My Latest Language Teaching Venture: German Language Classes and Blog for the Japanese Market

A few weeks ago I blogged about how I was using ChatGPT to create an English language study blog for online teaching:

Unfortunately, the student who I was teaching (a Japanese woman in Australia) got homesick and quit her au pair job and so that was the end of that.

My First German Language Student

Meanwhile, at one of the gigs where I teach part-time in Hiroshima, I agreed to take on a Japanese lady who wanted to study German. I did so on the understanding that she was a "beginner" or at most an "elementary" level student as German is not my first language.

It turned out that the student has a good passive knowledge of German - lower Intermediate level, I would say - but no ability to speak.

My German Language Study Blog, Created With AI

I decided to create a German language study blog for Japanese students of German, using my experience of creating the English language study blog that I described in my two previous blog posts.

Just as with the English blog, I am using ChatGPT to create the German lesson materials and Bing to create the images.

We have had three lessons and the format is working well. My student has a good knowledge of English, so I get her either to translate from English into German or vice-versa, and then to read the story, and then we go through the comprehension questions. In this way, the student does most of the talking, supported by the text provided and so I think she gets good value from the classes.

I also record the ChatGPT audio version of the story and upload it to the blog, which means she (or anybody else who access the blog) can listen to the stories or dialogues any time.

My Second German Lanaguage Student

Well, this week, the boss asked me if I could take on another German student who is a real beginner, and I willingly agreed. So now I am creating beginner-level classes for her.

I met her yesterday and gave her a twenty minute demo lesson, which I have now turned into a blog post in a new "Deutsch für Anfänger" (German for Beginners) section of the blog.

Here is the story that ChatGPT and I cooked up for my student, and the accompanying comprehension questions:

Deutsch für Anfänger 1: “Hallo Anna!”

Max trifft Anna im Park. Max sagt: "Hallo, Anna!"
Anna sagt: "Hallo, Max!"
Max fragt: "Wie geht es dir?"
Anna antwortet: "Es geht mir gut. Sie fragt, Und dir?"
Max sagt: "Mir geht es auch gut." Er fragt: "Wie geht es deinem Hund?"
Anna antwortet: "Es geht ihm gut. Er spielt im Park."
Max sagt: "Tschüss, Anna! Bis nächste Woche!"
Anna antwortet: "Tschüss, Max! Bis bald!"

Beantworten Sie die Fragen:

Wo trifft Max Anna?
Was sagt Max zu Anna?
Was fragt Max Anna?
Was antwortet Anna?
Was antwortet Max?
Was fragt Max noch?
Was antwortet Anna über ihren Hund?
Was sagt Max am Ende?
Was sagt Anna am Ende?

I added a lot more material for Japanese students of German. Again, the target audience is Japanese people who want to study German. Here is the blog:

https://german.siterubix.com/

Tschüss! Bis bald!

David Hurley
#InspiredFocus