Using the new language afterwards (Düsseldorf experience, part 2)

Micropolitics of language is language acquisition, which means basically: using a language. Using a language means learning a language, and learning is ideally Using the language in a refined way. Of course it needs also efforts to acquire a language in the country, where the language is spoken. But in general it is much easier to acquire a language in the country, where the language is used: The Düsseldorf experience means for the students: lots of opportunities for using the language (see previous post). But after returning to your home country (in this case Japan) this is gone, it is no longer possible to use the (German-speaking) surrounding for language acquisition or at least for keeping the language level. After returning to ones home-country it needs additional efforts to maintain the language level. I know about what I am talking about, because I learnt Japanese for several years in Germany and it was a constant struggle not to forget too much words. That was in the 1990s and you will find a lot of people on the Internet arguing that the Internet changed this completely. I am not sure about that, at least for maintaining a intermediate (CEFR B-level) of a language some planning is required. I used different kind of movies to learn Japanese. One movie is called Tampopo (Wikipedia about the content) and learned a lot colloquial Japanese, the other was Tokyo story (Wp), which is still partly difficult to understand, because of dialect and old language. The important trick is watching the movie several times and hiding the subtitles. In a German cullture studies class at the Chukyo University I try to show the students how to learn German, using (among others) the movie Labyrinth of lies (Wp). But there are problems:

• Only a few students watch the film in advance (as homework)
• It is not a language class, the aim of the class is (German) culture
• Some basic background knowledge is missing 

But the last problem is actually an chance, because it gives the opportunity to learn something about (German and Austrian) history (we did also "Mahler on the couch", Wp). The students were surprised that German mainstream ignored the (then not named) "Holocaust" (Wp) in the 1950 years and it were the (Frankfurt) Auschwitz trials (Wp) and an American Television drama (called "Hollocaust"), which were responsible for contemporary German "Erinnerungskultur" (Wp). In this context "Using" the German language means expanding ones terminological (vocabulary) basis, by watching Films and reading about historical backgrounds. This helps expanding the vocubulary base for difficult word or concepts and therefore expanding (selectively) ones communication abilities and cultural awareness.