19, no. 1 (September 1987): 33-34
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
No Works Cited |
|
CULTURAL ENCOUNTER AT BONN'S AKADEMIE NIEDERBERG
Eric Williams, in consultation with Heinrick P. Kelz
FOR THE last four years Bonn's Akademie Niederberg has cooperated with the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges to provide an innovative six-week summer-abroad program for students interested in learning German. The LVAIC consortium consists of five institutions in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area of Pennsylvania: Lehigh University and Lafayette, Moravian, Muhlenberg, Cedar Crest, and Allentown Colleges. Situated in part of a sixteenth-century Carmelite cloister in the Beuel section of Bonn, the academy offers an integrated approach to language instruction and cultural studies that is tailored to fit the specific needs and preparation of participants.
A nonprofit educational facility, the Akademie Niederberg was founded in 1974 to help integrate non-German-speaking immigrants, specifically those wishing to pursue a higher education, into West German society. It thus not only offers instruction in German language and culture but also maintains a special focus on the future academic training or retraining of its four hundred regular students. Its instructors, who all hold German university degrees in subjects ranging from sociology to Germanic philology and English literature, also have training in Deutsch als Fremdsprache (German as a second language). The academy is part of the larger educational organization, the Gesellschaft zur Förderung berufspezifischer Ausbildung (GFbA), which consists of eighteen institutions from Hamburg and Berlin to Murnau at the foot of the Alps. Working in cooperation with the state (Länder) departments of culture and education, the Otto Benecke Foundation, and several German and foreign universities, GFbA institutions offer a total of some fifty courses in language instruction, technical and professional training and retraining, and continuing education.
By integrating in-class study and discussion with excursions to sites of historical, cultural, and political significance, the Akademie Niederberg has been able to impart to the LVAIC students within a relatively short period of time a vital and multifaceted picture of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the past summer, for example, students taking a unit on contemporary politics first studied in class the basic structure of the West German political system, then attended a session of parliament (Bundestag), and finally discussed, back at the academy, contemporary issues with parliament members representing the Federal Republic's four major political parties. In conjunction with a unit on German history, students visited Roman ruins and museums in both Cologne and Trier as well as the site of Charlemagne's palace in Aachen. A unit on new German cinema offered students a unique view of post-World War II Germany with screenings and discussions of such films as Wolfgang Staudte's Der Untertan , Rainer Fassbinder's Die Ehe der Maria Braun , and Volker Schlörndorff's Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum . Another unit explored the relation between Germany's rapid industrialization and the turn-of-the-century movement of expressionism and combined the study and comparison of painting and poetry with visits to two exhibitions of expressionist painting. Other activities included a trip to Heidelberg, a visit to classes at a secondary school (Gymnasium), a tour of a brewery, a wine-tasting excursion on the Mosel River, a sight-seeing boat trip up the Rhine, as well as numerous cultural events in Bonn itself.
After a diagnostic language exam on the first day at the academy, LVAIC students are divided into groups according to language proficiency. Although the academy has a wide range of proficiency levels for its regular students, the LVAIC students are kept together in small groups ranging from low intermediate to advanced. Mornings are then devoted to language instruction, and afternoons, evenings, and weekends are used for cultural studies programs. Since the academy has maintained a decidedly low instructor-student ratio in the last three summers no language class has exceeded seven students—instruction is both intense and intimate. The general emphasis is on communicative competence; in using visual aides, realia , and various forms of audio-lingual exercises that deal with everyday situations, language instruction at Niederberg strives to strengthen grammatical structure while building a pragmatic vocabulary for speaking and writing. At the conclusion of the program, students are given a comprehensive written and oral examination and receive six hours of graded, upper-division college credit at their home institution.
Although the academy can provide housing in private homes, the LVAIC students have preferred the stimulating atmosphere of Niederberg's international dormitory. Virtually all the students considered this to be one of the most fascinating aspects of their summer abroad. Many an evening, they report, was extended into the early morning hours by animated discussions—in German, the common language at Niederberg—with emigrants from the Soviet Union, Poland, Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and other countries around the world. One student remarked: “The Akademie Niederberg experience is intense; not only did we learn a lot about contemporary Germany and other cultures and political systems but we were also forced to take a hard look at what it means to be an American. We really had no idea that this would turn out to be so interesting!”
The academy has also been effective in bringing together the LVAIC participants and the German people. The students have, very importantly, close contact with their German instructors and the academy staff, who not only accompany them on the many excursions and activities in the community but also frequently entertain them in their own homes. Also, by inviting students from the University of Bonn to participate in certain LVAIC-Niederberg functions, the academy puts the LVAIC students in touch with Germans their own age.
Although participants come almost exclusively from the LVAIC consortium, the program is in principle open to any student with at least one year of college German. The cost per participant (which includes round-trip air-fare, tuition for instruction at the academy as well as the home institution, room and full board, extensive cultural excursions, books, all entrance fees on organized outings, daily bus and tram passes, and the administrative services of the full-time resident director from one of the LVAIC institutions) has ranged over the past four years, depending on the relative strength of the dollar against the West German mark, from $2,500 to $3,000. After the first year of operation, when the program received a small subsidy from the LVAIC board of directors, the program has essentially paid for itself. There are no additional costs paid by consortium schools.
At present, the LVAIC consortium and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles are the only American groups cooperating with the GFbA and the Akademie Niederberg. In a time of proliferating foreign study programs and increasing foreign language enrollments, it is reassuring to note that the GFbA will continue to work with these institutions and will be able to expand and vary its program offerings to accommodate other American institutions of higher learning as well. Indeed, the GFbA organization is in a good position to do so, with its eighteen locations and its innovative and flexible teaching staff and management.
Information about the LVAIC program or the Akademie Niederberg may be obtained by writing Galen Godbey, the director of LVAIC, at 213 West Laurel, Bethlehem, PA 18018, or Eric Williams, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature, Lehigh Univ., Bethlehem, PA 18105.
The authors are, respectively, Assistant Professor of German at Lehigh University and 1986 LVAIC-Niederberg Program Director, and Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Language Learning Center at the University of Bonn.
© 1987 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 19, no. 1 (September 1987): 33-34 |
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
No Works Cited |
|
