International Profiles British woman teaches German to refugees
Bonn · When Sarah Paeffgen came to Bonn from her native England several years back, she didn’t speak a word of German. Now, she is teaching the language to refugees in the Bonn area, using her years of experience and learning to benefit others.
A few years back Sarah Paeffgen earned a qualification to teach English as a second language. She used this only sporadically, mainly teaching business people who needed English for their work. But then in 2016, Ms. Paeffgen, who is British and lives in Bonn, was asked by a consultancy firm if she would be interested in teaching German to refugees. The firm had received a contract for teaching refugees and they had been seeking teachers. “I wasn’t sure that I would be capable of this challenge,” she says, “but there is only one way to find out and that is to try.” Now she goes to work every morning for several hours, teaching not English - but German to refugees, most of them who never learned to read or write. She says the challenges she faces now are certainly different than when she was teaching English, but not necessarily more difficult.
Like many expats in Bonn, she didn’t come here initially because of a big job opportunity. Ms. Paeffgen, from the county of Surrey in England, moved to Bonn in 1994, married a German national, stayed on and raised a family. Bringing up four children in two languages (English and German) has been a job in itself. Never mind the dog part. Now two of the children are at university and only two left at home. It’s one thing to find yourself in the position of wanting to go back to work in your home country at that stage of life, but it’s even more challenging as an expat.
In her newly found mission, she makes her way each morning to a renovated army barracks in Bad Neuenahr. There is a large room which is used as a classroom. They have to share with another group, “which can be a little loud at times.” The group that she teaches is around 12 to 15 students, male and female, and they mainly come from Syria, although there are students from Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Age differences are pronounced; the students range from 17-years-old to well over 60. But Sarah Paeffgen isn’t easily phased, “The enormous age difference between the students isn’t a problem in itself but generally the younger ones tend to learn more easily.”
Being an expat means a lot of learning on the fly - and this put her in good stead. Ms. Paeffgen didn’t receive specific training in teaching the German alphabet phonetically. “It’s really quite self-explanatory,” she believes. In the first weeks of a class when she is teaching the German alphabet, she has observed that vowels are the main problem for the students. They also have difficulties distinguishing a “p” from a “d” because they sound so similar. She starts with one letter, then builds to two letters and more, teaching them how to put the letters and sounds together. The whiteboard is her main tool in the classroom. “To write their own name is a big achievement,” she says. Recently, they were able to complete the sentence, “Der Hund ist braun” (The dog is brown).
Unique to Ms. Paeffgen’s group is that 90 percent of the students have never visited a school in their home countries. She has the distinction of being their very first teacher: “They are very enthusiastic about learning the language but of course there are enormous differences in their learning abilities.” What does she get out of it? “To see these people actually being able to read and write in a foreign language is hugely satisfying for me let alone for themselves,” she says.
The Bonn resident and expat understands that many international residents come here at first being a little lost, not speaking a word of German and muddling through the day with limited knowledge not only of the language, but the culture. “I can empathize with them having been in a similar situation myself, not being able to speak or write a word of German,” she expresses sympathetically. At this stage of her life, she is using her acquired German skills, experience and abilities to benefit the local community. “I do personally feel that I am helping a good cause,” she acknowledges.
