Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

I got a haircut today.  No big deal, right?  Normally, I would agree, but today I recognized the benefits of three weeks of intensive German classes.  The haircut was supposed to be done by a woman who spoke English.  It wasn’t.  From my entrance into the shop, I realized I would be maneuvering through the stress of a haircut without benefit of my Mother tongue.  How did this happen?

For the past three weeks I have spent every weekday afternoon in Lorrach, a local city, studying German with 18 other people.  From one to five each day I find myself, along my fellow students, drinking from the fire hydrant of German language learning, head spinning and mind exploding.

Some of us come with former experience in German; others have learned several languages.  A few are struggling just to take a breath.  We represent five continents, twelve countries, and speak more than seven different languages.

 As a teacher, I come with a unique perspective on learning, and I am influenced by the work I will be doing as a teacher of English as a foreign language.  I want to reach out to the students who struggle, change the attitude of the teacher toward sassy students, and, unfortunately, be the perfect student who makes no mistakes myself.

The tenor of the class changes with the instructor.  On Monday and Friday the young male teacher plays along with the joking and noise.  On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the more experienced female instructor uses sarcasm and body language to keep the class under control.

Home work for German class

In both cases the class often reminds me of my 6^th period chemistry class of several semesters.  The class tenor tends toward rowdy, with some who try to be teacher’s pet.  My own students seemed to be just one step from totally chaos.  This Language class has the same problem.  We are learning in the afternoon when we really want to be free of encumbrances and not have struggle with yet another German grammar concept.  (Let me interject, I am so very thankful for learning English grammar.  That knowledge has already saved me on a number of occasions!)  Students have come to German class to learn German, but fun is more inviting! 

The class structure has us out of our seats regularly, playing games and conversing with one another.  We have workbooks and handouts and make lots of charts and lists of words, conjugations, and parts of speech.  The fast paced lessons leave me (and others half my age) exhausted at the end of each session.  But…

Here is the ‘but’.  Today I spent 45 minutes getting my hair cut by a woman who does not speak English.  Nor did her assistant who washed my hair.   I realized during the hair washing I could understand part of the conversation.  Enough to get my hair cut the way I wanted.  But, more than that, the ‘but’ is I am relaxing with German.  I still try to translate every word, but (again) I am developing comprehension and, at the same time, accepting what I don’t know as fuel for future learning. 

I love learning German, not something most would say, but, to answer the question in the first paragraph, I recognize growth in my ability to communicate in German.