In every learning experience the motivation is a crucial factor. What about those courses in the University that thought really interesting topics catching all your attention and led you to study as if you were playing a videogame (or reading a novel, or something not academically related). The trick is in the motivation, at least for me.

So that’s why today I am talking about this slogan: Mit Spaß um Erfolg (With fun to success). Fun is one of the thousand factors that can gate interest and therefore motivation. And as I say, nothing else is that important when learning, and especially when you are learning a language, that it is not going to have a final grade and affect your GPA.

When I was studying Portuguese (and also English, but let’s focus on my favorite one) I was surprised on how my teacher’s teaching technique was so effective. I was always excited about going to class, to do my homework… and so on. And for me the secret was on the dynamic of the course, it felt more like a friendly environment than like a strict formal class. So I studied Portuguese with all my motivation and excitation, and manage to develop pretty good skills.

With this course I have had the same feeling. I had already done my A1 course in Bonn, but the class was big, and the dynamism was pretty slow (boring I could say). We never got to play a game, or do “theater”. And although I was motivated, the reasons that drove me to the course where coming from the outside rather than form the course by itself. Here, the days I liked the most where those in the last week, when we were just “applying” in a funny and dynamic way what we had learned during the 3 weeks before. So we were interacting with little presentations, games and –most important- tons of laugh and making the learning of the German language more a pleasure than an obligation.

Proud of our presentation of Die Zeitung

If you ask me, is in this teaching method where the secret to success lies.

Today was my last day of course. Most of my classmates (ah! and I need to say that at the end we were just 6… don’t know what happened with the rest in the way) are going back home this weekend, me also. So, for ending this wunderbar month with a highlight (in Colombia we say, „cerrar con broche de oro“), we did one hour exam (what other than that could be a highlight? No, seriously, I mean it! ) and then went out to the sun and have kind of a home-brought brunch.

Does not look as a professional brunch?

At the end people get nostalgic. You start thinking about all the cool things you could have done but you didn’t. About all the German you could have studied at home, all the tandems you could have done (are you aware of tandems? if not, check it out!), all the activities you could have proposed to your classmates… all what you could have… but you didn’t. That’s the crude reality. And that’s why at the end people get nostalgic. And then you say good-bye with a long speech trying to state how much you liked all in spite of never expressing it.

Today was our last day of course. A pretty enriching one in my opinion. After one month, our teacher is stolz and we feel like we are a little bit closer to this difficult goal of learning German.

The survivors. Hand clapping for all us. We made it!
Although there is a longer way until the real goal…

Don’t worry (that’s more like self-consoling words). I’ll still be around here for a while. Bringing back the recent memories of my experience, and the reality of the days out-of-class.

Trying to keep the order of my entries I wanted to detail some other point I listed as „The biggest difficulties of the German learning“ (http://www.deutschakademie.de/berlin/blog/2013/08/27/the-ugly-face-of-deutsche-sprache/). However (lucky that I won’t get that boring!), I remembered that yesterday, when coming out of my German class in Wittenbergplatz, I found myself faced with a market. One of those delicious, noisy, crowded, odorous, colourful markets so common here in Berlin.

Markets… markets…. uhmmm, how much I like you. Here with my „family-in-law“.

 Since I am a super fan of those markets (somehow they remind me more about my country and my own culture and traditions) I was wanting to invite you all to dive into one of them and let it fill all your senses. Coincidentally, just next to the DeutschAkademie building in KaDeWe they take place at least twice a week. I also found a pretty cool website (http://www.timeout.com/berlin/features/909/berlins-best-markets) listing the markets in Berlin, and it seems like every Thursday (TOMORROW!!!!) it takes place exactly in Wittenbergplatz one pretty famous and antique Farmer’s Market.

Good food always present.

Apart from that, I wanted to share my experience in [which to the extend of my knowledge is] one of the biggest Flea-markets (oder Flohmarkt auf Deutsch), which also holds a crazily-enormous-out-door-karaoke. Plenty of things to see and buy (be careful if you suffer from some buying-compulsion), plenty of artists playing music and doing shows, food and bier offer and this huge karaoke that can complete your amusement on a sunny well-named Sunday.

The open air Karaoke. Look how much Publikum there is.

ps. I never said that I apologize in advance if there is any error in my use of English or Deutsch. Just leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to fix it and learn something!

…besser: Der hässlichste Gesicht der deutschen Sprache

I have identified at least four huge obstacles when learning German. I would like to describe them, but for making it bearable I am going to detail them one by one. First, let’s start with one simple list:

1- Declinations and cases
2- Extremely long and complicated words, and words with no clear meaning
3- Pronunciation
4- Structure of the sentence

A lot have been said about how difficult is to learn this language and where the difficulty is localized. For me, far away from any other thing, the first point of my list appears to be the ugliest and most horrific of all: The declinations and the cases. For those who are not familiar with these terms (happy those who still rest in the comfort of A1…), they indicate the peculiar characteristic of German grammar by which the adjectives, articles, possessive pronouns, personal pronouns and nouns are modified according to certain verbs and prepositions that determine the „case“ (Genitiv, Dativ, Nominativ and Akkusativ). Not happy with all this confusion, the modification will also vary according to the gender, which… (add one more thing and I will kill myself with a banana!)… not only is feminine and masculine, but has the great idea to include also the „neutral“ classification.

Truly speaking, in very few situations I have been able to understand why you should use one case and not another one… the only solution, I guess, is to repeat and repeat and repeat (and do it more -let’s say- thousand times) those crazy-brain-burning exercises like the one we have done in class.

Do not lose hope, look at me and remember that there is always someone suffering more than you.

Este es un relato un poco modificado y actualizado de una historia propia que escribí hace algún tiempo y que se ajusta de forma adecuada a las intenciones de este blog. Aquí va:

Desde hace 11 meses vivo en Bonn, al occidente de Alemania. Muchas veces he abierto los ojos, he mirado a mi alrededor, me he concentrado en cada cosa pequeñita que hay en mi cuarto, he caminado hacia mi gran ventana y me he asomado a través de ella. Mirando la calle, que por estas épocas se colorea con un verde intenso (otrora naranja, gris o rosa), he pensado, ¡¿qué hago aquí? ¿Cómo vine a parar a Alemania?!

Yo y dos amigos colombianos en un domingo de „frijolada“, un plato típico de mi país.

En la universidad tenía una amiga enamorada de Alemania. Ella tomaba clases de alemán y elogiaba muchos aspectos dentro de la cultura que estudiaba. De hecho, una vez contó una experiencia que yo encontré “particular” (por no usar otro adjetivo): Siempre pensando en la puntualidad, mi amiga llegó un poco adelantada a casa de su profesora. Y cuando digo un poco es UN POQUITO, entre 5 y 10 minutos.  Su entonces profesora abrió la puerta, miró su reloj de pulso y profirió: “Por favor Alejandra, nuestra clase comienza en X (entre 5 y 10) minutos. Vuelva en el tiempo adecuado porque mi horario se organiza estrictamente y usted debe respetar mi tiempo”. Cada vez que oía a mi amiga pensaba que difícilmente encontraría descripciones e historias más alejadas de mis gustos personales (y al fin y al cabo ella tampoco comparte conmigo la vibración de piel y órganos al ritmo del bambuco, el currulao, y la salivación deliciosa al pensar en un mondongo con aguacate -ritmos y comidas tradicionalmente colombianas-), pero después de ese relato pensé: “¡Parece un alien, eso es locura!”. Así que por ese entonces no me gustaba el idioma, no tenía el mínimo interés por el país. Yo estudiaba portugués y me fascinaba desde su tonalidad musical hasta la forma en que era enseñado y la imagen que proyectaban mis profesoras (Hay que ser brasilero para tener esas maneras tan efectivas, didácticas e inesperadamente eficientes) y fuera de eso las posibilidades que consideraba eran las de aprender italiano o francés, idiomas estereotípicamente “bonitos” (vale aclarar desde el presente que no he cambiado mi opinión después de tener la oportunidad de ser expuesta los dos mencionados). El alemán por su parte no aparecía ni el último rayón de mi lista de posibilidades.

Buenas razones sí tenia para enamorarme de Brasil. En Pedra da Gávea, Rio de Janeiro.

Pero ahora estoy aquí, me doy un buena zambullida en la cultura cada día, con felicidad voy para mi clase cada mañana, con regocijo intento (junto con una buena dosis de vergüenza y de auto-exigencia) componer las frases simples que las expresiones de neonato recientemente aprendidas me permiten y he descubierto que lejos de ser aliens, los alemanes son solamente diferentes.

Mis compañeros de maestría,
haciendo un BBQ en un día soleado de inicio de primavera.

Por cosas de la vida vine a parar aquí a este país, y no me queda más que aprovecharlo y esforzarme en aprender este idioma de origen germánico… en otras entradas intentaré compartir lo más difícil que el alemán tiene para mí.

Quiero aprovechar esta entrada para introducir a mi clase de alemán. Una mezcla bien internacional que condimenta en sincronía la dinámica del curso. Personas de nacionalidades variadas, muchas de las cuales constituyen el primer representante que conocí en esas respectivas tierras.

Sorprendentemente para mí, mi clase se compone por 3 rusas. Una chica de San Petesburgo y dos amigas de otra ciudad cuyo nombre no puedo recordar, que se localiza „cerca de Moscú“, un gran porcentaje que tiene sentido al re-pensarlo considerando las dimensiones del país y la „cercanía“ a Alemania. Además de ellas, hay un chico de Serbia (primero que conozco!), dos itlianas, una polaca, una francesa, y un chico de Barbados (el primero también!).

He aquí una foto de mis compañeros y nuestro amable profesor, Julian

Como siempre que se mezclan culturas, lenguas y personalidades, el resultado es una sopa de aprendizaje y diversión. Se sienten diferencias drásticas en los comportamientos de cada uno, pero al final es esa diferencia el ingrediente perfecto para un grupo equilibrado. Que si todos fueran habladores y animados como yo (en esto me acompaña el chico de Serbia) la clase sería una locura…