The Magic of Language Learning

Magic inspires curiosity and creativity, which expand our imagination. It is an effective instrument to improve interpersonal competencies such as communication and public speaking skills. With magic, you can engage, entertain, and pleasantly surprise people.

Tobias Grünfelder Campoverde uses his magician abilities and their benefits as a creative tool to teach languages and to enhance cultural awareness in children and teenagers. According to Tobias, the application of magic in education is an innovative and new method, which sparks curiosity and eagerness to learn the languages effectively, which also fosters pronunciation and confidence in speaking.

Learning Language with Magic

Tobias is a doctoral student at Zeppelin University and simultaneously works as a project manager for the Transcultural Caravan, and most surprisingly, he is also a magician. His interest in magic began in his teenage years and as of today, he combines his magic tricks to teach children languages In collaboration with the Goethe Institute and the German Embassy, he has worked in many different countries as a magical ambassador to promote cultural exchange and teach the German language with the support of magic.

It starts with the awareness of various diverse parts that we can look at, such as the diversity of animals up to the variety of humans, which encourages interactions among children. He uses these aspects to attract attention and initiate discussions, which increases cultural sensitivity and language competencies. Moreover, he applies his magical abilities in an interactive and playful approach to teaching languages. For instance, he developed different tools, such as typical card tricks to learn vocabulary or applying magic spells to learn and foster the pronunciation of words.

Creating stories connected with magic is another tool he applies to teach languages at school projects from primary schools up to children in their teenage years. Similar to languages, when learning magic, it is natural to make missteps. Tobias reiterates that making grammar or pronunciation mistakes is an important and helpful step, which helps to learn and increase proficiency, and while applying magic in the progress, children can also use tricks to hide their lapses. With the support of his magical abilities, he triggers creative thinking and collaboration, and similar to language, magic is something very diverse with a variety of styles, applications, and tricks.

Transcultural Caravan

The Transcultural Caravan is a project with the intention to establish a centre of global thinking and invites students, researchers, as well as academics from all around the world for diverse teaching formats and events. The inspiration behind this idea of “Caravan” is to create a sense of belonging while traveling and starting a journey of practical experience together.

Conclusion

Magic can be surprising, but it also reminds us how easily we can be fooled by our perception. Similar to culture and working across cultures, we need to be aware that our perceptions can be misleading or we might perceive things differently from what they are. . For Tobias, magic reiterates that the reality is not as we perceive it and what is more, the purpose is to surprise and amaze people with tricks that demonstrate new and surprising dimensions for learning new things in a less traditional, yet creative way.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” – W.B. Yeats.

Final words:

SIETAR Austria and The Multilingual Garden would like to express their appreciation and gratitude to Tobias Grünfelder Campoverde for demonstrating new innovative and creative ways of teaching languages with the application of magic.

You can find further information about Tobias Grünfelder Campoverde at:

https://www.tobias-campoverde.com/about/

Furthermore, we are grateful to Dr. Karin Martin for leading The Multilingual Garden and continually acknowledging the value of multilingualism in our society.