Last week I spent upwards of 12 hours a day talking to complete strangers in the middle of the German countryside. Have I gone insane and become a hermit? Nope, I just spent the week as a volunteering "Anglo" at a Diverbo full immersion English camp.
I have wanted to do a Diverbo volunteering experience ever since I stumbled across the company some time after working in Spain on Summer camp way back in 2012, but for all of those who haven't come across Diverbo before I will give a quick run-down.
Diverbo is a company based out of Madrid, Spain, and functions as a language school; but it also has two programmes for full immersion English learning. In Spain this is called Pueblo Ingles, and in Germany it is called Englischhausen. I participated in Englischhausen.
The idea of he programme is that for one week non-native speakers live in a all-English environment to build their confidence and improve their language skills. Fluent English speakers then participate on a volunteer basis to act as conversational partners and teachers, in exchange for free accommodation, food and a really interesting experience!
All day everyday you only have to do one thing, speak English! It's a very intensive week for both the students and the Anglos (what they call the English speaking volunteers) but it's a lot of fun and everyone learns a lot.
In Germany the programmes run from a Friday until a Sunday, from the time the students arrive on the Friday afternoon German is forbidden, even with the hotel staff. This is why a secluded hotel is a must, less opportunities to accidentally hear or read English. Our hotel was a lovely family owned hotel near to a village called Laubach, about an hour outside of Frankfurt. It was surrounded by forest and walking trails, perfect for walking and talking! The food was excellent, and abundant, and they honestly had the best salads I've ever eaten - many meals were spent trying dissect the salad dressing.
All activities, meals and free time is conducted in English and it's a pretty daunting experience. Most of the students really embraced the full-English experience although you could always tell if they were cheating a little bit when you saw two Germans together and talking quickly while looking a bit shifty!
Every day was a mix of hour long activities, designed to give the students a mix of experiences and to let them be exposed to a wide range of accents, nationalities and personalities. Some people got on better than others and as the week went on people began coming out of their shells more and more. Some people felt most comfortable in the one-on-one environment, others preferred the less structured setting of meal times, but no matter what people preferred everyone definitely was stretched to their limits when it came to speaking!
For me the wide variety of activities was one of the best things about a programme. Our timetables were built on a "need to know" basis, which meant that we only knew what we'd be doing for the next few hours, until a new timetable was posted, but there was a general structure that the days followed. Generally the morning sessions were for one-on-one conversation, and occasionally conference call practise; then after lunch was a group activity, more one-to-one sessions and evening entertainment. While the whole week is fast-paced and tiring, I think everyone enjoyed it and had a lot of fun. It's a great thing to watch people grow more confident, start making jokes in English and managing to follow conversations and do presentations by the end of the week. One students was an amazing story-teller and, although his English may not have been perfect, he could always hold the attention of the room when he had everyone cracking up over a story. This really highlights for me what makes the whole week so fun and interesting, and leads me on to three things that sum up the Englischhausen experience.
The most important thing that I learnt over the week is that everyone is interesting. If you are interested enough to ask enough questions then you can always find something interesting about a person. Talking to different people, their interests really come across, I had a long conversation with one student about the animal intestine casings for sausages because that was the industry he worked in, who'd have known it would be such an interesting conversation! The range of people was incredible and half way through the week I started writing down what different people did for a living. Here is just a small range of the areas people worked in.
I have wanted to do a Diverbo volunteering experience ever since I stumbled across the company some time after working in Spain on Summer camp way back in 2012, but for all of those who haven't come across Diverbo before I will give a quick run-down.
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| The group |
The Idea
Diverbo is a company based out of Madrid, Spain, and functions as a language school; but it also has two programmes for full immersion English learning. In Spain this is called Pueblo Ingles, and in Germany it is called Englischhausen. I participated in Englischhausen.
The idea of he programme is that for one week non-native speakers live in a all-English environment to build their confidence and improve their language skills. Fluent English speakers then participate on a volunteer basis to act as conversational partners and teachers, in exchange for free accommodation, food and a really interesting experience!
All day everyday you only have to do one thing, speak English! It's a very intensive week for both the students and the Anglos (what they call the English speaking volunteers) but it's a lot of fun and everyone learns a lot.
Englischhausen
In Germany the programmes run from a Friday until a Sunday, from the time the students arrive on the Friday afternoon German is forbidden, even with the hotel staff. This is why a secluded hotel is a must, less opportunities to accidentally hear or read English. Our hotel was a lovely family owned hotel near to a village called Laubach, about an hour outside of Frankfurt. It was surrounded by forest and walking trails, perfect for walking and talking! The food was excellent, and abundant, and they honestly had the best salads I've ever eaten - many meals were spent trying dissect the salad dressing.
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| Laubach |
Every day was a mix of hour long activities, designed to give the students a mix of experiences and to let them be exposed to a wide range of accents, nationalities and personalities. Some people got on better than others and as the week went on people began coming out of their shells more and more. Some people felt most comfortable in the one-on-one environment, others preferred the less structured setting of meal times, but no matter what people preferred everyone definitely was stretched to their limits when it came to speaking!
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| The Castle in Laubach |
You will meet so many interesting people
The most important thing that I learnt over the week is that everyone is interesting. If you are interested enough to ask enough questions then you can always find something interesting about a person. Talking to different people, their interests really come across, I had a long conversation with one student about the animal intestine casings for sausages because that was the industry he worked in, who'd have known it would be such an interesting conversation! The range of people was incredible and half way through the week I started writing down what different people did for a living. Here is just a small range of the areas people worked in.
- An HR manager
- A neurologist/psychiatrist/psychoanalyst/psychotherapist
- An ex-secret service worker
- A journalist and radio personality
- A retired teacher
- A man who worked in the casing of sausages industry
- A man who worked in a company that finds solutions to problems involving plugs
- A woman who worked in pharmaceutical pricing
- A student
- A former show cat breeder
- A retired financial adviser
- A retired diplomat
- A neurologist/psychiatrist/psychoanalyst/psychotherapist
- An ex-secret service worker
- A journalist and radio personality
- A retired teacher
- A man who worked in the casing of sausages industry
- A man who worked in a company that finds solutions to problems involving plugs
- A woman who worked in pharmaceutical pricing
- A student
- A former show cat breeder
- A retired financial adviser
- A retired diplomat
You will learn a lot about German culture
When you're talking for up to 12 hours a day it's hard to avoid learning new things. There's only so long you can talk about your job so very quickly conversation topics broaden to anything and everything under the sun. You end up learning a lot about people in a very short space of time and inevitably you start to learn about and understand some of the differences between your own culture, and German culture. I learnt about the local custom of burying bodies in the middle of the forest around trees, I learnt about the German education system, but my favourite bit of new German knowledge? The old tradition in a tiny village called Landemert, involving coffee, eggs and an incredible amount of schnapps - the Germans really do love their schnapps! (If you want to know about that particular tradition you'll have to ask me! It's a long process!)
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| Grave marker on a tree. |
Your native language will get worse
Many times throughout the week a student would ask me how to say something in English and my mind would go blank. Trying to speak simply all the time can really knock some of the more obscure vocabulary out of your head!
From the students side, I heard lots of students telling stories about how a family member or colleague had called them during free time and how they had automatically picked up the phone and started to speak English without thinking! One man even started talking to his 3 year old daughter in English rather than German, leaving a very confused little girl who "couldn't understand daddy"!
Another time a group of us when for coffee in the local town and one of the students was forced to order in German because the waitress didn't understand any English. It was all going fine until he ordered his own drink in English!
Times like this really proved how much the program was working and embedding English into the students brains, whether they realised it or not!
So, did I enjoy it? Hell yes!
Would I do it again? In a heart beat, now I just have to find the time!
Good description of the program Clem. And the experience in one. No vacation like a lot of newcomers think it will be, unless you think putting in about 70 hours or so in the week is a vacation. And now off to numbers 23 and 24 in a couple of weeks. I'm a glutton for punishment.
ReplyDeleteHaha yes, definitely not a vacation in the traditional sense! But still a lot of fun and definitely worth doing! Still can't believe you have done so many!!
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