Mark

Welcome to my homepage here at the University of California, Los Angeles. This page is intended to give you a brief overview about me, whether you saw me as your classmate, colleague, or Teacher of your German class.  I am a Fulbright Scholar from Berlin, Germany currently studying at the UCLA School of Law in order to obtain an advanced Law degree. I was also appointed as Graduate Student Instructor for German for the academic year 2014/2015. 

 First of all, I did not come here without help. I am grateful and very happy that the Fulbright Commission has blessed me with a full Scholarship to enable me to come to the U.S. The Dean of the UCLA School of Law awarded me with a scholarship too, for which I am very thankful. Many people were involved in helping me to get where I am right now. Two of them are Prof. Dr. Kristina Bautze and Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice from Berlin who saw something in me, I could not believe myself. Another important person  is Terrence Jegaraj, a California native, who showed me a new and loving perspective of friendship and communication.

Teaching German is part of my cultural mission to get to know and understand the U.S. and the Americans better and also for Americans to to get to know me and gain a first lively understanding about the German language and culture. Besides the communicative approach to acquire German language skills I will follow the mother tongue mirroring method, especially researched in Germany. (see Butzkamm, W., RELC Journal Dec. 2011 vol. 42, no. 3 p. 379-391). With this method, we will skip a lot of frustration and grammar drills which usually come up in foreign language classes. 

Diversity – a challenging concept 

When I arrived my very first time in the U.S., in Jersey City I was struck how different everything and everybody looks as compared to Germany where it is more or less pretty homogeneous. Almost everybody has an immigration background here and could tell something about their ancestors and how they ended up in the U.S.. I never heard anybody in Germany talking about that subject my whole life. Because the people literally come all from somewhere else, they are more open to the idea that other people are different, i.e. that they look, eat and talk differently. To an average German the expectation is rather the opposite. He would expect that other people talk like him, eat more or less what he eats and finally looks like him. That is because he always experienced it in that way.

Diversity in America is a living concept that is the core of the U.S. identity. Everybody adds a different aspect of his background to the society. I am happy to experience this in one of the most vibrant cities in the world; in Los Angeles. Last December I went with  a group of Americans to the Big Sur Area located at the coastline of Central California. I was able to see how natural their interaction which each and how deep their understanding of each other other despite being multi-diverse is. I realize that mutual acceptance will lead to a greater understanding of each other and that will lead to a stronger bond between each other bridging the differences.  You can watch a video here about our awesome hiking trip to the Big Sur.

After the Big Sur experience I am now continuing my journey with teaching German and also volunteering for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles in Santa Monica. There, I am helping low-income people with their landlord-tenant issues. So far I can say,  that this gives me a deep insight into the American society from two different perspectives. On the one side I get to know how the live of people with low income is, how they worry about getting sick because the don't have health care, or that they have to file bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills.  On the other side I can see how the higher education works and college life feels like. When I read the first essays of my students, written in English, asking about stereotypes, I was touched about the personal informations their shared with me.  It seems underneath the surface nothing is like it seems to an outside observer. Stereotypes are even in the U.S. a part of everyday life but students are very well aware of them. 

After struggling a lot and figuring out everything I believe we can learn a lot from each other if we open our mind  and experience in a non-judgemental way what makes the other side so different for us.  

 Last update: January 2015