Day 84: Why I Don't Go to German Class

Some days, I skip the free German class offered by the University of Dresden. The reason? You learn very little German in those classes. This is because the teachers are students of Germanistik (German Philology), and their main goal is not for us to learn German (a secondary—or rather, tertiary—objective) but to complete their training as German teachers.

As a result, we have a different teacher every day (who reappear every so often), leading to bizarre situations—like being taught by a Vietnamese exchange student, or crossing paths again, now as instructors, with the same guys who once guided me through Saxon Switzerland (see Days 13, 14, and 15: Sightseeing in Saxony)—as if they needed more power...

The teachers are numerous and inattentive. They just deliver the lesson they’ve prepared and couldn’t care less whether you participate, because someone always will—especially a Nigerian woman who never stops talking, not even underwater... And that’s another thing: the class consists of 35 people from 20 different nationalities.

So, dear reader, you can now understand why I often prefer to skip the 90-minute class (plus 30 minutes of commuting) and stay home to study on my own.

Highly Recommended German Learning Book: Übungsgrammatik (Grammar Exercises) by Renate Luscher, published by Hueber.