Digitalised German Language Teaching in Nigeria - My Experience

Abstract

Digitalised German language teaching has gained more popularity among teachers and lecturers of German in Nigeria in recent times. The Covid-19 pandemic and the stringent government- enforced measures - such as delimiting the percentage of employees and clients who could be present within a workplace at the same time, and partial or total lockdowns - to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus necessitated the adoption of alternative measures to onsite teaching. It was this necessity that informed the introduction of online courses at the Goethe-Institut Nigeria, where the author of this paper worked for 3 years as a teacher and examiner. This paper highlights the experience of the author with the transition from face-to-face classes to online teaching and the adaptations that were made to master teaching German online. Goethe-Institut Nigeria is Germany's cultural institute in Nigeria (About us, https://www.goethe.de/en/uun.html) and one of the 158 centres across 98 countries (Locations, https://www.goethe.de/en/wwt.html). Situated in Lagos, the institute through its language department offers German language courses from A1 to B2 levels and exams A1 through C1 level based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Course Levels, https://www.goethe.de/ins/ng/en/spr/kon/stu.html). Prior to the global outbreak of Covid-19, the institute had offered only on-site courses for all available levels with flexible schedules such as morning, early afternoon, late afternoon and evening classes. However, this flexibility still could not meet the need of every interested learner of German. On one hand, the constant heavy traffic to and from Lagos Island – a business hub in its own right – meant several hours of commuting for many potential course participants, and in some cases that was enough discouragement. On the other hand, the only Goethe-Institut centre in Nigeria is in Lagos, leaving the remaining 35 states in the federation without a Goethe-Institut centre. While travelling from other states to Lagos for the Goethe-Zertifikat exams is realistic, doing the same 3 to 5 times a week over a period of 12 to 16 weeks in order to attend physical classes is less practical.

Thus, from time to time the language department received enquiries about and requests for online courses. Besides not having trained personnel to meet such requests, the requests were also rather infrequent and less than the institute's minimum policy of 8 course participants in a class at the start of a course. As a result, such requests were usually forwarded to the sister institute in Nairobi – Goethe-Institut Kenya, where they already had online courses and personnel with the required training.