One week of German class is done. It's tiring, but I enjoy it. My teacher is good. Being a language teacher too, it's funny to be the student. She only speaks German to us in class. Of course, she speaks slowly and clearly and uses a lot of hand gestures. It's similar to how one would speak to a person who is mentally incapacitated. She speaks English very well so it is tempting to speak English to her during the breaks, but I try to only speak German. I really do sound mentally incapacitated though because "Mein name ist Holly" and "Ich komme aus den USA" will only take me so far when I want to say something about a movie I saw last night. Although in a pinch I can count to 100 or recite the alphabet. Obviously, fluency is only a few classes away. Really though, I do feel a little more confident about speaking and understanding.
Another funny thing is the other students. There are five other students from Russia, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Bulgaria, and Brazil. Naturally we all have accents from our mother tongues. Sometimes, I can't tell if a couple of them are even speaking German. I'm sure they think the same thing about me. Also, we have learned a lot of questions this week and the ways to answer those questions. One student keeps on just repeating the question back to the teacher instead of answering. I would have lost patience a long time ago. It also makes me empathize with my students when I make them work in pairs because I only want to be paired with the better students.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
That would be so hard to teach a language to people whose native languages are all different and none of the speak what you are trying to teach!
Post a Comment