Today was our last class of the level, we were sad to leave our teacher but many of us will continue next level, so is nice to see that you will continue to the next step studying German with the good friends that you have made in the DeutschAkademie.

I have analyzed how better is my German comparing when I started the course, I still have to continue working on it, but from the day that I started the lessons it is much better, I have gained confidence with the speaking also I can see that my writing, reading, and listening is improving, I can see it in my daily activities when I use more and more German than English, or even when I can say an idea the first word that came to my mind is in German.

Thanks to my teacher that each day encouraged us to learn more vocabulary and to speak, for that reason the last advice that she gave us when we left the room was never forget to speak and speak.

In the conversation club, we are a mixed of levels from A2.2 to B1.2. Some people could think that the communication could be difficult due to the participation of people of different levels but thanks to the teacher the conversation tend to be more fluent, due to he solves our doubts and teach us new expressions.

In the second class of the conversation club, we talked more about our home countries, so I learned a little bit about Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam and Estonia. At the same time, my teacher taught us some facts about basic geography in Germany to identify the main cities and regions in the country.

Something that I have experienced on my own with a friend is traveling along Bayern using the regional ticket, is the cheapest way to travel and makes easier the visit to places near to the cities where you are living at least it works for each region in Germany, in my case “the Bayern Ticket” that is valid for one day to take all regional trains in Bayern also for S-Bahn and buses of the places that are you visiting. So it is a good way to know the country by regions.

Today we learned the connectors in German: obwohl, dass, sodass, deshalb, trotzdem, dann, weil. It is difficult to keep fresh all the grammar that we have learned, for that reason to make our learning easier our teacher gave us at the beginning of the course some posters where the DeutschAkademie summarizes all the important grammar with the most common verbs used in the infinitive, perfect and präteritum form, also prepositions and a guide to used Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ or Genitive to never forget them. At the same time, she recommended as to bring it with us to the lessons every day.

Also, there are multiple exercises on the DeutschAkademie website to practice the grammar or you can just download the app on your cell phone. So as you can see the DeutschAkademie offers different tools to practice, in the same way, there are many other apps that you can download, to learn new vocabulary or to practice grammar.

At the end you have many resources to practice, you can choose what is the best one for you, at least I have a new challenge for myself learn a new song every week, it helps me to memorize vocabulary and improve my pronunciation while I share my passion for music so you just need to be creative to learn a new language, therefore be creative to study German.

One of the big questions between my classmates and me is now that we have learned a lot of grammar in the lessons, how to continue the exposure to the German and interact with the language more hours during the day apart the 3 hours of the intensive course? Sometimes it results difficult because we tend to switch the German to English or our mother tongue in our daily tasks.

Is for that reason that the DeutschAkademie offer some activities of integration to interact with more people that attend the courses and practice German, it is an activity that they organize each month, a perfect opportunity to meet new people that as you, are learning the language and practice with them.

Aside from that, there are also other meetings that other people from Munich offer to meet also international people and practice German, last week my classmates and I joined to one of these meetings in a karaoke bar, was a good chance to practice while we were singing.

Living in Germany not only implies knowing the language. It is also important to know the culture, it makes part of the adaptation process, that is not easy, especially when you come in winter and you can’t understand a word of the people on the street.

But there is a huge variety of places that you can visit in Munich to learn about the German culture. There are numerous museums to visit, like the Pinakothek. Each Sunday the entrance cost is 1 EUR or the Deutsches Museum for those lovers of technology.

There are also other places like the Nymphenburg Palace, that was the summer residence of the Bavarian monarchs, or just the Marienplatz and the beautiful Rathaus, my favorite place in this city, you don’t have to be an expert of architecture to admire the city center of Munich. On the other hand to those football lovers, there is the Allianz arena stadium or the Olympia Park where this spring and summer it offers an exhibition of “Street art”. Also, there are good bars for those that enjoy dancing Latin music, I go as often as I can, I can’t avoid that part of my Colombian culture. As you can see there are many options according to your preferences, for all of those reasons, I love Munich.

I have chosen the DeutschAkademie among other institutes, first, because of many people recommend it to me, also the prices are reasonable, and a group of 11 persons is good to have the chance to participate in all the activities during the class.

What I liked more about the lessons is how the teachers make them more didactic, with exercise on teams, alone, conversations in group, games even excursions. But it is not a secret that at the same time that you take the course it is important the self-studying and do the homework given in the class. The teachers don’t force you to do it, but if you really want to learn you need to be constant with it and do an extra effort. For instance, I am preparing a presentation for tomorrow, the topic are desserts also some classmates promised to bring some of them, let´s see.

Today was the first day of my conversation club at DeutschAkademie. It takes place every Friday in the mornings for one and a half hour, this month due to the holidays, we are taking 3 days of two hours each one.

I enrolled in it because I need more hours to practice my speaking. I’ve read that to be a professional in any field, like languages, mathematics, and music, whatever that you want to do with your live, you need 40.000 hours of practice in this field. This means that you don’t need to be an expert in anything, you just need practice and persistence to become an expert in something.

Therefore I need to practice my speaking German as much as I can, and this is a good way to do it. We start with a self-presentation, everybody was shy, but after some minutes we could break the ice and little by little we start talking more. In this conversation club the teacher is in the class to serve as mediator and propose topics of conversation, also to correct our mistakes. So I will add some hours to my 40.000 hours improving my German.

As I wrote before in previous articles I have met people from many countries in my German course, they came from Ukraine, Bosnia, Italy, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, China, Nigeria also from Latin America such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia. All of us have made a good connection so the classes are very interesting because we are helping each other to understand the grammar and cheer us up to be better every day, therefore not only you have lessons you have also fun. Even we have created a WhatsApp group to share more examples of the lessons or if somebody gets stuck doing the homework for the next day of the course, we help each other to solve the doubts. So I can say that I have made good friends in the DeutschAkademie and also I conserve some of them from previous levels.

Talking with my classmates we have been looking for diverse forms of practicing German, at the end, you need to practice what you have learned in the lessons otherwise everything will be forgotten. So we have shared some tools and tips to practicing, like apps such as “Leo”, a good dictionary app with accurate translations. To acquire more vocabulary, read books for children, there are also some books for adults written in German and English even many available in your own mother tongue. There are also many apps with games like duolingo, memorise or studyblue to do flash cards or just play a game while you learn German. Personally, I prefer to use flash cards in an electronic device due to I have lost many times the ones that I did on paper, so with it, I found a way to never lose them again. Finally, I recommend to do “tandem”, there is always local people that are fluent in German and want to learn your mother tongue, in my case Spanish, so why not try this one and practice more your speaking, it is also a good way to meet people. I have joined many tandem pages on Facebook and the other ones have been recommended by friends.

The last three months I have been traveling around Germany, such as Frankfurt, Berlin and towns and cities in the south like Nürnberg, a beautiful city just two hours by train from Munich and of course the fabulous Neuschwanstein Castle an unforgettable visit in Bavaria. But at the end, I can say that Munich is my favorite city. What I like about it, is the combination of nature and the asphalt. Nothing better that in a sunny day walk through the city center and getting lost in the beauty of its buildings and their history to continue to the English Garden, having a beer in the Bier Garten or just walk around seeing the nature, to finally end in a cafeteria drinking coffee as a good Colombian studying German.