1.What are your personal top three tricks and tips when teaching languages?

It?s not easy to motivate students so I often use computers and the Internet. They like it and this way of learning makes them more active. Another trick is my sense of humor. When I see that my students aren?t interested in the lesson, I try to make them laugh (not too hard, of course). My last tip/trick is the teacher?s behavior. He should act like students sometimes, so he can understand their problems.

2.Which word do you always have trouble pronouncing?

I don?t have many problems with pronunciation now but I remember a word that was quite hard for me to pronounce at the beginning. It?s a German word for teacher – ?der Lehrer?. It has this difficult German ?r? (rolling ?r?).

3.What is the worst translation error you have ever made?

It was in Austria. I was a German translator there and worked the whole day, often till midnight. One time on a conference I translated a speech and said ?langweilig? (boring) instead of ?langsam? (slow).

4.Which language teaching product / service / method / gadget … has impressed you the most and why?

I love new technologies in learning and teaching. They are very interesting and motivating so I use them a lot in my classroom. I like e-learning platforms; they allow learning from every place on earth, no matter where the teacher and the students are.

5.What has Lexiophiles’s top Language Blog competition changed for you?

First of all I could see that people like and value my work and hobby. I also saw that they like the German language and that they learn it also outside school. This competition was also a very strong motivation for me. My 5th place is like winning for me and I see that it makes sense to write about what I love.

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