Emden

During my Intercalary Year I went to France and Germany.  Following my seven months in Longwy, France, I moved to Emden in Germany where I spent two months, again as an assistant, in one of the town’s Gymnasien.  Here I found myself taking full lessons and observing the German education system – during one English lesson (not organised by me) a pupil was talking about her pet dog and it suddenly arrived with the girl’s mother and was placed on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room – sehr interessant!
The course certainly benefited me in many ways: firstly, it gave me the language capabilities I had always wanted; to be able to go to France and Germany without a dictionary and do more than just get by.  It also meant I could move to the next stage of my dream of becoming a teacher of Modern Foreign Languages at secondary school level. 

Andy Lennon