Firsthand Report: Digital German Courses for Refugees from Ukraine

Language support for refugees is currently threatening to fail due to a lack of teachers. Yet digital training offers have the potential to make a much greater contribution to solving the problem, as this practical example illustrates.

"Good morning, Mrs Müller!" - Dina joins the chorus of morning greetings in a completely natural way. The 14-year-old has made it! She is one of about 150,000 pupils from Ukraine who are currently attending classes at German schools. There could be up to 400,000 by the end of the year. According to the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz), about 24,000 additional teachers would be needed to provide them with adequate instruction in German. In view of the already existing severe shortage of teachers, which is further exacerbated by the Corona-related catch-up teaching, this is a challenge that can hardly be met.

Many schools are therefore now using digital teaching materials in Ukrainian, such as the "school cloud" available in some federal states. Especially in the area of language support, however, the targeted use of digital educational offers could contribute much more to solving the problem. Mobile German learning offers with attractively designed multimedia content strike a chord with the young smartphone-savvy generation. The successful example of Dina shows that mobile self-learning courses can also be a good solution for young people as a supplement to training or school lessons.

Having escaped the chaos of war, she has been diligently learning German since the end of March with the help of LinguaTV’s language learning app. The fact that she can progress at her own pace is very much in line with her high motivation: "I want to be able to participate in social life here, so I want to learn German as quickly as possible!" She particularly likes the videos in the app, which show typical scenes from everyday life and tell little stories along the way. In the conversation trainer, she can then act out the dialogues in the videos by taking on one of the roles and getting direct feedback on her pronunciation. She also likes the grammar videos. Thanks to the Ukrainian subtitles, she can even immerse herself in the complexities of the German language and further consolidate what she has just learned in the interactive exercises.

After only three months, Dina has already been able to improve her German considerably. She is currently taking classes in a regular school class and is now getting very good grades there. She has now extended her language course in the LinguaTV app for another three months.

Conclusion:

LinguaTV's digital German courses offer a fast and scalable way to provide adult and teenage refugees from Ukraine with effective language training.

For more information and a free consultation, the team at LinguaTV is happy to help. Please use the following contact form to get in touch.