DE-206972
I used to study German for a number of years...4 years in high-school, two at university...and never managed to get past the basic stuff of the numbers (which i actually learned when i was 5 or 6 years old) and the basic stuff of "Ich bin Studentin, ich bin xx Jahre alt, ich komme aus Skopje, ich wohne in Skopje.." and stuff like that...my absolut problem with the German were the articles and the cases...I never grasped why and when things go from nominativ to dativ or accusativ...and the respective articles of the nouns, die, der, das...and all those possible and impossible changes when making a sentence...partially its coz i never truly dedicated myself to it and didnt really take it serious...I was convinced thatt since I know English so well, im just gonna catch up with German just like that, without any dedicated work...well, of course, I was sooooo wrong....
In high-school, I have to say, the teacher we had was way to incompetent as well...she was a medical nurse who lived in Germany for I dont know how many years, so she ended up teaching German....we often made jokes on her behalf, coz she was just...well, a good joking material :) And when it came to tests, in most of the cases this is what happened...we either copied from each other...or..if this other class who had German as well, did the test before us (which happened in most of the cases) and got the results back before we actually did the test ourselves (which as well happened in most of the cases, since we always had German later in the day) so we would have just taken a test with the highest mark, copy it, and then simply copy the answers to our tests, coz the questions were always absolutely the same...and of course, we got high marks, even though we knew nothing in German :)
At University was a different story.....the classes in German were late in the evening, at 7pm, which wouldnt have been such a problem if those days classes didnt start at 7am...so it was aaaalll day spent at uni, and eventually I started skipping classes...that was in the first year...the second year, i was just too lazy in general....for the exam, i copied things from my friend...the teacher was aware of it, but didnt do anything...so i ended up scoring a '9'...having in mind that the '10' is the highest mark at Uni, i was more than satisfied....so thats how my German adventures had passed, and thats why i never managed to actually learn it...
Eventually I wanted to enroll a course, but once I finished uni, another problem occured...I started working immediately, and my working hours had always been in the afternoon till 10pm...and of course, all German courses were in the afternoon as well, so I simply COULDNT fit it in, regardless of how much i wanted it....and finally this year, at the school im currently working at, there is a beginner course in German, and I can fit it into my shcedule, since at least i dont have to go to some place else (coz i wouldnt have the time for it)...so I just have my German class, and immediately i move on with my own classes, in the same classroom :) So from the studnet's chair, i move into the teacher's one...its quite odd...but to be honest, i LOVE it...you have no idea with how much enthusiasm im into all this...and i truly hope this time, im gonna finally move past the basic stuff...so far, im doing ok...hopefully it will keep being ok :)
Ill tell you about it at my next German card :)))
3 comments:
I also had german classes, 3 years in college. I was a good student, with nice grades, specially the 1st year. Now, after 3 years without any contact with the language i just remember some basic stuff, like those sentences you mentioned!!
Good luck with your german classes, or should i say viel Glück!!?
Tschüss :P
I've been learning German for about 8 years at school, but I still can't it well, just because I lack motivation. But I can communicate in everydays's situation in Germany. And I write cards to Germany in German :)
I guess you had some problems with cases, because you don't have them in Macedonian, right? (At least I know there are no cases in Bulgarian). In Polish we have 7 cases, so it's easier to understand 4 German ones...
I'm sure you'll learn to speak German well :) Of course, it's different than English, but it's really easier to learn another foreign language, if already can speak one very well. I know it from my own experience (Of course, English and German aren't the languages that I know well) :)
Can you speak also Serbian/Croatian?
@ Marta: vielen dank liebe Marta
at least you were a good student, so you can say that you knew German really well...that counts :)
And as for any other language, if you have no contact with it, you tend to forget things...I think that this postcard thing is a nice way to do bits of language revisions :)
@ Ksenia: yup, one of my main problems are the cases, since we dont have them here...well, we have some leftovers, but we have mainly replaced with direct and indirect objects, and stuff like that :)
first, i never managed to use properly word endings with the cases, so i always get stuck if I should for example say 'jede...jedes...jedem...jeder'..or any other adjective, noun which receives suffixes
also, the distinguishing between masculine, feminine and neuter nouns...coz whats feminine in Macedonian, may be masculine in German (for ex. table...in Macedonian, its feminine, but in German its masculine..and such things are freaking me out)
im pretty ok with verbs' conjugation though ;-)
and yup, i do speak Serbian and Croatian (just that my accent is somewhat hillarious :) Though, Croatian had undergone a lots of changes, so im making some mistakes there (in vocabulary mainly) but I can manage it pretty well..
btw, your English is great, and you handle it more than well...i tell you this from a teacher's point of view, so just keep up with the great work :))
I hope i will be able to speak German well for once...this time i feel really motivated and enthusiast, and i just love it
Vielen dank für deine 'support' :))
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