By accident I ran into information about the project of a bilingual Kindergarten in Bochum named BiKiBo e.V. It’s not connected to any of those schools project. All of these school projects seems to think about founding own Kindergartens, pre-schools or nurseries.
First, there should be clear what the term Kindergarten means. The word “Kindergarten” is a loan-word to English. The semantics of Kindergarten [engl.] and Kindergarten [germ.] are different. Kindergarten [engl.] is only the last year before schools start. Kindergartens [engl.] are connected to the schools. At least, this is the concept my native speaker here at home explained to me. The Kindergarten [engl.] prepares for school. Sometimes the children already start learning how to read and write. IMHO a good translation for Kindergarten [engl.] would be ‘Vorschule’. The Kindergarten [germ.] ist better translated with pre-school or nursery.
The project of the ‘Verein zur Gründung und Förderung einer Bilingualen Kindertagesstätte in Bochum e.V.’ has a website named BiKiBo.de with a profile of the Kindergarten [germ.]. They want to start an institution for children between 6 months and 6 years. Therefore, I would call it a nursery and pre-school.
Like in the Carolinen-Schule, the pupils shall learn German and English via immersion
Interesting.
I’m still on holiday in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, but I found an interesting note in today’s edition of WAZ Bochum – the local paper of the regional newspaper: Someone called Eva Masuch is going to found a Toastmaster Club in Bochum. The first meeting shall take place in the “Haus der Freunde” (house of the friends… of the Ruhr-University Bochum) next Monday, April 20th at (the articel doesn’t say).
A toastmaster is the person (man or woman) offering toast at the a dinner or some other formal meals, e.g. a wedding. There is an international organization that tries to teach people how to give public speeches. I think, it’s mainly an anglo-saxon thing. Nevertheless, the German toastmaster movement – with clubs in Berlin, Munich – focusses on giving speaches not in German but in plain English. The groups seems to aim at teaching people to speek freely – in English, with not more than school English. That sound interesting to me. I will try to have a look at the group and the way they work. Due to the newspaper article, everybody gets a manual.
The weekly appointment is the same time/day of the week the English natives speaker meetings take place in Game and Grunewald in Bochum. Well, “native speaker” are a minority there but working language is English.
According to the WAZ you shall contact the organizer:
“Infos gibt’s per Email (toastmasters-bochum@email.de) oder unter Tel. 0234/32-29368 (tagsüber).” (WaZ, 16.04.2009)
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