Dear colleagues,
I am a Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Nottingham,
beginning a research project on the history of German language teaching
in the UK.
At the moment, I am building a database of textbooks used for teaching
German in the UK since about 1850, as well as a database of contacts. I
am hoping that the expertise and long memories of at least some ISMLA
members may be able to help. Please also feel free to pass this message
on to any retired colleagues who might be able to help.
I am particularly interested in the following:
1. The textbooks you have used to teach German, as far back as you can
remember. The more detail the better (dates, name of school, etc.), but
I would be grateful for any information at all, even vague information
(e.g "I think it was called Unsere Freunde and we used it in the 80s" is
still useful!).
2. Names of any textbooks YOU yourselves used for learning German when
YOU were at school. Again, name and location of school and approximate
dates would be greatly appreciated.
3. If anyone - or anyone's retired colleagues - have copies of old
German textbooks or grammars lying around at home that they used in
teaching, but now don't want/ need, may I invite you to consider
donating them to the research project? If anyone has a lot to donate,
please let me know and I will see if I can assist with postage costs.
4. Finally, we are hoping that one strand of the project will be an oral
history of language teaching in the UK. If you would be willing to be
interviewed on your experiences as a teacher of German over the years
(and the more years, the better!), please let me know.
Please respond direct to my email: nicola.mclelland@nottingham.ac.uk
With many thanks in advance for any help that you can muster,
Dr Nicola McLelland
Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer,
Department of German
(Room C32, Trent Building)
University of Nottingham,
Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K.
Tel. +44 (0)115 951 5822
email: nicola.mclelland@nottingham.ac.uk
website:http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/german/
Visit the Historiographia Linguistica website:
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=hl
Visit the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas:
http://www.henrysweet.org
Visit the Association for Low Countries Studies:
http://alcs.group.shef.ac.uk/
Visit the Nottingham Institute for Medieval Research:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/medieval/index.php
