Choosing between two exchange offers
Lena, a Year 12 German Continuers student, has two options for her three-week exchange. Option A is a Gymnasium in Leipzig with a host family whose parents both work full-time; the family has two younger children and speaks fast Saxon dialect at home. Option B is a small town near Freiburg with a retired couple who host students every year and speak standard German slowly. Lena's teacher says her listening is her weakest skill and she freezes when she cannot understand a word. Her written German is strong. She wants to improve her speaking confidence and also wants to experience everyday family life. Option A offers a school choir and a sports club; Option B offers cooking and gardening with the hosts. Lena has never travelled alone and is anxious about being misunderstood.
1. Which option better supports Lena's stated weakness in listening, and why? Justify with reference to the evidence in the setup.
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The stronger choice is Option B, but with a qualification. Lena's weakness is listening, and she freezes when she misses a word. A retired couple who host students regularly and speak standard German slowly provides comprehensible input at a level she can process, which lets her build tolerance for gaps rather than panic. Option A's fast Saxon dialect and full-time-working parents mean less supported interaction and more unsupervised exposure. However, Option B is slower and less demanding, so it may not stretch her. The judgement call is that supported input should come first: confidence grows from repeated success, and Option B offers more of that. Option A would be better only if she already had strategies for coping with incomprehensible speech.
2. What counterargument favours Option A, and how should Lena weigh it against her listening goal?
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The counterargument is that Option A offers richer, more authentic immersion: a school choir, a sports club, younger siblings, and a busy household create many spontaneous interactions that build speaking confidence and everyday-life experience, which are also her goals. Option B's quiet routine with a retired couple may produce polite, limited conversation and less peer contact. The weighing principle is that her listening anxiety is a barrier to the other goals, not a separate goal. If she cannot cope with fast speech, the rich environment may shut her down. A defensible answer: choose B for the first exchange, or choose A only if she commits to a strategy such as asking for repetition and using context to guess meaning.