Why the British are bad at other languages part x

[nineveh_uk]

I have to decide whether to sign up for next year's German class. Realistically, I am going to sign up for next year's German class*, but no thanks to the information about it, which makes it sound astronomically boring. This is an adult evening class, by definition going to be taken by people who are not of school/student** age and considering their exciting future career in Germany***. So why on earth does the proposed programme involve quite so much job-related stuff??? There are many interesting things in German-speaking nations, it would be nice to talk about some of them instead of time management. Here is the thrilling prospect:



Week 1: Kennenlernen/Körpersprache/ Personenbeschreibung (meeting people, interpreting body language, describing people)
Week 2: Biografie, Lebenslauf (writing a CV)
Week 3: Fremdsprachen lernen (talking about German speaking countries)
Week 4: Sprachreisen (writing a formal letter)
Week 5: Städteportrait (writing a city guide)

ASSESSMENT TASK SET

Week 6: Kaffeehäuser/Cafés (describing pictures)
Week 7: Einkaufen/Kaufgespräch (salesperson/ customer dialogues)
Week 8: Lebenshaltungskosten (discussing living expenses, looking at different life styles)
Week 9: Zukunft - Ratschläge zur Lebenshilfe (discussing time management)

ASSESSMENT/COMPREHENSION TEST

Week 10: Weihnachtsvorbereitungen/Zeitplan (make a jobs list/devise a timetable)



Term 2: 9th January
Week 11: Beruf und Stellenmarkt (writing a job application)
Week 12: Anfrage beim Personalbüro (telephoning about a job)
Week 13: Liebe und Partnerschaft (writing a letter to an agony aunt)
Week 14: Verlobung und Heirat (writing about a wedding)
Week 15: Internet, TV und Radio (commenting on a television programme)

ASSESSMENT TASK SET

Week 16: Die Presse (writing a newspaper report)
Week 17: Gesund leben - gesunde Ernährung (recommending a healthy diet)
Week 18: Wellness (booking a stay at a wellness clinic)
Week 19: Verkehrsmittel (comparing modes of transport)

ASSESSMENT/PRESENTATION

Week 20: Auto-Mobilität (discussing the future of transport)

I have been to look at the textbook and that is actually a lot less boring, so there is at least hope. I did consider not doing it, but the fact is that I have not spent one evening a week since March diligently revising grammar etc. so I do need the external push to continue. But it is annoying. Could they not even try and suggest that it is meant to involve some enjoyment? It's not quite as bad as being expected to learn the French of a load of car parts I don't really know in English, but it's not exactly encouraging of stimulating engagement.

Meanwhile in other language news, a much worse crisis: when I accepted Firefox's invitation to speed it up by "refreshing" it (which has indeed worked), it didn't mention that this would include getting rid of Adblocker and my add-on for pretending to be in Norway so I can watch the skiing when it is not at a convenient time on Eurosport (or I need more skiing). This would be a minor annoyance were it not that the new version of Firefox is incompatible with said widget. Aargh! Apparently there is something similar I can do with Chrome so I will try that, but I do feel that "By the way, you will lose everything you customised to make it work for you" was something they could have mentioned.

*At least once I had done the Deutsche Welle test myself to check I'm at the required level, because I'm not sure I believe it really.

**Students get much cheaper classes through the university. I could do them too, except I can't because they are when I am at work.

***There were a couple of people last year who might potentially work in Germany or Austria one day, but they would be doing so in English.

Comments

[caulkhead]

That's an... odd selection of topics (writing about a wedding, really?) And how often do they expect you will be writing to agony aunts*? Though at least that one could be fun.

Exploration of office norms could potentially be really useful, and interesting, but it's not exactly gripping.

(*as opposed to explaining why you will/will not be charging VAT, which is a letter I could probably still write in my sleep).

[ellen_fremedon]

Now I am imagining writing to an agony aunt in all the dead languages I've studied.

[caulkhead]

"Dear Pythia, I think my friends are plotting together behind my back..."

Unfortunately, my knowledge of AngloSaxon only goes as far as Hwaet!, because it would make a great beginning.

[nineveh_uk]

Given the sort of ancient texts that survive, writing to an agony aunt might have been very useful for the people in them.

[clanwilliam]

Dear Peig…

*dies laughing*

[nineveh_uk]

That might work in an odd way: "Is my life so bad I want to write to Peig about it?"/"No."

[clanwilliam]

She’ll only one-up you in her reply and finish with a lovely little anecdote about the Holy Family.

[nineveh_uk]

I'm trying to work out what one learns/demonstrates through writing about a wedding. Grasp of fashion? Family politics? The awkward conversation you had with an ex?

I think the English sounds worse - talking about Christmas preparations sounds fine, "Make a jobs list" deathly. I suspect that it is an issue of trying to make things sound worthy and specific for some sort of regulatory function, but it isn't really fascinating.

[aunty_marion]

That does sound rather job-focused and therefore more boring than it needs to be!

"It's not quite as bad as being expected to learn the French of a load of car parts I don't really know in English" - reminds me of our German A-Level, where the dictation passage we got was all about stripping a car engine down and repairing it (or something similar), for which none of us knew what the words were, and couldn't make a guess because most of us didn't know what they might have been in English. Our German mistress protested strongly to the exam board, because (bearing in mind this *was* 1972) she said it was aimed heavily towards boys, and I believe she got our submissions re-marked.

[nineveh_uk]

It sounds like your German mistress had a point! At least I got to learn the parts of the car in advance. It's a classic issue in maths/science - I once heard something on the radio about how biased classic spatial reasoning examples were, including some research that had been done in which men and women were given exam questions based on the pattern for a man's shirt in which the men performed disproportionately badly despite the fact they were all wearing shirts of the relevant type.

[antisoppist]

My American friend was unable to answer any questions in a fairly simple test on the case endings for "from" and "to" that we were given at our Finnish evening class because it assumed that everyone could read a bus timetable.

[nineveh_uk]

The hazards of assuming cultural knowledge!

[clanwilliam]

In the meantime, I’m bimbling along with hello, goodbye, please, thank you, excuse me and counting in beers.

Have hit advanced level. Not just cutting greeting down to morgen or a snappy schuldegung, I have semi-mastered tschüss, thanks to Bamberg!

Also, there’s a lot less Grüss Gotts in Pertisau than there are in München, bizarrely.

[nineveh_uk]

Maybe people in Pertisau are self-conscious.

There were quite a few Grüss Gotts in St Anton, but also a number of Servuses, I assume on holiday from Vienna.

[clanwilliam]

Maybe it’s because my language is not quite that of a Chalet girl. While I mainly talked myself past the drops en route to Gaisalm with logic and a dose of buck-up-old-thingery, one bit was negotiated with fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck.

Rincewind’s mantra is reserved for Hyde Park Corner on a bike.

[antisoppist]

It's just good that you weren't channelling Peter Marlow halfway up a cliff.

[clanwilliam]

I have *some* self-pride.

[nineveh_uk]

At least you didn't have to pay a slang fine.

[antisoppist]

You can either design a course to suit your students or you can use one that someone else has designed and hope that it matches what your students want to do. The latter is the lazy option. But I am biased because I was expected to design English lessons to suit the precise needs of 35 different classes every week without being paid extra for it.

I suffered in Finland from there only being one book for Finnish as a foreign language in the early 1990s, where the problem was the opposite one, that it contained nothing that was of any practical use to anyone actually living there. Oh for a dialogue about how to buy buns from a market stall!

Is this the only book there is for teaching German to adults? Really?

[clanwilliam]

I reckon they’re aiming it at everyone doing a Brexit runner.

[antisoppist]

Of course!

[nineveh_uk]

Makes sense. I had quite a lengthy conversation on Brexit on holiday in a mixture of German, English, and exaggerated gestures of despair, incredulity and fury.

[nineveh_uk]

How to buy buns from a market stall is exactly the sort of useful thing that should be in a text book.

I went and looked at the book yesterday lunchtime, and it wasn't that bad - my first flick open was to a short article and exercise on German composers. Except now the website is saying "Course withdrawn" and I'm wondering if they haven't had enough takers. I am unsure whether I am relieved to be let off homework, or whether I am aggrieved and should email in case they just need one more person.

[antisoppist]

After a months of me pointing and saying "two" every Monday morning on the way back from teaching English to the mayor, the market stall lady told me what the buns were called and corrected me when I got their partitive case ending wrong. And was delighted when I got it right the following week.

You could e-mail and say you were considering doing it and wonder if they are going to offer any other German courses at that level either this term or next. And then they might tell you why and what's going on.

[nineveh_uk]

You were taught Finnish by the Big Society! I have looked up the partitive case on Wikipedia and am none the wiser.

That is a good way of phrasing it, I shall do so.

Ed: I notice that the Upper Intermediate Conversation course at the same level is full, so maybe people have gone for that instead. But it is in the daytime so I couldn't do it even if weren't full. As the higher level courses are also unavailable I suspect that it might be people simply drop out/don't enter after a certain point.

[antisoppist]

This is how to form the endings
http://people.uta.fi/~km56049/finnish/partitive.html

Once you've got that clear :-) you also need to know when to use it. For the object in negative sentences, for the object after numbers (no Finnish does not use the plural after numbers, that would be silly) and when anything is unfinished or indefinite, which is pretty much all the time.

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you. I understanding completely :-) Or at least, I understand that you use the partitive because there were two (stated) buns involved.

[gramarye1971]

One full chapter of my undergraduate Japanese textbook focused almost entirely on apologies and (by extension) passive complaining. The featured dialogue was an exchange student being gently but firmly scolded by her landlady for putting her recycling out on the wrong day of the week.

[nineveh_uk]

That actually sounds quite useful from my admittedly stereotyped and limited awareness of Japanese culture. Sort of the way that my Danish course had vital information on how to say your bike had a puncture and bringing beer to parties (and "Hi, Danish student I've been sleeping with, I can't see you next week because my boyfriend's visiting." which is definitely not unrepresentative of exchange students).

[(Anonymous)]

When I was learning Swedish, I wrote a short story (or dramolet) a week as homework, regardless what the actual assigment was. You can turn anything into a short story, even comparing modes of transport or recommending a healthy diet, as long as you have a sensible teacher who doesn't try to impose burdens of genre, and the challenge of coming up with a scenario that made sense was a big part part of the pleasure. Maybe this strategy would work for you? It certainly did wonders for my creative output, and it was pretty good for my Swedish as well.

[azdak]

Sorry - that was me.

[nineveh_uk]

That sounds an excellent approach to homework, and I may have to adopt it given that the course has been cancelled due to insufficient enrolment (I took the opportunity to give them some marketing feedback) so I am going to attempt to find some self-discipline and work by myself.