Mr. German Man tried his very, very best to help me learn German.
But we made some mistakes along the way.
So today: what not to do when learning a foreign language with your native speaker partner.
Hey everyone, Dana here!
When I first moved to Germany, I knew straight away that I wanted to learn German.
There was just no question about it for me; if I was going to be living in Germany, I
wanted to learn German.
So I set off on that quest to do so.
And lucky for me I had a German native-speaker partner, Mr. German Man, to help valiantly
lead the way, slaying all those horrible German grammar dragons along the path….right?
Wrong.
Having him around while I was learning German, especially right at the beginning,
sometimes actually made it even more frustrating, and feel even more hopeless.
So from my experience, here are some things that it might just be best not to do.
First of all: probably don’t learn a foreign language from your native speaker partner.
At least not exclusively.
Mr. German Man was not, still is not, a language teacher.
He’s also not interested or passionate about languages like I am.
He simply speaks German, but he doesn’t understand why he says the things how he says it.
Die, der, das, den, dem, accusative, dative...
He has no idea.
He just says what sounds right.
Which was very frustrating for me.
Why did you just say den instead of dem?
Why are you using a different past tense now in this email?
If zu means to, then why does zu Hause mean at home and not going to your home?
I wanted answers to these questions!
Perhaps if Mr. German Man had been a language teacher, then maybe it would have been okay.
Although, especially because I was really starting to learn the language from zero,
I still think I would have preferred going to an outside language teacher too, going
to German courses like I did as well, just so that we could keep all of the frustrations
and sometimes moments of, honestly speaking, feeling a little stupid while learning a new
language, and our relationship together separate.
So all those feelings of frustration over here.
And our relationship over there. You know, nice little divide.
So, as I said, I did go to German courses.
But if I could go back and do it all over again, the self-imposed rule for myself would
be no why questions for Mr. German Man.
If a question starts with “why?” then I would need to save that question for my
German course, my German teacher, and not ask my partner who is “just” a native
speaker and not a teacher.
Another don’t for the language learner: don’t take it personally when your partner
laughs at you for something that you said wrong.
You are going to say things wrong. A lot.
And sometimes you are going to sound funny.
I know that it’s not fun to be the butt of the joke all the time, but try not to take
it too personally.
Of course they shouldn’t be mean about it, but sometimes the things you say when you're
learning a new language are going to be funny to the native speaker.
And so for us I'd say it’s basically like, as long as it’s a loving laugh, then it’s usually okay.
But going along with that, and this next one is for the native speaker partner, what not
to do: don’t laugh too often.
Be kind, remember that this person, your partner, is trying something new and they might already
be feeling a little scared of looking stupid, maybe a little vulnerable, maybe a little sensitive.
Perhaps even feeling a bit of a power shift in the relationship because you, the native
speaker partner, are fluent and they are barely able to string 5 words together.
So just be kind, and feel out the vibe of the moment
before poking too much fun at their expense. You know?
Feel out the moment. Is that really the right time to laugh at them?
Are they crying on the floor about die, der, das?
Maybe don't laugh at that particular moment.
Next up, pronunciation is hard. So, so, so, so hard.
So native speakers, try not to get frustrated at your partner if they can’t say something
or lots of things like you can.
I know that you might really want them to say it right, and I know that you’re probably
only trying to help, and maybe for you saying it right is just so easy, you can’t even
understand why they can’t just say it like you are.
But just saying the word over and over and over again with maybe increasingly more agitation
in your voice as they continue saying it back to you wrong over and over and over again
will not help.
Lehrer. - Lehrer. - Lehrer. - Lehrer. - Lehrer. - Lehrer.
Sometimes you just have to move on.
Maybe suggest they watch some videos in that language to help with the pronunciation or
find them some pronunciation guides online.
But sometimes you might just have to accept that they will never be able to say that word,
or words, quite the same way as you.
And that’s okay. Embrace it. Accents are beautiful too.
And, this last don’t might be a little controversial, but for me, if I could go back and do it all
over again, I would ask Mr. German Man not to correct my small mistakes at the beginning,
when I was just starting to learn German.
Now that I’m reasonably fluent in German, I do appreciate him correcting my smaller
mistakes too because I feel like I now have a good enough grasp on the language that I
can kind of go back and polish it up with his help.
But at the beginning when I was just starting to learn German, the thing that I needed
most out of speaking German with Mr. German Man was simply back and forth conversation
practice.
So when he stopped to fix every die, der and das that I mixed up, I just felt like it really
got in the way of the whole conversation thing.
Looking back on it, I wish that I had just been like: Stefan, I will get all of my little
corrections and really learn the nitty gritty of the language from my courses and the book.
With him I should have just had general conversation, and, like, basically as long as he could understand
what I was saying, then good enough.
So my question for you is: Have you ever learned a foreign language with a native speaker partner?
And what do you think of my list of what not to do?
Please let me know in the comments below.
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Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
You look so angry. - Hey, I don't have to act actually.
It's just better that way.