German Through English Eyes. A History of Language Teaching and Learning in Britain 1500-2000, by Nicola McLelland, published by Harrossowitz Verlag Wiesbaden in 2015. McLelland was – and is – Professor of German and History of Linguistics at Nottingham University, which I gather is about to axe its German department. Borrowed from the London Library.

The book engages me more than I expected and will need a thorough read. I will come back to it.

Above all it makes me think about what textbooks teach us. I have been attempting to learn languages as far back as I can remember, but beyond thinking “not enough grammar” or “I can’t stand the direct method”, I have not thought much.

First I was remembering the German course I started with in 1959, which was Deutsches Leben. Then I remembered there was a more modern course a friend used for teaching in the 1980s or later, called Vorwärts. It featured a family who lived in Cadolzburg, and so when my friend visited me in Fürth years later we had a trip to Cadolzburg, where the populace seemed to have heard enough about their fame. The pupils using that course all seem to remember Lieselotte and the dog Lumpi, which shows that some things stay in the memory.

I found an interesting weblog with a post on this topic. Multilingual Mum – Adventures with Languages, by Jane Welton, who turns out to be an ITI colleague.
German Textbooks – how they’ve changed. A thorough post and interesting comments, and nice scans of some old German textbooks. One of the comments links to an audio clip from Vorwärts.