Carmen Stadelhofer
In the beginning of 2018, ILEU e.V. launched a pilot pen pal project between Bulgarian pupils learning the German language and German pupils and adults. Fourth and tenth grade pupils have taken part. The aim was to get to know each other, and by exchanging letters, to give the Bulgarian pupils the opportunity to apply their knowledge of German in lifelike conversations.
Photo: Stela Petkova Benova
Photo: Neli Pramatarova
1. A project between three fourth grades from an elementary school in Ulm and three fourth grades from the Friedrich-Schiller-School in Ruse
The pupils from Ruse started the correspondence in October 2017 and presented themselves in a short letter with some personal notes and a self-painted picture. This was sent by post to Ulm. At Christmas, a response from the pupils from Neu-Ulm was sent to Ruse and arrived there in the middle of January. The Bulgarian pupils answered in March and added home-made Marteniza, the red-and-white friendship ribbons, which are given as gifts to others everywhere in Bulgaria (but also in Romania and Moldova) on March 1st. After Easter, the German pupils sent again a letter to Bulgaria.
The project went well on both sides. The teachers on both sides found this correspondence positive because it allowed the pupils to learn in a very practical way how to write a letter in a foreign language. The pupils on both sides seemed to enjoy the exchange
2. Project with ten pupils of the 10th grade of the Friedrich-Schiller-School in Ruse and 10 pen pals on the German side.
The project started on February 22, 2018 with a total of 20 participants. Ten pupils (nine females, one male) from the 10th grade of the Friedrich-Schiller-School in Ruse, Bulgaria, made conversations via e-mail and Skype for five weeks with German speaking people from the greater Ulm region, Oberursel and Lodz in Poland. The main theme was “Our Cities and Europe”. The project was coordinated by Carmen Stadelhofer and Margaretha Schmid, a master degree student who was doing an internship at ILEU at that time, in consultation with the German teacher from Ruse Mrs. Neli Pramatarova.
Unfortunately, there was not a teacher in a 10th grade class in Ulm who had the capacity to supervise the pen pal project, because of the upcoming exams in the second half of the school year. Therefore, as she had very good experiences with old-young projects in German context, Carmen Stadelhofer asked several people of different ages to participate in this small project. . The German participants were of very different ages. From 19, 20 and 23 years, to 30, several people between 60 and 75 andeven a person over 80 years old. The age diversity in this project proved to be positive. The comments of the older participants were differentiated and led the younger people also to make differentiated contributions. The pupils from Ruse profited from this linguistically as well as in terms of content, and so did also the other participants.
The project was designed for a total of five weeks with the aim of promoting intercultural and intergenerational exchange. It was the aim of the project to enable insight into the various habitats and ways of thinking. At the end of the project, the pupils received a certificate of participation.
Work schedule
Week 1: “Who participates” – introductory round
Intermediate task: quotes about traveling
Week 2: “Your city”
Skype meeting on March 16, 2018, formation of subgroups
Week 3: “My favourite place”
After week 3 were Easter holidays.
Week 4: “We and the Danube countries”
Week 5 “My Europe”
Resume:
The project went very well. For the coordinating institution ILEU e.V. it was a lot of work in terms of planning, process-oriented coordination of the course and evaluation, because there are no examples of this type of exchange of letters with pupils from South-Eastern Europe. It is difficult to find German teachers who still have the time and motivation to supervise such a project due to the tight schedules during the school year. This affects all the pen pal projects with pupils in the 10th grade. Involving adults as volunteer partners has proven to be useful. The high motivation of the 10 Bulgarian pupils, which was shown by continuous participation in the weekly tasks, had made the value of such projects clear. The project took more time than planned, because the students had many exams after Easter, but all participated until the end.
The evaluation of the project showed that the Bulgarian pupils and the German participants enjoyed the exchange of letters and learned a lot from each other. All of them appreciated the pen pal project. However, the students wished that they had more time to answer the questions and they would have liked having more interaction with solid subgroups and a higher use of social media.
Photo: Doro Köhl, Germany
The exchange for new projects were in Ruse on 22nd of October 2018.