“Double Club”: A Feel for the Ball and the Language
Playing football while learning German: the concept is called Double Club. A visit with the enthusiastic players at Langley Park School for Girls near London. Bethany Price curves around one player, then another. Her ponytail sways, the ball flies into the net. The pupil in the gym at the Langley Park School for Girls near London manages a formidable solo run and effortless dribbling. It would appear to be a normal English sport lesson if the hall weren’t echoing with such unaccustomed vocabulary. “Wunderbar,” the coach calls in German. “Gut gemacht.” – “Umdrehen.” – “Alles noch mal von vorn!” Bethany Price smiles. “Combining football and German,” she remarks, “that’s pretty bizarre.”
Without a doubt it is an unorthodox idea to link two subjects in class that have nothing whatsoever in common. Yet that is exactly what makes it so compelling for Bethany Price and her classmate Saranka Viththiyakaran. Once a week, sixteen girls, all 13 and 14 years old, voluntarily stay at school longer for the course Foreign Languages and Football. They have to sit in the classroom for the first part of the extra lesson and learn terms like Fußballstutzen and Flügelstürmer. Only then are they allowed time with the ball.
First half: German lesson
This double lesson concept that was developed by the Goethe-Institut London together with the professional English club FC Arsenal and the educational organization UK-German Connection is called Double Club. The basic rule is as simple as a football match: Each unit lasts 90 minutes and is divided up into two halves. The first 45 minutes are dedicated to vocabulary work and grammar. During the second half what’s been learned is applied on the field or in the gym and it’s no longer the German teacher, but a football coach from Arsenal standing on the sideline. The course is designed to supplement school lessons and lasts eight weeks. It ends with a day at the stadium of the premier league FC Arsenal.
Self-confidence through football
What fascinates Faye White (32), captain of the Arsenal Ladies and the English national team, about the Double Club is that it works both ways. It not only increases foreign language skills. “Playing football also promotes the girls’ self-awareness, social skills and self-confidence.” And self-confidence, she suspects, is what some pupils need when they attempt to express themselves in a foreign language that they still make mistakes in. Yet, all too often top athletes think that compared with mastering the ball, mastering a foreign language is unimportant. During international journeys, players are usually surrounded by a staff of professionals that takes care of everything, if necessary, from booking the flights to ordering breakfast.
Goalkeeper Emma Byrne, who grew up in Ireland, first recognized the importance of foreign languages when she was playing for Fortuna Hjørring at the start of her career in Denmark. “The team spoke Danish, the team meetings were held in Danish, the directions were in Danish. I couldn’t understand a word.” Her teammates had to translate every sentence into English for her. She only lasted in Hjørring for six months, then returned to Ireland. When she changed to Arsenal, where she could speak English, she realized why she had suffered in Denmark. It wasn’t homesickness, but the helpless feeling of not understanding anything and feeling no one could understand her. “Today,” Emma Byrne says, “I would always learn the language before switching to a foreign team.”
Europe-wide model for success
The model became so successful that the cultural institutes of France, Spain, Portugal and Italy also developed Double Clubs. Again, the ball was kept rolling: the project became multilingual, attracted the interest of the European authorities and the London Goethe-Institut played give-and-go with the EU. School journeys to Brussels and Berlin were financed with EU funds and the Bundesliga club Hertha BSC got involved in the project. In the meantime other professional clubs in England, including Chelsea, copied the Double Club model and tailored it to their club structures. And now it’s time for the girls to keep the ball rolling.
“The girls are probably even more attentive and dedicated than the boys. They pick up the words during training and use them easily in class,” observes Fraser Davis, who runs the Double Club at the Langley Park School. The German teacher, who studied and taught for two years in Potsdam, considers it a cheery, creative access to lessons. It especially helps to motivate the pupils when they have to decide on their foreign language exam subject.
This summer, a Double Club group will travel to Germany for the Women’s World Cup, which may expand the pupils’ vocabulary with words like Nationaltrikot, Würstchenbude and Feuerwerk. And for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London Karl Pfeiffer, the educational coordinator at the London Goethe-Institut, is already putting together the next Double Club project.
The article is from the Goethe-Institut’s magazine on “Women” (PDF in German).
Copyright: Goethe-Institut
June 2011
