Interview with Mariette Ernst

Will you tell me the story of the "Kanarievogeltje"?

It was a Dutch lesson for 13/14 year olds. I'd never had this class before. The aim of the lesson was to teach the fashion auxiliaries "kunnen, mogen, willen". To animate this lesson, I placed a canary in a cage on my desk. I was able to use this situation to be able to say:

"Dat is mijn kanarievogeltje.

Het is heel klein, dat is een kanarievogeltje.
Het is in een kooi.

Het kanarievogeltje kan zingen. Kan je zingen?

Het kanarievogeltje kan vliegen."

How did you get the canary?

Thanks to the concierge. Every morning, when I arrived at school, I greeted the janitor. We hit it off. So, for this lesson, I asked him if he could lend me his canary. The janitor agreed, warning me that the canary might sing... but that's no problem, because if it sang, I could say "het kan zingen". At the beginning of the lesson, I told the students "het kan niet zingen". He didn't sing for the whole lesson, and then at the end of the hour, he started singing. I exclaimed, "Ah, ik ben vergeten, het kan zingen". The students laughed.

Why a live canary rather than a fake?

It's more cheerful with a real canary rather than a plastic one. It adds a bit of atmosphere to the classroom and helps make things more concrete and fun for the students. You have to make the students laugh because it's fun when they understand. It's much more fun to teach when they're receptive. It's more lively, so students understand faster. Since they're grown-up, they won't make fun of it; they'll even find the idea of learning with a canary brilliant.

For example, if the lesson focuses on describing a person: nose, mouth, etc., I won't just write the words on the board. I'll ask a student to go to the board and point to their nose, etc. "Dat is mijn neus, dat zijn mijn ogen, dat zijn mijn oren". "Uw zegt oog enkelvoud, meervoud ogen en je schrijf het op het bord".

Did your colleagues use objects or animals to teach back then?

No. Language teachers were often trained as translators. They wrote all the vocabulary on the board and the students simply had to copy. So it was a difficult pedagogy because the teachers didn't give explanations.

I was the only teacher on the teaching team who tried to make my course "lively". For example, I also taught the children songs in Dutch to help them learn the language. The fact that I also taught in local schools probably helped me to use more playful methods. It's also important to involve the students in a dynamic way, rather than passively listening to the lesson. If they intervene during the lesson, they'll integrate the material better and it'll be a more fun experience for them, and for me.

If you could take any object and give a language lesson, which one would you take?

It depends on the subject of the language. If we're talking about the study of flowers, I'd take a pot of flowers or a bouquet. I could, for example, draw on a text about flower fields in the Netherlands.

We often went on excursions to visit museums in Amsterdam, Utrecht, or even Geleen. I loved organizing these outings (keeping abreast of activities, getting in touch with museums, asking for discounts for my students and myself, etc). Sometimes there was a guide who explained the collections. But there were also times when I gave the explanations myself.

After each outing, I bought posters of the museum visited. So my classroom was adorned with posters that I used in the lessons.