 He began his career as an innovative teacher of English, German and French as foreign languages, and was appointed to the Chair of English Language Teaching in Aachen in 1973.Butzkamm was inspired by C. J. Dodson's language teaching and the bilingual method when he pioneered his “aufgeklärte Einsprachigkeit” (enlightened or informed monolingualism) in 1973, which in Germany has become almost a stock phrase.Since languages are learned from use, the foreign language is by itself the primary means of acquiring it and must accordingly be made the working language of the classroom.