Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools
should continue and not looking at him, I urged him to do so. After a few more words his voice became faint and his face white. He went back to his seat and soon recovered. I asked advice from the students. “Never have a student do this over too long a period, at least not at the beginning,” they said I realized that my ears and eyes should have given me warning signals. I was still too bent on good results in the language and not really understanding the person. Such experiences taught me that we were all learning together, each at his or her own pace. The students were also very willing to help each other, and the competitive spirit so prevalent in many college classes seemed to diminish. I do not mean, of course, that it disappeared. When a student, for example, misspelled the new word “Geld” on the blackboard writing a t, they would immediately point to the und on the chart. A mispronounced z in “zahlen” would provoke shouts of “zwei,” “schwarz,” reminding him of what he actually already knew. Emotions were often quite strong, frustration as well as delight and excitement when students discovered things by themselves. Once, when in complete despair, I was tempted to give an explanation, they did not want it. They preferred to struggle to find the solution. During the semester I made an observation that took me by surprise. I had worried so much about this new approach, about my inadequacies and yet this was the class to which I looked forward most when I got up in the morning. What was the reason for it? There are surely many, and I do not understand them all. What I liked was the unexpected event, the unforseen delights and disappointments, the students’ active participation, the variety of living experiences. There was an atmosphere of 154