A routine I've fallen in love with

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So you want to learn German, (Gut!) and you want to study at the German Language School (Sehr gut!) and you chanced upon this article? A blog in a world of cute cat videos a.k.a the internet. Welcome. "Ich heiße Aparajith Raman" (My name is Aparajith) and I would like to show you how a day in GLS is like, with photos.

This is the entrance to the GLS German language school. The school is located on Kastanienallee in a very hip area called Prenzlauer Berg. Getting to GLS is never an issue. A tram station is right in front of the door and a couple of U-Bahns are within walking distance.

I usually walk to GLS from my house, if the weather is nice and crisp, it takes me about 19 minutes and I enjoy it.

Welcome to my classroom, classroom number 127. Say Hallo to Nancy my wonderful German teacher who is ever so patient and has helped us speak better German. 

You'll notice that the door is open, take a quick look at the clock. While being punctual is the norm, sometimes owing to some emergency we cannot make it to class by 9:00. GLS is accomodating and lets students enter the class till 9:10. If you come later than that? Please come back for your second block.

We usually start our day telling Nancy what we did the following evening. Today being Friday, we spoke about our plans for the weekend. It's a great way to engage with your classmates. You get to know the cool things that people are planning to do. I got to know about a few places where I could go rock climbing. A couple of girls in my class ended up going to Munich for the weekend on a spontaneous trip. Here in Berlin, the sky is the limit.

Apart from getting new information, this exercise is a great way to practice speaking in German. Nancy helps us pronounce words correctly. She also gently reminds us of grammar rules when we get a bit too excited talking about our weekend and forget the Verb position 2 rule!

We review the homework that was given to us the day before. This is very important as the homework helps us absorb what we have learnt in class, better. The homework helps us understand the gaps in our understanding of the language. You won't get chided if you didn't do your homework, but everyone does it because everyone understands how it helps them improve their command over the language.

Usually the homework is slightly tougher than what is taught in class. This helps us pick up the nuances of the language better. We can use any external resources to complete the homework. This helps us firm our grasp of the language over time.

Every Friday we have a small test which helps us understand how much we learnt. These small tests are great because it keeps us on our toes and helps us identify which areas we need to work on some more. As a rule of thumb, if you get over 60% in the test, you are on track. If you get below that, don't worry, just revise the concepts a few times more.

 

We usually review our performance almost immediately. If we thought a sentence was structured in a particular way, but that is in fact incorrect, we get to quickly firm our understanding of our errors. Once you get your papers back, you have two days to review your class notes and you’ll hopefully never make those mistakes again!

Classes are never all about the lectures. The teachers here use a multifaceted approach to teach the language. Today, as we are learning Adjectives in Grammar and new words about “Work Life”, we have been split into 3 teams and we need to come up with a newspaper ad for a business!

We came up with “Toto Tattoo” that specialises in tribal and Geometric tattoo patterns.

Break time! 

We have a great tradition going on in my class. Every Friday, Sue cooks something wonderful for us! In the past, we’ve had some excellent brownies, fruits covered in chocolate and cookies! We love this little tradition that she brought with her from the USA!

For our second block, we have Boris! Boris is a super fun teacher who keeps the class lively and helps us brave the afternoon lull. His sense of humour and his patience makes him a wonderful teacher!

GLS uses smart boards to teach. This doesn’t stop with the teacher writing on a monitor with a touch pen. This means we can open an electronic version of our textbooks, mark, highlight, zoom in and out.

In the second block we’re learning about “Love”. What a better way to learn about it than listen to a German love song? Boris introduced us to Vielleicht Vielleicht by AnnenMayKantereit (and now I have it stuck in my head!). We spent a couple of minutes debating if the song is a happy one or a sad one. We had to dissect the lyrics, debate it amongst the other classmates and come to a final stand. That’s practice for speaking, hearing and reading! All at one go!

On Fridays, at the end of block 2, we say Tschüss to some of our classmates. Some classmates are done with their course and are leaving GLS, it’s not always a fun way to end Fridays, but we always say Bis Bald, hoping that we’ll see each other soon!