For almost 15 years, the “Battle of the Books” competition at the Amerikahaus Nürnberg has been a popular and highly anticipated event: students compete in teams against other schools from all over Bavaria to demonstrate their English reading comprehension skills.
Therefore, it’s not that easy to sign up as one of the participating schools, however, the COG has managed to do so the second time in a row. And – what’s more – it has succeeded in recruiting competitive, curious and committed students of year 11, 12 and 13 who are willing to go the extra mile in their free time and study several English-language novels, like T.J. Klune’s “House in the Cerulean Sea”, George Orwell’s “1984” or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby”.
But why bother with fiction these days at all? Isn’t it only an easy escape from the harsh reality? According to the US Consule for Public Diplomacy Dr. Julius Tsai – who opened our afternoon session at this year’s event on February 25 – the “power of reading” can do so much more here: it offers the teams a “moment to shine” at the event itself, but also asks for “close and careful reading” preparation, which is “a fundamental skill in times of swipes and AI”. Additionally, the young readers can “develop empathy” and gain insights into “enduring American ideas and ideals” addressed in “these remarkable novels”. All these aspects combined might help them to start questioning today’s world and at the same time become “global citizens” of a shared future in which Americans and Germans are friends and allies. To further this bond the DAI introduced a new highlight at this year’s event: American students from Vilseck and Ansbach joined the teams, turning the competition also into a people-to-people exchange. We thank Margarete, our American teammate from Vilseck for her support!
So how did it go this year Kathi, Maja, Nethuki and Harsift?
“After some exploring in Nuremberg, we got our team shirts. It was a light green this time (we were not too happy about that), but that’s not the point. Before we took our seats, we took these pictures and selfies below (props to Mister Schreiner, our passionate photographer). After that we did our last revisions and talked to some other teams, who were all excited and also had a competitive spirit.
The first round began and although we missed out on some points in the beginning, we gained those back fast. Overall, the first round went pretty well, except for some technical difficulties the organizers had. The moderator of the battle, Steven Schotte from the US Consulate’s Regional Security Office, was quite funny as well.
The second round made us all a bit nervous and that’s probably why we didn’t get as many points as we had hoped for and didn’t end up on the podium. Nevertheless, it was a fun experience, especially because we also got to buy Nuremberg’s best pretzels (which are very delicious) after the competition and we got to talk a lot with each other. We will most definitely participate again next year!”
Last but not least, we want to thank our “Förderverein Gymnasium Unterschleißheim” for their generous financial support of this project and their funding of the excursion to Nuremburg by train.
Christine Avram and Christoph Schreiner
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