Exploring (German) pronunciation with drama: secret mission äöü

In this workshop we will playfully practice some basic but sometimes tricky aspects of German pronunciation. This workshop is addressed to teachers of German and other languages. In fact, non-German-speaking participants are explicitly invited, too, to take the role of learners to explore in how far the activities are indeed effective. German was chosen as the practical example but participants will be invited to reflect on how they could adapt ideas from the workshop to the languages they teach.
In our role as secret agents in Germany, our mission is to blend in with the population – we do not need to speak a lot of German, but our pronunciation has to sound authentic! Participants will go through a training camp, exploring the articulation of particularly ‘German’ sounds and learning how to decode messages written in secret language agents’ cipher (aka IPA). In the field, they will use their new knowledge to figure out clues and to play their roles as ‘normal’ Germans to find out crucial information from the natives.

Stefanie Giebert works at the language center of Kempten University of Applied Sciences and teaches German as a foreign language and (technical) English at various universities in German. She completed her PhD in English literature at Trier University and has been a practitioner in the field of foreign language theatre for more than 20 years, running e.g. the Business English Theatre at Reutlingen University for several years. She has also been the co-organizer of the DiE Days since 2015.