being questioned on the door (the clubs in Berlin do this to increase their exclusivity), we made it into Tresor and had a great night…and morning – the techno scene doesn’t really get going until 3am!

Reichstag – German Parliament Building. Photo courtesy of Emma Davis.

A few misconceptions I had before I travelled to Berlin were that most people would speak back to you in English, the dialect would be difficult to understand and that vegetarian food options may be few and far between. However, everyone that I approached spoke to me in German and I didn’t encounter any difficulties with the dialect. Moreover, there were countless vegan/veggie food options to try, including a twist on the traditional Currywurst!

East Side Gallery Mural. Photo courtesy of Emma Davis.

Brezhnev and Honecker – East Side Gallery. Photo courtesy of Emma Davis.

Berlin is a city full to bursting with museums and during my week there I explored the German Spy Museum, Humboldt Forum, the Jewish Museum, and East Side Gallery. The Spy Museum is slightly less well-known than the destinations on Museum Island but is an engaging multimedia museum which walks visitors through the entire history of German espionage. For me, the most interesting part was listening to audio recordings of Germans who were involved in creating the Enigma code. The Humboldt Forum, considered the German equivalent of the British Museum, contains a thought-provoking exhibition responding to the question of whether colonial countries should return looted artefacts to their original owners or whether they should be displayed in places like the Humboldt Forum. This forces people to consider their country’s colonial history (incidentally, one of my favourite German words is die Vergangenheitsbewältigung which means ‘coming to terms with the past’). The Jewish Museum educated me on not only the extensive persecution that Jewish people have faced throughout the ages, but also the successes of many Jewish people, for example in the Weimar Republic. Finally, East Side Gallery is not a gallery in the conventional sense but rather a 1.3km stretch of the Berlin Wall that is painted in countless murals, many with political messages relevant to the reunification of Germany.

To see even more of Berlin, I walked from the Brandenburg Gate, down Unter den Linden and past the Tiergarten to reach the Victory Column, which is 60m tall with a 360-degree view of the city. Another option for an incredible view is the Television Tower, which stands at 368m tall with a viewing platform 203m up.

Berlin’s Television Tower. Photo courtesy of Emma Davis.

I had a fantastic week, would highly recommend Berlin as a travel destination and am very grateful to my college’s travel grant for this opportunity.

Alannah Burns, a fourth-year Philosophy & German student at Lady Margaret Hall, loved teaching English at a secondary school in Berlin on her Year Abroad. Here she tells us why.

‘Too many choices of what to do on a Year Abroad?! But one obviously stands out…’

Berlin’s ‘Karneval der Kulturen’ (Carnival of Cultures), May 2018]

Nine months. One city. One school. One job. One language.

Today, it’s the game ‘werewolves’ in English for Grade 8 at 12pm.
Tomorrow, it’s one-to-one English speaking exam practice with Grade 10 at 2pm – this will be the first time they are learning what the exam is really like.
This morning it was going through the answers to the English class test from last week with Grade 8 step-by-step.
Tonight I’ll have to look up the lyrics to a Disney song and create a gap-fill exercise from it to help Grade 7 students practise listening to and understanding American accents.

For nine months I was paid to assist Grade 7, 8 and 10 English lessons at a ‘community school’ [Gemeinschaftsschule] in Berlin. I worked at the school for just over 12 hours a week (that’s right! Only 12 hours a week minimum and 20 hours a week maximum are required of you!). I did this as part of the British Council’s English Language Assistant programme. This is a very popular choice for those doing a Year Abroad, and I’m here to show you why.

I had never been to Berlin before I started my Year Abroad. I lived in nine different flats in eight (very different) areas of Berlin, for periods ranging from only five days, to four months straight (try doing the maths on that one!). I saw so much of the city this way, and experienced so many different kinds of city environments. I was paid 850 Euros a month for the teaching and (amazingly) never paid a cent more than 500 Euros for an entire flat to myself in Berlin with all bills included… Student life certainly does not get better than that! Teachers I worked with let me stay with them at the start of my time in Berlin, and helped me open a bank account, register my addresses, and find new places to live. The English Language Assistant placement with the British Council is also part of the Erasmus+ Scheme (which most universities are signed up to), meaning that you have access to extra funding and can continue to receive your maintenance loan from Student Finance as usual! I even still received funding, as I do every year, from Oxford University’s Moritz-Heyman Scholarship which is for students from backgrounds with a low household income. Put all these things together and see just how quickly my financial worries about a year of moving to a new country by myself were extinguished!

‘Living abroad for a year?! But how will I finance this?! How will I make friends?!’

outside the ‘Berliner Dom’ (Berlin Cathedral)

Another scary part of spending a year in a new place and new country is how to get to know new people. The British Council run training sessions before your placement which are usually (but not always) in the country you will be spending your Year Abroad. This training lasts for a few days (for which they usually provide you with accommodation etc.) and during it you work closely with the other people from different universities who are also going to be teaching English at schools in the same city/region as you. This means that you know a circle of interesting people straight away who will be doing the same job, and build good friendships with them early-on while learning how to prepare lessons, work with teachers, teach different age groups etc.

Now to the job itself. The idea behind the British Council’s English Language Assistants programme is to foster an environment of joyful learning and incredible cultural exchange abroad, with a native English speaker supporting and encouraging people abroad to enjoy learning English and about English-speaking countries.

My experience was pretty unique: I never prepared my own off-curriculum lessons on British culture (or indeed anything), and never spoke German to the students… Here’s why: Most students at the school were from migrant or economically-disadvantaged backgrounds, with many students having diagnosed behavioural problems or learning difficulties. Some students had weak levels of German, let alone English. Not knowing I can speak German thus encouraged them to practice English with me – great for the students, but not for my spoken German… We followed the curriculum strictly as the students’ English levels generally were too weak to diverge from the textbook with exams/class tests always looming.

‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here. But it helps tremendously!’

As an enthusiastic native English speaker, I was told I had become a very valuable asset to this school. I led whole lessons, supported students in one-to-one speaking sessions, ran lunchtime English clubs, explained grammar, produced my own worksheets, and marked tests and homework. This experience was perfect for me as I hope to become an English teacher abroad in future. but my experience was certainly not typical! I know some people who worked at schools in Spain which asked them to teach science or other subjects in English, and others in different countries who were always preparing their own English lessons about British culture or their own background. The teaching experience is what you make of it and what you want it to be. There is always so much scope to talk with your school about what they want to get out of having a lively native English speaker in their classrooms, and what you want to learn from the experience and gain skills in. Every key skill you could ever need to show-off on your CV (such as leadership, teamwork, confidence, independence, reliability, punctuality, commitment, etc.) is what you can gain from this Year Abroad placement with the British Council. I cannot recommend it enough!

After leaving Berlin I gained a TEFL qualification through doing around 250 hours of volunteer English teaching to Polish children/teenagers in Warsaw and London, and German business professionals in Frankfurt. The English Language Assistant programme with the British Council certainly prepared me well for this.

You can find out more about the British Council programme here.

Adventures on the Bookshelf

Tag Archives: Berlin

Eine Reise nach Berlin

BERLIN AND THE BRITISH COUNCIL: Notes on a Year Abroad and Teaching English with the British Council

A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!