LLJs
were an awesome assignment. As I found out, I can basically
do anything fun that I want, as long as I do it in German!
[Quote from an end-of-term evaluation form] |
The
goal of this component of the class is to give you more control
of your learning--and hence also more responsibility for it.
This should be your favorite assignment: what we want you
to do is to find something involving German that you realllllly
enjoy, spend an hour doing it each time you get an LLJ assignment,
and then write something briefly and informally in German
describing what you did and what you got out of it. If you're
in 101, just use as much German as you can, and fill in the
rest with English.
If
you find yourself hating this assignment, please discuss that
with your instructor: it has to be possible for you to find
something you enjoy doing, and that's when you'll learn the
most, because you'll be motivated and interested.
Examples
of excellent LLJs
- Madonna
looked at the recommended books at the bookstore, and the
dual language edition of Alice im Wunderland caught
her eye. Every time an LLJ was due, she read it for 45-55
minutes, and then spent 5-15 minutes writing a short paragraph
about what she'd read. After a while, she could read faster
than a ray of light. When she was finished, she wrote a
review and posted it online at the amazon.de
site for her last LLJ. She decided to read Harry Potter
in German next. Sting wanted to be more like Madonna, but
his German was not as good, so he didn't think he could
read a German book, until he found the Graded German
Reader, which starts with texts using a lot of cognate
words that even a beginning 101 student could read, and
gradually works its way up to harder texts. It was pricy,
but Sting was rich, so instead of borrowing it for free
from the Free Reading
Library in the LRC, he bought it, and was amazed at
the progress he made.
- Elvis
tried the links
for finding email partners. The first partner he found
was nothing but a hound dog and didn't write back, so for
his first two LLJs, Elvis just handed in the emails he had
sent this guy. He tried again and found a new partner. Everytime
an LLJ was due, he handed in what he'd written and the responses
he'd gotten, and asked his instructor about anything in
the response he couldn't understand. He fell in love with
his partner, faked his own death at a concert, and they're
now living happily ever after in Austria.
- Lady Gaga
found a way to escape the Papparazzi and go to the Max Kade House for Kaffeestunde or Deutschtisch whenever an LLJ
was due. Afterwards she spent 5-15 minutes writing about what
she had talked about with people at the Kaffeestunde, or
describing the people who were there. It was a great way for her to get away from her bad romance with Alejandro. Eventually, she fell in love with one of the Max Kade residents, whose poker face made her want to just dance. She broke up with Alejandro over the telephone, and can't wait to write her next LLJ.
- Garth
had some German-speaking friends in low places, and a German
grandmother in Alabama. Whenever an LLJ was due, he went
down to the Oasis and tried his German on his friends, or
if he was too hung over, he called his grandmother, who
was really excited to hear him speak German to her. Then
he spent 5-15 minutes writing down what they'd talked about.
- Cher
had just been through a bad breakup, so whenever an LLJ
was due, she would rent a German romantic comedy, or watch one of the German movies on reserve in the
LRC or on CTools, and those movies taught her to believe in life after
love. After a while, she felt strong enough to watch artsy
movies about gypsies, tramps and thieves, and some classic
movies like The Blue Angel, M, Metropolis
and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari that made her
wish she could turn back time. Each time she spent 5-10
minutes afterwards writing down what she thought of the
movie, or summarizing what happened. Her instructor encouraged
her to post a couple of her reviews on a German movie site.
- Bruce
was born in the USA, but he was on fire to learn German,
so whenever an LLJ was due, he went to the German
on the Web link list and surfed around for things that
caught his eye. He went to joke sites and tried to understand
the jokes, watched the German TV news on the web, downloaded
some songs he liked, found a great dessert recipe, kept
up on the Bundesliga soccer results, watched some German-language
movie trailers online, read his favorite Bible
passages from the book of Ecclesiastes in German, and was
reminded of his glory days by the German Bruce
Springsteen fan site. Each time he wrote down the sites
he visited, and a bit about what he found there, and when
possible, handed in printouts of what he'd read, especially
if it was something fun, or if he had questions about it.
- Janet
was a control freak and hated the fact that she didn't know
exactly what the lyrics of her favorite Rammstein songs
meant, so she printed them out, and whenever an LLJ was
due, she spent an hour trying to translate them. She soon
realized they were nasty, nasty boys and didn't want to
support such escapades, so she surfed the web for other
music she liked. Sometimes she listened to a song several
times and just wrote down what she understood; other times
she printed out the lyrics and tried translating them.
- The
Beatles came up with a brilliant new idea every time an
LLJ was due. For the first LLJ, they went ice skating for
an hour with their friends Tonya and Nancy and spoke German
while they were doing it, and then wrote about what they
did for 10 minutes. For the second one, they called their
old concert promoter in Hamburg on the phone and surprised
him with their German, then wrote about the conversation
for 10 minutes. The next time, they wrote in English for
an hour about how their German learning experience was going.
For the fourth LLJ, they spent an hour writing down some
interesting things they had done the previous week, such
as helping their friend Jude take a sad song and make it
better, and talking to their friend Rocky Racoon from the
Black Mountain Hills of Dakota who had tried to shoot the
guy who had stolen his girl and hit him in the eye, but
ended up meeting his match and getting shot himself. It
was only a scratch, but still, in times of trouble, the
wisest thing is sometimes to let it be. For the fifth LLJ,
they looked at the paintings by German-speaking artists
in the University of Michigan Museum of Art, such as Emil
Nolde's Frisian landscape and Max
Beckmann's Begin the Beguine, and then spent 15 minutes
writing what they thought of them. For LLJ 6, they played
volleyball and spoke German while they were doing it, and
then wrote about that; for LLJ 7, they went for a jog in
the Arb and spoke German and wrote about that; for LLJ 8,
they tried to find out about the German Park off Pontiac
Trail, and ended up speaking to an old German immigrant;
for LLJ 9, they went to the Heidelberg restaurant on Main
Street to eat drink and be merry, spoke German all night,
and ended up speaking some German with the owner, who happened
to stop in. For LLJ 10, they wrote about the conversation
they had with a German exchange student who happened to
sit next to them at the stadium while Michigan was massacring
Ohio State, and for LLJ 11, they wrote about a conversation
they had with a couple of German tourists whom they had
overheard speaking German at Borders. They ended up showing
them around town and giving them an impromptu concert on
the roof of the MLB.
Examples
of poor LLJs
- Whenever
an LLJ was due, Bridget just handed in a diary in German
of what she'd done that day. This was fun and good writing
practice for a little while, especially since it helped
her figure out how to express in German the kinds of things
she actually did every day, but eventually it got boring
for both her and her instructor, and she started to get
"check minuses" for these LLJs.
- Andre
kept handing in very brief LLJs about going to Kaffeestunde
or watching various German movies, and his GSI began to
suspect that Andre wasn't really doing these things, and
sure enough, it turned out that Andre was lying. He'd been
spending the time playing tennis and hanging out at home
with his wife Steffi [why didn't he just speak German to
her and write about that for his LLJs??] and their lovable
little child. This was very cute, so he wasn't expelled,
but he was severely reprimanded for his academic dishonesty.
- Arnold
hated the LLJ assignment. He was a robot from the future,
and as such, he didn't know the meaning of fun. Consequently,
he had trouble thinking up things to do that he would enjoy,
handed in assignments late, and never really learned much
from this assignment, despite the incredible power of his
cybernetic brain. Arnold should have talked to his GSI,
and I bet that together, they would have come up with something
Arnold would have liked, such as browsing German sites selling
leather outfits, shades, explosives and assault weapons,
watching German trailers for his movies, or reading German
news coverage about Californian politics.
Resources
and Ideas for LLJs
Things
you can do once or twice for your Language Learning
Journal
- Reflect
on your language learning experience. This is the only kind
of LLJ you should be writing in English (but by all means
do this in German too if you can!). What parts of the class
are you enjoying? Which are giving you trouble? Are you
comfortable speaking? learning vocabulary? applying what
you've learned? If not, do you have any ideas as to what
to do about it? This sort of entry may be invaluable to
you in many ways, although it does not directly involve
learning German: it allows you to step back and assess your
strengths and weaknesses, and come up with ideas for how
to use your strengths and address your weaknesses; it allows
your instructor to see your perspective on your language
learning experience, and to give you suggestions s/he might
not otherwise know you would benefit from; with certain
kinds of feelings of uneasiness or unhappiness, it will
do you good just to talk about them. "Stepping back" in
this way periodically may dramatically improve your language
learning experience, both directly by giving you ideas for
learning more effectively, and indirectly by making you
feel better about learning German--and research has shown
emphatically that how one feels about learning a language
dramatically affects one's ability to learn that language.
- Keep
a running commentary in German in your head about what you
are doing all day, and write an account of some of these
things in your journal. Thinking in German about what you
are doing is great practice in general and we highly recommend
it--but we also want you to seek out other opportunities
for practicing your German.
Summary
This
is a very "open-ended" assignment, and you can definitely
turn it into meaningless busywork. Please don't! 
The language learning journal is your chance to make sure
you get what you want from this class, i.e. to make sure:
- that
you spend time learning to do exactly what you wanted to
learn to do when you chose to enroll in German, and
- that
you find ways to perform up to your potential in this class.
If
this is not working for you, please speak to your instructor
about it, so that you can figure out together how to make this
assignment be both productive and enjoyable for you!
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