B2.1 The unfair game

I started learning German out of curiosity but it is becoming a hectic exercise as I advance throughthe levels. Teaching style of the Germans does not match my learning style.

Six hours a day, six days a week, one just takes in new words, grammar and culture. While class work focuses more on group work, I tend to be more of a pause-think-observe-learn person. I am simply overloaded by the content and my classmates rush ahead with work while I am still busy thinking about how can one get more creative with the given assignments. One only finds time on weekends to focus and 'digest' the language, working in peace and solitude.

However, the very teaching and assessment mechanism of the Germans works in my favor.

They believe that language is learned best in a group as it gives you lots of opportunity to talk. It gives me lots of opportunity to observe. Secondly, while classes focus on group work, exams are held in a different class than usual. Oral exams are held as discussions in groups of two. There are only four people in the room- you, your discussion partner and two teacher who watch without interfering.

The fewer the people and the calmer the surroundings, the more comfortable I am. The exam and not the noisy class is actually my comfort zone! This is so because the exams are designed to heighten the stress levels of extroverts who are comfortable in groups and outgoing party environment. The exams are conducted in the opposite kind of environment resulting in many a confident voices in class under performing their usual self. My case can be best explained in the words Steve Jobs said when Apple entered the mobile phone market.

“we are a software company competing against hardware companies.”

Having its own operating system enables a software company to go its own way rather than depend on others for software (like IBM's dependence on Microsoft).

I am an introvert in a world designed for extroverts.

B2.1 is also an internal course of the institute and not international one. The course places a premium of 'class participation'. I cant do that. I end up quietly observing things and listening rather than talking. To others I always appear as that guy in the corner, lost in his own world. My friends have even given me a nick name 'Khoya Khoya Chand' (that lost guy)

Being unable to deal with an information overload, my strategy relies on deciding which point I want to argue in debates and steadily building my German vocabulary around a particular context. I just cant learn random words like others do. I then defend that point of view like a fort, counting on simple words but perfect grammar and context to convince the examiners of my opinion. That is why the vocabulary of some of my friends appears to be better than mine.

I probably wont be able to score impressively in the exams but my language is more likely to improve when classes end, giving me time to internalize and digest the language in months or even years to come.

For those of you who dont know, I failed in English in standard V and VIII.. It was not until the University that i scored in English creative writing. Language is to be internalized and improved over time. That is the very thing the Germans are not giving me.

Quiet time in solitude.