USA: Foreign-Language Departments Bring Everyday Texts to Teaching

In a second-semester German class at Georgetown University, students each present a favorite omelet recipe. They will soon use German to write postcards to friends and prepare the horoscopes of ideal partners.

Down the hall, students in a fourth-year German class each write a letter to the editor from an imagined old man who compares contemporary xenophobia to what he witnessed in World War II. They also write letters of condolence to the imagined sister of a Jewish woman killed in the Nazi-led pogrom known as Kristallnacht.

Monday 5th November 2007
Chronicle of Higher Education (subsciption needed for online version)