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Reporter Timofey Neshitov as a German teacher in Berlin
Photo: Gene Glover / DER SPIEGEL
I learned German at the end of my puberty because I wanted to read Heinrich Böll.
Views of a Clown
, original.
Letters from the war
.
At that time I lived in Saint Petersburg and had no idea about Germany.
I am Russian.
For me, Germany was Heinrich Böll.
Böll was dead. Schröder was Chancellor.
I took my first steps – as I put it back then – through self-study.
Phrases help with language learning.
Every beginning is difficult.
The die is cast.
The penny too.
My department head at SPIEGEL hates empty phrases.
Of course, I try to avoid empty phrases, at least in public.
I also no longer ride a bike with training wheels.
I inherited my German course book from a friend who already spoke German fluently.
The book - to be on the safe side it never left our apartment - smelled of tobacco, had coffee stains and came with audio cassettes.
Even birds can speak German
The book said: Hello, I am the parrot.
Who are you?
On the cassette a man said: Hello, I am the parrot.
The man spoke nasally, trying to sound like a parrot.
Maybe it had an educational message.
Even birds can speak German, you can do it too, Timofey.
I was 18 and wanted to be a reporter and see the world.
24 years later, I enter a bright room with high windows at the Berlin-Mitte adult education center on Turmstrasse.
I am a reporter and want to teach German as an exception.
I want to know which course books are used today and who is learning German in Germany.
At the district office they recommended that it would be best to take part in a German course for refugees.
They are proud of these courses in Berlin.
The Senate already financed it when the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees was still of the opinion that only foreigners with a secure residence needed German courses.
Many asylum seekers and tolerated people are now learning German nationwide, and the state usually pays for it.
A teacher at the adult education center agreed to my experiment.
I can assist her.
Our course book is called
Step by Step in Everyday Life and Work 1,
we will take lesson 3, the topic of shopping.
It is absolutely beginner level, the course only started four weeks ago.
I want to – wonderful German phrase – slip into this teacher’s shoes.
Heal sentences in a broken world
They sit at white tables, lined up in a square: 2 young women and 13 young men, refugees from Turkey, Guinea, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.
The teacher is a tall, blonde woman who brings groceries to class.
She puts them on her table: a pear, a tomato, a tangerine, an apple, a roll, a tomato, an egg.
“An
egg ,
”
she says, pointing to the egg.
"
The
egg.
No
I."
They repeat it after her, uncertain, confused.
Samet, Boubacar, Schalale, Yusuf, Dialo.
"
A
banana!"
»
No
banana!«
They do it well, with almost no mistakes.
I listen for a while as if hypnotized.
Any correct declension is good.
Heal sentences in a broken world.
The teacher comes from Ukraine.
I only found out about this in the hallway, I'm leafing through the course book while she holds fruit in the air.
I was assigned page 40, prices and quantities. Over the course of the afternoon I was supposed to lead the course for a quarter of an hour and teach the refugees the difference between a pack, a can, a cup and a bottle.
Then I should explain to them how to inquire about the price in Germany.
There is a brochure with special offers in the book.
I'm sitting next to an interactive screen that shows cups and cans.
You can touch them and move them.
Samet giggles and speaks Turkish.
The screen keeps freezing up.
When it's my turn, I go to the middle of the room and begin to walk up and down involuntarily, speaking very slowly, the way strange adults talk to children.
It's a useless instinct, I see myself standing in this room: my lips move like those of a stranded fish, while I smile, just to be on the safe side.
After a few minutes I have a flash of inspiration.
I notice that at one point in the book it says:
How much does a bottle cost, but
in another place it says:
How much
does a bottle cost
?
So you can use “What?” and “How much?” synonymously.
I wasn't aware of that.
I ask the group: »What is the difference between
How much does it cost?
and
How much does it cost?
«
Nobody understands what I want from them.
Difference
is an abstract concept, you can't point a finger at it like an egg.
It doesn't get better by saying the word very slowly and making circular hand movements.
I let it go and talk faster.
I just read out what it says in the book:
A kilo of minced meat costs six euros, ninety-nine.
Please try again.
Khaledin says:
It's
worth it
.
This time I probably spoke too quickly.
Samet says in Turkish that
he
understood.
You should just buy things on offer, always the cheap stuff from the brochure.
I speak Turkish and say to Samet in Turkish: It's good that he understood, but please only speak German in class.
In doing so, I am violating the rule that German teachers only have to speak German in class.
Feels like I was trying to help a child across the street and dragged him across the street when the light was red.
I sit down again.
Ms. Shebanova, that's the name of the teacher, now has a touch of magic around her.
She doesn't talk too slowly or too fast.
She doesn't smile every other sentence.
She says, “I would like cheese,” and everyone says, very naturally, that they would also like cheese.
In conclusion, I decide that modern course books are of secondary importance.
The interactive screen and the apps definitely make learning easier, but what matters is that touch of magic that good teachers have.
Also definitely on the motivation of the learners.
During the break I want to talk to Ms. Shebanova about her career.
She is from Kharkiv, she says.
We sit at the table where she has spread out her groceries.
The tomato has burst, Ms. Shebanova looks around for a cloth.
She came to Germany in March 2022.
With her three children.
And her husband.
“He was allowed to leave the country,” she says, looking me in the eyes.
"Because we have three children."
She is 42 years old and her first name is Olviia.
I'm not sure if she knows I'm Russian.
I ask her where she learned German so well.
We speak German.
Me with my accent, she with hers.
Students sit behind us.
They drink coffee.
Her father taught her, says Ms. Shebanova.
He was a lecturer at the university in Kharkiv.
The Namaz app sounds in a student's cell phone.
Call to prayer.
Ms. Shebanova says she studied teaching and German in Kharkiv, and the adult education center hired her shortly after she fled.
In May 2022.
I ask her whether it plays a role in class that she, as a refugee, teaches refugees.
It doesn't matter, she says.
She only told her students where she came from a week ago.
Yusuf then shouted: Slawa Ukrajini!
Glory of Ukraine.
That touched her.