In our second lesson this week, we looked at dates again. I think our teacher realised the tongue-twisting nature of the words were a little bit tricky for us and gave us lots of speaking practice again – YAY!!! We also looked at what words indicate position of an item i.e. under, over, in, on etc. and then started on the wonderful case of Dativ.

Dates were still pretty fun to say again and I found I was finding them easier to distinguish. Practice, practice, practice right? We had fun and games with learning the positioning of things with a Hot-Cold game. I.e. Is the ball on the table? Cold. Is the ball behind the cupboard? Hot. Etc.

However, this morning, I ended up playing the same game as I heard sounds from behind my computer table/cupboard. I have to say I’m still yet to find out the source for sure, but me thinks it can only be a small rodent that has sneakily got his foot in the door. However, I think our rodent friend may find our house to be severely lacking in fruit for his labour due to my OCD for cleaning and complete phobia that has led me to get one of those high-pitched plugs today to drive him crazy and away from our home– QUICKLY. Ah, another joy and facility of cities.

Having had so many instances over the last few weeks, where we’ve been wanting to make sentences that need the Dativ case, I think many of us were pleased to finally get to use it (officially). I thought I would be one of those people but I think my brain went into the “GO-SLOW” gear at this point. A distinct feature was when I was hearing the words, knowing they made sense but not being able to do much with them and finding them just hanging around my mind like an unfocused fog. Yet, everyone else seemed to pick up super quick. I’m not sure whether this is because of my age, recent personal stresses and general busyness or just general slowness but it really was quite a worry at the time. However, hope shone through when our teacher gave us the guideline that this case is generally used for movement, it seemed to insert a little box into my brain to start throwing all the DATIV stuff into. I was so grateful for this, as we have our final test for the course on Thursday and this gave me some hope of at least knowing the words. Sorting it all out can come later – yeah? Any further tips or ideas to get this one, would be very welcome.

Token random thought? Have been thinking recently that I have been struggling with quite a lot of the course. I wonder just how much my age is affecting my learning?  Is learning for the mature person only for the super smart and in school full-time? Discuss.