Isabelle, a year 9 student using Gimagine as part of her DofE award shares her experience.

One of the ways language teachers can support young people to broaden their linguistic horizons is by using the Gimagine platform. This is a great way to explore the German language and if your students are also working towards the Duke of Edinburgh award, they can opt to learn German as their skill. Once they have completed the Gimagine course, they can ask their assessor to validate their DofE certificate issued by the Gimagine platform, and log the amount of time they have spent developing their linguistic and cultural knowledge as part of the award.

When and why did you start to use Gimagine?

On the 26^th October 2024, I logged into Gimagine for the first time. I’m currently in year 9 and have been learning German since year 7. I decided I wanted to improve my German as my DofE skill and I was hopeful this would also help me in school too.

What’s the Gimagine platform like?

The platform is very creative and there’s lots of pictures. There are also regular reminders to make your own notes in a notebook, and opportunities to practise verb conjugation which is something I hadn’t done a lot of at school. You could also record yourself speaking German which was a good opportunity to practise without feeling embarrassed.

What have you been learning about?

I’m working towards the DofE certificate whereby you complete 10 modules from the starter course and 5 modules from the global learning course.

As part of the starter course, I’ve learned how to describe myself, to talk about food, colours, outfits, festivals, school in Germany and music.

I’ve now also completed four of my five global learning courses and I’ve learned about sustainability, future skills, translation and lifestyle. This has helped me to broaden my understanding of German culture and to consider how learning German might help me in the future. Most of the content from the global learning course is in German with short texts or videos about topics which you don’t usually cover at school. For example, I read some short texts in German containing real and fake news and the task was to factcheck the information in order to identify the truth.

Is it accessible for beginners?

I’ve been learning German since year 7 so some of the content on the starter course I already knew and understood. The platform helped me to consolidate and to practise the work that I have already done on these topics. I also didn’t know some of the content and it was very easy to pick up the new vocabulary and grammar rules during these modules. The course is inclusive whether you already speak a little German or none at all!

What’s the most interesting thing that you have learned?

I have learned how to differentiate between the genders and how they can be affected in the dative and nominative cases, which is really helping me in writing tasks.

What has been your favourite thing about the platform?

There are lots of opportunities to practise the new content with drag and drop activities, word searches and fill in the blanks. These activities are really fun and help me to understand how to use the new language properly.

What’s your favourite German word?

My favourite German word is Sehenswürdigkeiten which means something worth seeing. I like it because it’s a long word and I like the way it makes my mouth feel when I say it!