About

After graduating from University with an Economics degree, I spent three months living and studying beginners German in Berlin. I continued to study German whilst working in various roles such as sales before I worked as a Fremdsprachenassistent for a year at Ernst Abbe Gymnasium, in Eisenach, Thuringia. On my return I worked for Rolls Royce for three years, where I used my German language skills every day. At Rolls Royce and other companies I have worked at, I found that the lack of foreign language skills meant that those with language skills, especially German, were offered more opportunities. 

 

In September 2012 I completed my teacher training in Primary Education with German at Newman University and was offered a job teaching Year 1 in my placement school. Teaching these younger children gave me an excellent grounding in techniques I use for teaching German. In the Summer of 2013 I took part in the Internationaler Sommerkurs at the Universität Erfurt and after completing the course I took the Goethe-Zertificat C1 Zentrale Mittelstufenprüfung exam in Berlin and passed with 'gut', with a particularly high level of spoken German.   

 

I have been the German Teacher at The Oval Primary School in Birmingham, England since September 2014. The Oval is 3-form entry which means I am teaching German to around 360 Key Stage 2 pupils. In my first year of teaching German, I was nominated for and won a 'Special Mention' at the German Teacher Awards, for 'setting standards of excellence in the teaching of German as a foreign language in the United Kingdom'. I was presented the award by the German Ambassador Dr Peter Ammon and the Welsh Minister of Education and Skills, Huw Lewis AM (pictured above, provided by the German Embassy, London).

At The Oval,  I aim to create a love of German and part of that is making the German lessons as enjoyable and interactive as possible. Please read my lesson and Zeit für Deutsch plans to see what strategies I employ in order to achieve this.  I am passionate about German and am committed to developing learning German in this country. I hope that by engaging with this website and using my ideas, it will help you in your efforts to develop German too.

 

Viel Spaß

 

Sean Sullivan