Popular scientific texts are an important source of new knowledge. For this reason, in the “German with Children’s Online University” course students are supposed to gain experience in extracting information from these texts in German. Possible ways of working on the example of the text about Louis Braille (lesson No. 2) are presented below. Feedback from teachers who participated in piloting the course included these opinions about it: “For the fourth grade students, it was difficult to quickly and independently understand the text, in some places I had to help. Children could not cope without translation.” All the texts used in the lessons of “Children’s university” are a little more complicated than the texts in the textbooks, and are in the next successive development zone for the students. This is due to the fact that special texts in a foreign language that our students will have to deal in their professional lives will contain, with a high degree of probability, complex grammatical structures and a large percentage of unfamiliar vocabulary. Success in extracting information from such texts will directly depend on how well the reader will have formed compensatory competencies, which include, among other things, the ability to “complete” the content by keywords, the ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words by context, by similarity with other languages, by word elements, the ability to ignore unfamiliar vocabulary that is not essential for understanding the content, and others. “Learning is only good when it occurs before development. Then it awakens and brings to life a number of functions that are at the stage of maturation, lying in the next successive development zone,” said L.S. Vygotsky. There is no doubt that the text about Louis Braille is difficult for fourth graders, and teachers need to help students. But what does “help” mean in this case? To help by no means requires translating incomprehensible words and sentences from the text into Russian. In real life, our students are likely to come across texts in which they will not know all the words, so do not teach them at school to think that “to understand means to translate.” There is no need to translate texts. The main task of a teacher is to teach children to apply compensatory strategies in a situation where they lack knowledge.
Instead of translation, it is worthwhile asking the students to mark all the words in the text that they understand with a marker. The first paragraph of the text about Louis Braille would look like this: “Louis Braille wurde am 4. Januar 1809 in Coupvray geboren. Coupvray ist eine kleine Stadt nicht weit von Paris. Louis hatte einen älteren Bruder und zwei Schwestern. Oft halfen (semanticized in the game before working with the text) die großen Geschwister ihrem Vater in der Werkstatt (there is an illustration). Louis spielte gern in der Werkstatt. Aber eines Tages verletzte sich (hurt himself) der dreijährige Louis am Auge. Nach einer Infektion wurde das Kind mit 5 Jahren blind.”
After this kind of work, students can see that they know almost everything in this text. Then it is necessary to discuss whether it is possible to understand the content of the text without understanding each word. The meaning of the first sentence (Louis Braille wurde am 4. Januar 1809 in Coupvray geboren) is easy to guess, knowing that this text is a biography. A biography always begins with the date and place of birth for the character. It is clear from the understandable words in the second sentence that it is a small town somewhere in the Paris area. From the third sentence, we know the number of brothers and sisters that Louis Braille had. Almost everything is clear in sentences 4-6. Even if the word blind is not clear in the last sentence of the first paragraph, it is possible by means of logical reasoning (“damaged the eye - infection - blind”) to assume the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
Students learning German as a second foreign language can work with the text in the same way, but in addition to the above, pay attention to words similar to English (geboren - born, Bruder - brother, Schwester - sister, helfen - to help, Vater - father, blind - blind, etc.).
It is enough to show how to apply compensatory strategies in the first paragraph, and then to draw the attention of students to the fact that they need to look for unambiguous information (answers to quiz questions) in the text.
In order to facilitate the task, you can repeat the values of the interrogative words (Der wievielte / In welchem / Wie viele / Wann / Welche / Wo / Woher / Wie lange), write their translation on the blackboard, if necessary, and highlight the keywords in each question (1. Der wievielte Geburtstag; 2. In welchem Land … gelebt; 3. Wie viele Geschwister; 4. Wann … blind; 5. Welche Musikinstrumente; 6. Wo … lesen und schreiben gelernt; 7. Woher … die Idee … Blindenschrift; 8. Wie lange … gelebt). The first four questions are answered in the first paragraph of the text, which the students and the teacher have already discussed. In order to find the answer to the fifth question (Welche Musikinstrumente spielte Louis Braille?), there’s not any need to read each sentence word by word. It is necessary to look through the text and find the names of any musical instruments in it. Students need to try to understand the sentence where they will find the words Musik, Cello (Violoncello) and Orgel. The same should be done with the sixth and seventh question. During the search in the text for keywords from the wording of the questions, children will find the word Blindeninstitut next to lesen lernen and Armee and Soldaten next to Schrift). When searching for an answer to the last question, students need to remember that they are dealing with a biography, therefore, information about the date of death could be contained in the last sentence.
If students learning German as a second language do not know how to pronounce words in German, it will not prevent them from understanding what is similar to English in the text. There is no need to force students to read the whole text aloud and “wear them out” with a detailed analysis of the text’s content. The Quiz task assumes the application of a strategy for reading to glean specific information, which is exactly the strategy that students should aim for by giving them tasks like “Findet im Text Informationen über ...”.
Let’s present and comment on one more fragment from the reports of the pilot participants about the classes that were conducted: “The quiz about Louis Braille was particularly difficult because the pupils could not read. They read the text all together, translated it based on linguistic guesswork. The questions were also translated together with the teacher. Students looked for answers themselves. After such work with the text, students answered almost all the questions in “Horse races” correctly. Yes, children answered all the questions correctly. But they lost the pleasure of participating in the competition. There was no excitement. This is no longer a “horse race”, if all horses gallop at the same pace and arrive at the finish line at the same time. When everything has been translated in detail (both text and questions), the task completely loses its meaning, the development potential inherent in the task is not used. The main task for the teacher in extracurricular activities is to provoke interest, and not to give students in the class a maximum of “regurgitated” information at any cost. There is a danger that this cost may be the desire of children to attend extracurricular classes.
Creating an atmosphere of freedom
Creating an atmosphere of freedom
in the classroom
The teacher should pay special attention to creating a friendly and psychologically comfortable atmosphere. Students should feel more relaxed during the extracurricular activities than in the classroom (of course, while avoiding chaos). The role of the teacher is changing: not a strict supervisor that constantly evaluates, but a like-minded person who, together with children, is engaged in discovering new knowledge about the world around them. Some activities may cause students to have noisy outbursts of positive emotions. This is a good sign that makes the teacher realize that the activity has not left the children indifferent. The main thing is to not have this turn into a disciplinary problem that prevents the child from moving forward.
Sometimes children express a desire to repeat a game or a task they liked. How should a teacher react in such situations? One of the main principles for organizing extracurricular activities is that students’ interests are paramount. Therefore, if they want to repeat an experiment or play a game they like once again, the teacher should not refuse, and should not worry that they will not have time to “get through” the entire proposed scenario in 45 minutes. Getting through everything is not the primary goal for the class. One of the main tasks for the teacher is to create lasting, positive motivation, and maintain interest in learning German. And to resolve this, it is necessary to exclude stress, negative emotions, situations of failure, and boredom. If some activities were particularly well-liked, and students want to repeat them, a teacher should not be afraid to “waste” time on this. That will bring more benefit than if the teacher succeeds in going over everything, and students will remain disappointed that their opinion is not taken into account at all in the class.