My classmates come from all over the world and they are mostly working professional. Probably because of that, I found it comfortable with them since they are so professional in class too ;-) One guy comes from England owns a film company based in London and Berlin. While probably he is motivated to learn Deutsch because of his business, I think probably because his wife is German. In this case money is a factor, but love is even a bigger motivator!  Another classmate of mine is a lawyer from Chile specializing in environmental law came to Berlin with his husband who is doing a master in architecture. So far, she spent a lot of time after class learning Deutsch with her 1 year old son. Another guy is a tool designer from Brazil who loves travelling. Every weekend he will be somewhere else around Europe. One Korean classmate who is working as assistant director of an Opera in Seoul is having a combination of vacation and studying. She is on vacation in Berlin while going to DeutschAkademie to learn Deutsch. Funny but true ;-) Another older classmate of mine is from England and he is here to be with his girlfriend who is doing a PhD in climate change. He is teaching English and sometimes Buddhism in Berlin during his spare time. Two classmates come from Poland. One is a car mechanic who also does some business relating to cars and another is a lady who used to work in an office in Warsaw but now trying to improve her German to find an office job in Germany. One Turkish classmate is studying German while doing her internship here in Berlin and a Danish girl who wanted to try to change her environment and move to Berlin with his boyfriend.

So far, most of the people I met wanted to learn German as an investment to find a better job in Germany. While the rest are rather interested to just know the language as a spare time. In both case, I still think German is a very useful language to know and learn.

Coming from an education background with little knowledge in linguistic, I found out later that it is very important to have a smaller group in class. This is especially due to heavy emphasize to practice speaking with the teacher and in order to have that conducive environment, I need a smaller class size. That is what DeutschAkademie offered with only maximum 10 students per class. In my case I was even more blessed to have classmates who are very motivated to speak in German. Never in mind I have ever imagine to speak casually even outside the class with my classmate in German. Even though we erred a lot between words, I personally felt like I have really improved a lot from day to day.

So far, one big motivational factor for me to learn German on daily basis is the willingness of local German people to speak to me in German even though they knew that I speak a little of German. Some German friends that I made even corrected me via text messages when we communicated. That is definitely a fast way to grasp the language quickly.