Language summer camp
Language summer camp in Lang Co 2015

Celebrating 40 years of German-Vietnamese diplomatic relations, 56 PASCH high school students travelled to Lang Co. The students, aged 15-17, took part in a language summer camp during 5 June – 14 June 2015. The camp was co-organized by Goethe-Institut and ZfA.

Each camp day started with a morning game to lift the spirits, followed by group learning and projects with special themes:
 
For 32 A1-level students from FIT-Schools in Hanoi and Saigon “Environmental education” and “Fairytales” were the themes, led by Goethe-Institut teachers. For the environment, the students interviewed hotel service staff about sustainable tourism, visited a fishing village in its early morning routines, chatted with the inhabitants and collected rubbish from the beach. In a Do It Yourself-Workshop they also learned that it is not necessary to buy everything new.
 
For the fairy tales theme, a German theater pedagogue led a fascinating project for the students. With different methods from improvisational theater, the students not only got hands-on theater experiences but also trained their team spirit and learned German. They intensively worked on choreography for the fairytale “Snow White”, being responsible for acting, directing, choosing music, dancing, as well as set and costume design.
During the theater project, also Goethe institute teachers actively joined the work, and learned about theater pedagogics in language teaching.
 

 
Meanwhile, “Find and invent” was the theme for DSD schools A1 and B1 level students, led by ZfA. The students had language teaching in the mornings and creative project work in the afternoons following the inventing-theme.
 
The week passed flying with lessons, project work and fun activities such as Yoga, Football, sand castles and swimming. On the last evening, the FIT-students presented their spectacular performance “Snow White” and the ZfA participants brought to stage great short stories about German inventions. The evening, along with the camp altogether, ended to a funky disco of dancing and singing to modern beats.
 
Heart-filling friendships got developed, and farewell was full of tears as students parted to Saigon and Hanoi back to their homes. The memories of the exciting moments remain, along with the hope to meet again at next year’s summer camp.