Anonymous asked: On this blog you teach a lot of people German in English. I was wondering how you felt about German kids, learning English. Do you feel that German youth has enough knowledge and interest in the English language? My own experience is that for example Dutch youth are a lot better in English. What do you think about this?

Ohhh, that’s an interesting question! Well, English is a required subject at school. But learning a language at school out of a book is of course not very efficient. It’ll only provide the basics that you need to improve.

In general, German kids have an interest in learning how to speak English which is probably influenced by their interest in music and celebrities coming from the English-speaking world. And in times of globalization English has become more and more important of course. However, the real need to learn how to speak English really well isn’t as high as in other countries. One of the reason for that might be that all movies, tv-shows etc. coming from the US, GB etc. are dubbed! So people don’t even think about watching something in the OV to practise, because they don’t have to. And if they’re insecure about their language skills or sometimes just lazy, they’ll probably choose to watch the dubbed version.

Personally I’ve always wanted to watch movies in English and really wanted to understand and learn from them. I wish that more people had this motivation and wouldn’t simply rely on their school-English. :)