German class (or at least my wrestling with it) has come to a close. I spent over 4.5 hours a day/ 5 days a week for 2 months in class, limped through my A1's, and now it's time to move on. German is a difficult language to master even under ideal circumstances, and the bottom line is that I came to realize (and will eventually make peace with the fact) that I'll never be able to talk or comprehend much better than a 3-year old Berliner who just took a slug of Nyquil. While the natural reaction is to blame others, I'll fess up and say that I probably could have been more motivated, and probably could have studied harder. But my heart just wasn't in it. For this I WILL lay the blame with my lousy teacher (an older woman, but a first timer at this school with this curriculum), who somehow thought that lecturing to us for 90 minutes a shot entirely in German with near-zero speaking exercises or student:teacher/ student:student interaction would make us-- apparently by osmosis-- fluent in German. Shockingly, it didn't happen. And the times I did speak up and demand better answers than the "that's just how it is-- deal with it" she was giving, I got my wings pretty well clipped. I was doing this for fun and betterment-- but I wasn't having any fun, and I don't think my language skills got much better, so I waited for the unit to end and punched the "eject" button. Next challenge, please.
3 comments:
I think that's how they taught "Nell" how to speak. If Jodie Foster can do it, you can too G!
Naitch: When the grammatically incorrect, but still understandable turn of phrase "The chef is cooking (baking) the cake in the kitchen" translates to
"Der Koch kocht den Kuchen in der Küche,"
...you know it's time to hang up your spurs and look for an easier language, like Inuit.
G
hey, just get out there and dare to speak! I learned French on my own, but I was relentless until I could make myself understood.
BTW: I never did receive any email from you. When are you coming for a visit - a long weekend or something. You really need to come see the spectacular fireworks we have here in Cannes in July and August.
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