261 Learning to Speak German - Rote Learning

261  Learning to Speak German - Rote Learning

Rote learning is somewhat unfashionable in school systems these days. Much of what happens in the classroom in these times tends to focus on process learning rather than memorising facts and information. However, I will be brave enough to admit that there is a very strong place for rote learning when it come to learning a language.

If you read back over Blog Post 4 again (if you have already done so), you will see that my first native speaking teacher was Kurt Herzog.  He influenced my thinking forever more when he said to me one night: 'Graham, I want you to tell me how a car works in German'. I was dead in the water on two counts here ... 1. I didn't know how a car worked beyond things like petrol, steering wheels, gears and brakes... 2.  I didn't know the German words for any parts of the car other than  'Auto', 'Wagen'  and maybe 'Straße'.  Herr Herzog very patiently took me through the process of both and after some 20 minutes of mind-blowing blood sweat and tears (not really, but a lot of concentration and mental gymnastics), we reached the end of the road or so I thought!

"Very good, Graham,' he said, 'but let's do it again now that you know how a car works and what the German for that is.'  Me thinks: 'you've gotta be joking, Pal!'   Panic stations! Well I we did, with a fair bit of help from my friend once again but a few words like 'Bremsen' (brakes), 'Lenkrad' (steering wheel), 'Reifen' (tyres) and even 'Zündkerze' (spark plug - lit. lighting candle) actually had stuck. 15 minutes later we had stumbled through the process.

'And again, Graham, one more time!'  'Oh no, this is murder (not really, just a little more exaggeration!)'  and away I went again. After only 8-10 minutes I actually managed to remember most of it. The words and phases Kurt gave me had started to be etched into the memory.

The human brain can do this! It is a wonderful facility often untapped these days except maybe for our multiplication tables. I saw a demonstration lesson one day at a Sydney school where the teacher put up a conversation between two people on the blackboard and bit by bit he removed words and replaced them with a dash. The students were able after a quarter of an hour to repeat the dialogue on the blackboard which in the end had nothing but dashes and no words! Try this experiment for yourselves with the dialogue below. Run off 5 copies of the dialogue and  by remove words in successive attempts in the order given in brackets after each word ..  eg.

Ich (1)    komme  (3)    aus  (4)    Australien  (2)  After Attempt 1, you would have 

 ___   komme   aus   Australien   After Attempt 2, you would have:  ___ komme   aus  ____  etc. 

Dialogue

A      Guten (2)   Morgen (1).

B      Guten (2)  Morgen (1).

A      Mein (2)    Name (1)   ist (4)  Schulz (3),   Martin (1)    Schulz (3).

B      Ich (2)     heiße (5)   Hanni  (1)  Schmidt (3).

A      Wo (4)   wohnst   du (2)  Hanni (1) ?

B      Ich (2)     wohne (5)  in (1)   Salzburg (4).   Und (3)  du (4)?

A      Ich (2)    wohne (5)  in (1)   Newcastle (3)    Australien (1).

B      Australien (1)?    Wirklich (5)?

A      Ja (1) ,  ich (3)    bin (5)    Student (2)  in (5)  Salzburg (4)