The first class of our four week German class was today. I was quite apprehensive as in a way we had rushed into this one without much forethought. Also this is the first time we are doing anything other than a beginners course (Level A2) - would it be too much?
To get to the school we hopped on the U-Bahn. As we now have our monthly cards we didn't need to forage for change to buy tickets at the station. Its a nice feeling of freedom to go anywhere when you have one of these, unlimited travel (for a month at least).
At the DeutschAkademie we went to our classroom number and sat outside.
We were early and slowly other people came along and soon the narrow hall was rather crowded. We looked at everyone in the hall and thought "Are you a potential classmate?". Every time someone new walked down the hall that looked like they knew where they were going we thought "Will you be our teacher?".
Around 12 the classroom doors started to open and the previous classes flooded the hallway and the changeover period was very busy. When our room was clear we could go inside and start to eye over our classmates. Our teacher had not arrived yet and so we mostly sat in silence and politely smiled when caught starring at one another.
Arriving a little late, our teacher 'Heike' came to the class. She bounded in the room dressed in full cycle gear, put her bag on the floor, her helmet on the table and then informed us she had to get a coffee. She was back seconds later with said coffee.
Heike introduced herself, name, age, where she lives (West Berlin) and her hobbies. We then went around the table introducing ourselves in the same way. I was first and when I said where I lived I made a point to say East Berlin to see what her reaction was. She laughed but I wasn't really sure why.
In our class are nine students total. There was supposed to be a tenth but he/she didn't attend today. There are three Italians, three Australians (if you include us), one French, one Venezuelan and one Canadian.
The class started immediately after our introductions. The whole thing was conducted in German and Heike spoke very quickly and with much animation. We understand most of what is being said, and when we don't then Heike uses alternative German words to explain - often with the help of charades.
We weren't really sure what we were learning today as we were straight into it. No introduction, course plan or things to learn for the day clearly defined. While other classes use a book, Heike does not and uses her own handouts. Initially we thought this would be a good thing and we will have to see how that goes over the four weeks.
It turned out that the main thing we were focused on today was the German Imperative sentence structure. We had several worksheets that we used and Heike made each of us individually work through examples aloud at times. It was quite confusing to be honest. While we can understand much of what is said, it is the complexities of the language that are hard to understand. Just as when we learnt German in Australia, sometimes the teacher says that 'It's that way just because it is' and no amount of explanation can make it clear. In this instance it's not just 'the way it is' but also whole new rules that we haven't been exposed to before. Heike gave us some homework from these worksheets.
Our classmates appear to be on quite different levels of comprehension, with some clearly struggling and others having no trouble at all. From what we can tell we are somewhere in the middle.
After class we met Tom and Danika as they were heading into their 3pm session. Not much time to chat other than to say 'Hi', but we will catch up later to compare notes.
We left after our three hours of class time digesting what had just happened while U-Bahn'ing back to East Berlin. We felt confused, excited, out of our depth and looking forward to improving our German language abilities.
Understandably we feel a bit inept at the moment but have to see the course through before we make any lasting judgements. We like Heike and her rowdy way of teaching the class.
In the evening we had a crack at the homework. We also tried to brush up on some previous learnt German and a bit more on the imperative structure. Quite a bit to take in.
So much more to learn and fifteen more lessons to go!
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