I don't like learning german in german.
Because I have been entirely hopeless during the year to date, I am back in german classes, and it's reminded me why I really wish I had been a more diligent student back in my Sydney german-learning days. In Sydney I had the luxury of english-speaking classmates and english-speaking teachers who could and would explain things in english. Hence I never had to learn german grammar in german. Here, though, we can be talking about stuff I already know, but I have no idea what's going on because I don't know how to say "past imperfect" (or whatever) in german. It's relentlessly frustrating.
On a lighter note, I had a dream the other night in which I was at a pub with one of my former classmates from german and Bob Hawke, the well-known former PM. As it turns out (according to my subconscious, anyway), Bob is really quite fun to have a beer or two with. He even laughed along good-spiritedly when Vlad made some crack about Australian children living in poverty. Ah, Bob.
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5 comments:
take heart. immersion language learning is intensely frustrating at first, but once you acquire a bit more vocab you can usually find ways of asking the questions you want answers to. you just have to battle on till you get to that stage. once you get there, immersion is by far the most effective language learning technique because you haven't developed the habit of breaking into english when the going gets tough and you are forced to try to express yourself in german. and every time you want to scream, just remember that i've just spent 9 months (750 hours!) learning arabic in arabic. and at least you get to practise german outside the classroom (tunisians speak dialect so i couldn't).
Actually, no one speaks normal german around here. I mean, they all could but it's not really their langauge so they don't. There is always TV though.
are you learning german german, not swiss german?
Yep, deutschydeutsch, not switzydeutsch. I think it would be nice to have a proper handle on proper german before getting all confused with Swiss german.
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