Language Learning the Independent Way

As of tomorrow I will be heading in to the final full week of my German course (I will also be there Monday and Tuesday or the following week).

Back in November 2010, almost a full year ago, I wrote the post 'Denglish', discussing how I would testing my German language level the following day in order to enroll on a course to improve what basis I already had. I did the tests (they were surprisingly tough) and waited...and waited...and waited. 7 whole months it took before I finally heard back with confirmation of a course! Incredible! Back in June, I finally started (read 'Back into Education' for more details) and at that point I was thrilled to finally be getting the chance to move forward with my German skills and I felt that would be my chance to get to the point of near fluency and to work on my awful grammar! Unfortunately my hopes for this course were all too quickly dashed. 5 months down the line I just feel it was in the main a waste of time and a deep cause of frustration. Maybe my hopes were too high, too unrealistic? But I don't feel that's really the case. We have been studying 6 hours a day, 5 days a week and if we had had the chance to study with talented, well intentioned teachers the whole time then we could have all come on leaps and bounds but that just didn't happen.

In the time I've been studying, my group has witnessed a handful of teachers. Two were fantastic, from these two I have at least learnt something but the other teachers, oh were they bad! Really bad! One of the teachers has been so pitiful that a large percentage of the class doesn't turn up any more or they lull in to class halfway through. I myself leave this man's class early each day I have him as after a couple of months of having to deal with his lack of interest in teaching us, I just had enough and decided I could make better use of my time being at home working and focusing on my business, then sitting in class, falling asleep and learning nothing. I have complained about him, some of my fellow classmates complained about him (the other's love the chance to get to sit in class at a computer and to play for 6 hours so they love him!) but it was all in vain and unfortunately as I haven't paid for the course myself (it's been funded by various European funds), I have no choice but to turn up, sign in and to keep going.

I could write for hours about my dismay at what ended up to be, about my disappointment, about how let down I feel after being so keen, so motivated to improve my German but instead I have decided to just take it upon myself to build upon what little I have learnt through said course. Starting today, 'The Englander' and I are tasked (by me) to learn 5 new verbs a week. Each week I am going to choose 5 complete new verbs or ones that I understand when they are spoken to me, but that I simply haven't managed to slip in to my own vocabulary. My 5 this week are:

• beleidigen - to offend, insult, affront
• einrichten - to arrange, organise, equip, furnish, establish, set up
• schätzen - to estimate, reckon, think, value, guess
• zweifeln - to doubt
• beweisen - to prove, show, give evidence

The plan is to revise the new words each day and to test each other on them, their meanings and to use them within a sentance. I then hope that we can have them memorised come the end of the week and then we start again with new verbs at the beginning of each following week. We will then revise previous words 3 weeks after first memorising them to see if they are still held in our heads. I know it seems like a lot of bother but at the end of the day, it seems that no-one else is really going to help us improve so it's up to us to work on it!

I love to read your comments so please feel free to let me know what you think...