Thursday, our last day of our A2.1 German class.
It has been a bit of a mentally bumpy ride for us over the past four weeks. Day 1 was a bit of a full on immersion and the rest of the week was interesting to be 'doing it'.
Week 2 saw some of the class start to flake out, with some in particular missing many days for the rest of the course. Nordine and I were the only ones to attend every class. We thought we were getting into actual learning but by the end of the week we were frustrated and confused.
Over the weekend between Week 2 and Week 3 we did some homework that we simply did not understand. We guessed the answers and went to class the next week very frustrated. We got everything wrong. Suddenly everything negative about the course came to the boil in us (me particularly) and I went to speak to the front office about my concerns. We like the teacher, but we didn't feel like we were learning much. we don't have a textbook and we have no course outline. We just felt lost.
The person that we spoke to at the front office offered to move us to another class. Being half way into the course we didn't think this would be a good idea. They said they would speak to our teacher. We didn't want to get her into trouble but we also needed to say something. If we would have had a chance we would have raised the concerns with her directly but with the way the DeutschAkademie schedules the prior and after classes there is never any time.
Funnily enough on that particular day many of the students in our class were away. As we had a smaller class we got through the work quickly and had a chance to talk to the teacher directly. We told her that we had spoken to the front office and she replied that she had already been spoken to. It sounded like she wasn't in trouble and we had a chance to discuss what our issues were. We spoke about feeling confused, having no structure and never having a chance to talk to her. She said she could let us know a bit more about the structure but that German teachers are generally told to 'hide the grammar'. That's so stupid, all we are learning is the grammar but we aren't allowed to know about it? crazy.
After our discussion with the teacher we both felt a lot better. We also did a lot of study at home (both in the previous weeks and afterwards) which helped us to keep up or at least feel like we were learning something.
However, nothing else teaching wise changed for the rest of the course other than the teacher showed up early the next day! The rest of Week 3 we found to be less confusing as we covered some things we already knew and also revised some of the stuff from previous weeks.
Week 4 started and our class had halved in size. This is a voluntary course that people pay for in advance with no chance of refund, yet they don't bother to come. Week 4 was more relaxed as we completed what we needed to do with a small class size by the end of Tuesday's session. Wednesday was a couple of games in a group situation utilising some grammatical things we learnt earlier. On Thursday our teacher took us for an excursion to the library.
The library excursion seemed like a silly idea to me at first. We met at the Akademie and hung around to make sure everyone that was going to come had arrived.
We then went outside to the Wittenberg Platz markets to pick up some food before we went to the library.
Our teacher rode on her bike while the rest of us took the U-Bahn. Meeting at the library near Hallesches Tor station we were shown through some of the administrative aspects of the library.
The teacher then took us to the relevant sections of the library for things to help us with further study.
We even went into the children's library which had a surprisingly large amount of resources suitable for us.
The whole library thing was actually quite useful!
With our excursion over we said good bye to our teacher and she rode of into the sunset. A little bit of a sad ending to our time together - we really did enjoy being in her class. She had a great boisterous and non threatening style that we enjoyed.
Overall though we have to consider whether we liked the course and if we feel we have learnt something. To some extend we feel more confused than when we started. I think we have learnt quite a bit, but a lot of this is due to our work at home. Hard to say how much is due to homework and what is due to class work. Ultimately we enjoyed our class time but we don't think it was the best method of learning for us. If we want to continue to learn German properly (which we do) then we are going to have to do more structured courses - so we will look to enrol next time in what was our first preference, the Volkshochshule.
It has been a bit of a mentally bumpy ride for us over the past four weeks. Day 1 was a bit of a full on immersion and the rest of the week was interesting to be 'doing it'.
Week 2 saw some of the class start to flake out, with some in particular missing many days for the rest of the course. Nordine and I were the only ones to attend every class. We thought we were getting into actual learning but by the end of the week we were frustrated and confused.
Over the weekend between Week 2 and Week 3 we did some homework that we simply did not understand. We guessed the answers and went to class the next week very frustrated. We got everything wrong. Suddenly everything negative about the course came to the boil in us (me particularly) and I went to speak to the front office about my concerns. We like the teacher, but we didn't feel like we were learning much. we don't have a textbook and we have no course outline. We just felt lost.
The person that we spoke to at the front office offered to move us to another class. Being half way into the course we didn't think this would be a good idea. They said they would speak to our teacher. We didn't want to get her into trouble but we also needed to say something. If we would have had a chance we would have raised the concerns with her directly but with the way the DeutschAkademie schedules the prior and after classes there is never any time.
Funnily enough on that particular day many of the students in our class were away. As we had a smaller class we got through the work quickly and had a chance to talk to the teacher directly. We told her that we had spoken to the front office and she replied that she had already been spoken to. It sounded like she wasn't in trouble and we had a chance to discuss what our issues were. We spoke about feeling confused, having no structure and never having a chance to talk to her. She said she could let us know a bit more about the structure but that German teachers are generally told to 'hide the grammar'. That's so stupid, all we are learning is the grammar but we aren't allowed to know about it? crazy.
After our discussion with the teacher we both felt a lot better. We also did a lot of study at home (both in the previous weeks and afterwards) which helped us to keep up or at least feel like we were learning something.
However, nothing else teaching wise changed for the rest of the course other than the teacher showed up early the next day! The rest of Week 3 we found to be less confusing as we covered some things we already knew and also revised some of the stuff from previous weeks.
Week 4 started and our class had halved in size. This is a voluntary course that people pay for in advance with no chance of refund, yet they don't bother to come. Week 4 was more relaxed as we completed what we needed to do with a small class size by the end of Tuesday's session. Wednesday was a couple of games in a group situation utilising some grammatical things we learnt earlier. On Thursday our teacher took us for an excursion to the library.
The library excursion seemed like a silly idea to me at first. We met at the Akademie and hung around to make sure everyone that was going to come had arrived.
We then went outside to the Wittenberg Platz markets to pick up some food before we went to the library.
Our teacher rode on her bike while the rest of us took the U-Bahn. Meeting at the library near Hallesches Tor station we were shown through some of the administrative aspects of the library.
The teacher then took us to the relevant sections of the library for things to help us with further study.
We even went into the children's library which had a surprisingly large amount of resources suitable for us.
The whole library thing was actually quite useful!
With our excursion over we said good bye to our teacher and she rode of into the sunset. A little bit of a sad ending to our time together - we really did enjoy being in her class. She had a great boisterous and non threatening style that we enjoyed.
Overall though we have to consider whether we liked the course and if we feel we have learnt something. To some extend we feel more confused than when we started. I think we have learnt quite a bit, but a lot of this is due to our work at home. Hard to say how much is due to homework and what is due to class work. Ultimately we enjoyed our class time but we don't think it was the best method of learning for us. If we want to continue to learn German properly (which we do) then we are going to have to do more structured courses - so we will look to enrol next time in what was our first preference, the Volkshochshule.
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