Bringing British expertise to Germany

Language tuition plus therapy: Alice and Rachel Everard with course students.

Who would have thought that a group of 17 German adults sharing a stammer and a love of English language learning could have made considerable progress both in their language and fluency skills over a weekend?

Invited by Elisabeth Bahlmann with support from the German equivalent of the British Stammering Association, Alice Everard, language consultant and Rachel Everard, specialist speech and language therapist joined forces for the first time to deliver an innovative weekend training course 'Immerse yourself in English' in Germany.

Alice's sessions focused on building rapport and making small talk, telephone etiquette and presentations, whereas time with Rachel was spent looking at overt and covert aspects of stammering, how to become more desensitised and different ways to manage stammering.

This is how Ludger, one of the participants, described his experiences of the weekend:

'Having to speak in English at work has always been associated with frequent and severe blocks and therefore with fear for me. The reasons why my stammer becomes worse when speaking English could be that my vocabulary is limited and therefore I am less capable to substitute feared words, and also I have to focus more on the pronunciation which leads to a growing apprehension of feared letters or words to mention just two. The weekend workshop 'Immerse yourself in English', announced as a combination of speech therapy and language course, therefore seemed to be a perfect occasion to tackle my problem.

The combination of speech therapy and language course turned out to be mutually beneficial in many respects. From the organisational point of view it offered the opportunity to often divide the relatively large group into two sub-groups giving everyone the chance to speak frequently. Also the change between the language and the speech therapy intervals made it diversified. To me the speech therapy part was a way to confront my stammer again after several years of abstinence from therapy and thereby gain more confidence to speak despite my stammer.

The language sessions were tailored for German participants, working for example on typical German interference and grammar errors. I also benefitted a lot from the role plays and the business etiquette exercises (as the German way of communicating might be perceived as sometimes blunt or even rude).

Speaking English the whole day (as we were asked to stick to English during the breaks and the meals) really meant to immerse in that language. After a short time I felt totally at ease speaking English for the first time in my life and very much enjoyed talking. This was an amazing experience for me.'

For further information, please contact Rachel Everard on 020 7492 2578 or at rachel.everard@citylit.ac.uk.

Extended version of article from the Summer 2010 issue of 'Speaking Out', page 15