Thursday, June 7, 2012

June 4 2012


Today we started our classes. They were quite daunting. For the first session we worked on getting to know each other better. All in German of course. We had some instruction in English but it was only just enough to make things clear when we really didn’t understand something. In our second session we got our books for the class and our first homework assignments. These sessions seem to be mainly working on basic grammar and vocabulary. I’m sure it will gradually get more complex though.
Most of us in the lower class took a lot of our lunch time to do homework. We had to walk down Colleganstraβe and do a sort of scavenger hunt (all in German) of various points/ historical markers near the Schlosskirsche.
After Lunch we had our last session. This was for phonetics. This class was really difficult. The students from Halle barely gave any directions in English, which, I knew we would gradually have to deal with but when I don’t even know what they want me to do then I don’t know how it is going to help me learn. Just a little more English would be helpful, or maybe first use German and then some English just to make it clear. I think all of us are a little afraid to say: “Ich verstehe nicht,” nobody wants to be the one to admit it.
Afterwards we had class with Kelly and took our quiz and worked on separable prefix verbs which was helpful. I feel like I got the most out of this class because I was able to completely relax and wasn’t afraid to ask questions in English. Maybe once I feel comfortable enough with the other teachers, if that ever happens, I will be able to learn better.
One word that I learned today was  “dach” which means smaller river, like a creek. We learned it in phonetics because it is one of the 3 fricatives: [x], [ς], and [j]

WORDS:

Revanche (f) (-) = revenge
Revanchieren = to take revenge
Revanchelustig (adj) = revengeful
Revanchekrieg (m) = punitive war
Buntstift (m) = colored pencil, crayon

No comments:

Post a Comment