Johannes Hinterberger
A matter of passion
Being a German trainer and an instructor of German as a foreign language and German as a second language (DaF/DaZ) is one of my greatest passions.
I teach learners from all over the world. What fascinates me most are the misunderstandings that can come up in communication. So I'd guess that's exactly one of the reasons why I'm so captivated by German grammar in particular, and by all the ways it lets you express yourself with nuance.
My participants quickly notice that I look at the structures of German grammar in a way that doesn't always match the classic learning materials.
For me, for example, a question you can answer with yes or no never starts at position 1, but always at the second position. Position 1 is simply missing – it only exists in questions you can't answer with yes or no. As someone who also knows a programming language or two, I often see structures "meta-metalinguistically". Much to the dismay of some colleagues. *sorry.
But how did it all begin?
About 13.768 billion years ago, give or take – scientists love to argue about that (and I'll be darned if I get involved!) – the universe is said to have come into being, or to have been created by God. Quite a lot has happened since then, in any case.
Anyway, one day my parents met. First my two siblings were born. Some time later, me. As a baby, I'm sure I did a lot of bawling. I had a happy childhood in a so-called market town that – while I was growing up there – was declared a city. That's where I went to elementary school (the so-called Volksschule, followed by a middle school with a music focus) and then to a business school. It was clear right away that I absolutely wanted to become a secretary, because the alternative, electrician, which I'd tried out as a summer job during business school, just didn't do it for me. But, as fate would have it, things turned out differently.
When I started my first job, I was over the moon. I was completely overpaid for very simple tasks. Back then I worked as "Assistance of the Assistance of the Area Manager West" for "The Yellow Pages" in Salzburg. It got even better when the "Assistance of the Area Manager West" quit and I got her position. A few years later, the job got too boring for me. I could totally understand why the "Assistance of the Area Manager West" had left.
Wanting a change
I wanted a change. After a stretch of odd jobs and a truly extreme phase (yes, I often know what you're talking about), I worked for a mail-order company. First in the call center and then in marketing. I'd won a company contest built around a creative idea, and as a result I was offered the chance to switch departments.
I was happy to take that chance. There I discovered my passion for technical structures and for so-called list brokering, which people commonly call selling addresses, although that's not quite accurate. At the company I learned SAS (Statistic Analyzing System) and, along with it, SQL, and in my free time I wanted to know everything about HTML. A few years later I started my own business, a multimedia agency. There, the right communication was what mattered: marketing communication.
Besides the multimedia agency, which organized pretty much everything from websites and classic advertising all the way to events, I'd also opened a small meeting place back then, filling a gap that the town I lived in at the time, in Carinthia, really needed (copy shop + internet terminals).
One of my internet projects from that time (see picture; after a short while it had about 1,350 members) had almost 80,000 users shortly before it collapsed – and that was at a time when hardly anyone had their own internet connection, and nothing like Facebook even existed. That's also why I decided back then to open another meeting place in a different town.
When a human trafficker gets in the way...
Unfortunately, I'd picked a town back then whose landlord turned out to be a human trafficker and (since convicted) murderer. During that time I lost everything you can possibly lose in (worldly) possessions. The agency, the meeting places, the businesses.
The worst part was that, because I knew about what was going on, the human trafficker hunted me all across Austria. So I was on the run, and today I can really understand how many German learners feel who are being, or have been, persecuted by aggressors in their home countries.
For two years I could hardly lift a finger or go out in public. The fear of being hunted down was just too great.
At first the police did nothing, but at the end of those two years (2010) a detective contacted me for questioning. I couldn't trust him. I was only willing to meet him under extreme security precautions.
Luckily, after that conversation with the officer, I had the chance to fight my anxiety. Step by step, I started finding my bearings again – or rather, finding new ones. Bore-out syndrome was the diagnosis at the time. A condition that's still very dangerous for me today: the fear of dying of boredom. Any kind of routine could be fatal for me.
A sense of meaninglessness?
My fight against meaninglessness had apparently begun. At first I spent a lot of time thinking about the sense and nonsense of being here – and also of being gone.
I registered, quite officially, as a freelance artist who contemplates the sense and nonsense of existence. I enrolled in an evening high school for adults to take my mind off things.
Unfortunately, there I ran into structures that acted as if modern media like the internet didn't exist. Questions, especially follow-up questions about assignments and requirements, weren't welcome. Looking back, what I learned there was how I never, ever want to be as a teacher.
The evening high school was designed to take 8 semesters. In the first two semesters I'd completed half of all the modules. When they asked me to slow down, it got too boring for me, so within 3 weeks I took the extra exams I needed for a Multi-Media-Art degree I'd absolutely set my heart on. I couldn't stand that either:
It wasn't about art, and it wasn't about multimedia either. It was about advertising (but I'd already left the agency behind; I didn't feel like lying products into people's heads anymore) and about worker bees with college degrees who, as henchmen of the film, advertising and marketing industries, have to follow orders, and whose creativity depends on a boss's mood rather than on the clients. It's certainly an exciting field in principle, but it wasn't for me (anymore). So once again I wanted a change of scenery.
A change of scenery
When I'd said goodbye to the University of Applied Sciences, I came across an ad from the Bildungsförderungsinstitut (BFI) in Salzburg promoting a diploma program.
At first I didn't even notice the part about the diploma program; the only thing that caught my eye was the instructor's name. She'd been the German instructor when I took the extra exams. I took a closer look at the offer and found out it was about German as a foreign language and German as a second language.
As I read through the diploma program's curriculum more closely, I found more and more subject areas that fascinated me. After I signed up, I was able to combine and bring in everything I'd learned and experienced so far.
Spoiler: By now, "and team" includes me, too. ☺️
German courses on TV, on YouTube, on Facebook and elsewhere...
After finishing the diploma program, interesting new opportunities came along.
Gerhard and I put together a B1 course for participants (cohorts: B1.1 and B1.2) that aired on television, and I also started a YouTube channel and a Facebook channel. Every week there are several chances to join public lessons for free, which I pay for out of my own pocket.
Some users are channel members on YouTube and help me cover the internet costs. Every week, hundreds of texts get corrected and people from all over the world get support with their learning. There's now also the option of taking private lessons (for a fee).
Whether it's media design or teaching, there's now also interest in looking at my perspective from an academic angle:
On top of that, the City of Salzburg and the University of Teacher Education (PH Stefan Zweig) gave me the "Speechless through Migration" award for a multimedia art project:
Read the original article by Lisa Gold
Here you can watch the film that won the award:
Working on the topic of speechlessness showed me how much all of this had affected me personally, too. For me, it was an incredibly important project, and it received a lot of recognition as a result.
Gratitude
All of this – and so much more – fills me with gratitude, joy and happiness. I'd love to give some of it back. From time to time, I'd like to expand this "about me" a bit more. That's also why I'm really curious to see what the future holds for the participants and me on this platform.
For now, I hope you have lots of fun learning, practicing and joining in!
All the best,
Johannes - "JoPhi" - Hinterberger
Certified DaF/DaZ trainer & instructor (German as a foreign/second language)
Areas of expertise:
- e-teaching,
- e-learning,
- online teaching (one-on-one, groups, large audiences)
P.S.: Private life
Yes, I have one. Anyone who takes my classes will find out a bit about it, too. I don't think it's all that great to just post everything on one page, because I love personal contact.