Merchant Taylors' School Choir sing at Lord Mayor's Dinner in London

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German

The German department is led by Mrs Garside assisted by Mrs Southworth and is currently taught from Year 8 upwards at the Senior Girls' School. Year 6 pupils at Stanfield have one lesson a week where they learn the language mainly through songs, games and oral activities.

The aim of the German course in Years 8 and 9 is to enable the girls to communicate confidently in German through regular oral and written practice based on a sound knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.

Pupils have the opportunity to write to penfriends at our partner school in Solingen NRW and several girls have subsequently taken part in an exchange visit. Follow the link to Kate's diary of her week in Solingen. (Kates Tagebuch - see below)

German is offered as an optional GCSE course in Years 10 and 11 and in the Sixth Form it is taught jointly with the Boy's School. Girls achieve excellent results at both levels and many continue to study German at university.

In addition we have recently taken girls from the GCSE and A Level classes to Berlin for a language and cultural experience.

German News and Events

German Christmas Markets December 2010

Every year before Christmas, the squares in German towns are transformed into Christmas markets. There are wooden chalets selling traditional hand-crafted gifts as well as a variety of traditional food and drink. The atmosphere is magical with the stalls decorated with candles, wooden toys and sparkling Christmas decorations.

At the end of November a group of girls from years 7-11 spent a long weekend visiting the Christmas markets in Aachen and Cologne. We arrived in Aachen at lunchtime and several of the girls bought their first German sausage. Crepes were also a popular choice and as it was quite cold, a few tried the non-alcoholic Glühwein. The girls visited the stalls selling Christmas tree decorations and tried the local gingerbread speciality called Printen.

It was only an hour's drive on to Cologne where there are seven Christmas markets in total. During our stay we managed to visit four of them. The first was the Angel's market where we went on the first evening. The markets are quite different at night when all the fairy lights on the stalls and in the trees are lit. The market was very busy but it was very easy to keep track of our girls as they were all wearing red antlers.

The following morning we went to the Cathedral and all the girls bar one decided to climb to the top, although a few gave up half-way. We then went to the Alter Markt in the old part of the town where the roofs of the huts were decorated with gnomes. The afternoon was spent in the chocolate museum, which proved very popular with the girls. On the way back to the hostel we stopped at the market by the cathedral which was very busy, but there were carol singers on stage which added to the atmosphere.

In the evening the girls, dressed in their antlers, visited the final market of our tour. This was a fairy-taled themed market at the appropriately named Rudolfplatz. Here they bought the last of their presents and the following day we headed back to England.

Several girls gave an account of the trip in assembly. Click here to read what they had to say.