** Our Chair accepted an invitation recently from the German embassy to the annual language teacher festival, this time held at the Goethe Institute in London. At this ceremony, normally a teacher is rewarded for his/her inspiring teaching of German.
The ceremony opened with a welcoming speech by the host, German Ambassador Miguel Berger, who had also invited the ambassadors of Austria and Switzerland, and an address by the Guest of Honour, the Rt Rev Dr Christopher Cocksworth, Dean of Windsor, who had served as Dean of Coventry Cathedral and visited its partner city Dresden.
What ensued was a presentation ceremony of the new GIMAGINE awards to high achieving students of German, and a series of performances by students from secondary schools.
The highlight, however, was the appearance of the famous (German) book illustrator, most well- known for The Gruffalo, Axel Scheffler, who came with a big surprise for his audience: he has created two new characters (pictured above) for children starting to learn German.
They are called Wuschel and Riki, and the stories are intended to attract young children to learning German – watch this space!
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