Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Bruder Jakob/Brother John

My office door/Meine Bürotür

I have a wonderful group of German students.  You see, our college has a large music program and all the future voice performance students (opera) have to take German.  When our textbook had the song "Brother John" in German today, I used my fine singers (four young men and four young women, almost half of my class) to lead the whole class in singing "Brother John" in German in a round.  First we sang it once through and then as a round with two and then three groups.  It was like a small German choir, truly wonderful.  I'm so thankful for having such wonderful young people in class.

Ich habe eine wunderbare Gruppe von Deutschstudenten.  Unser College hat einen bedeutenden Musikstudiengang, u.a. mit Schwerpunkt Gesang/Operngesang.  All diese Studenten müssen zwei Semester Deutsch lernen.  Unser Deutschbuch hatte diese Woche den Kanon Bruder Jakob, und so habe ich mir meine vier jungen Männer und vier jungen Frauen genommen, die Gesang studieren, übrigens fast die Hälfte meines Seminars, und sie gebeten, einen Kanon mit der ganzen Gruppe anzustimmen.  Erst haben wir das Lied einmal durchgesungen, dann uns in zwei und danach in drei Gruppen geteilt und es als Kanon gesungen.  Es klang wie ein kleiner deutscher Chor, ganz stimmungsvoll.  Ich bin so dankbar, daß ich eine so tolle Gruppe junger Leute zum Unterrichten habe.  

I decorated my door with postcards from German speaking countries.  
Ich habe meine Tür mit Postkarten aus deutschsprachigen Ländern geschmückt.  


6 comments:

  1. I love your name plate and the pictures, as always you manage to make something seemingly ordinary look homely and inviting! Such a treat to have a ready made choir too, it was a shame you were unable to record their singing.

    Wishing for you a good day.

    Much love San xxx

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    1. Thanks so much, San. The college puts our class schedule and office hours schedule onto the doors so I thought I should make it pretty around it. Maybe I should ask my music students if they would like to record it. It was quite impressive. I think we will try to sing more often now, there are so many pretty folk songs that are not hard for beginning German students.

      So nice to see you blogging again. I hope you continue to be happy with all your educational choices. I have to post more about what we are doing, it's so hard sometimes, though because in order to upload pictures I have to borrow Peter's laptop and he also needs it at night.

      I better go to bed now. I have to get up early tomorrow in order to be able to teach.

      Love to you too.

      Eva

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  2. Eva,

    I can just imagine the beautiful singing of your students. Some of my children have classical voice singing lessons and are taking music exams. They have had to sing in German too. It seems a lot of classical songs are written in German.

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    1. Interesting that this is the case even in Australia. Many of my students have to sing German operas. They have performed "The Magic Flute" in German. That is quite impressive I think.

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  3. Wie schön das klingt! Ich freue mich mit dir. Die Tür sieht toll aus. Hätte da noch eine Karte aus dem deutschsprachigen Teil Italiens Platz? :)

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    1. Das wäre toll, ich habe meinen Studenten schon von Südtirol erzählt, viele wissen jedoch nicht viel über europäische Geographie und ich lasse sie immer wieder etwas auf der Karte suchen.

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