Finding my Feet

Well I have been here for 10 days now, I would love to tell you that I have done so much, but unfortunately after I arrived and my body realised the stress had disappeared, it decided to let a cold in instead.  I knew it was a good buy picking up extra Lemsips at the airport.  I passed the cold onto Uwe where it mutated into Man-Flu, and as such we didn't get too much done except visit the supermarket a few times, but at least my belongings arrived in one piece.

The view from the supermarket car park is somewhat nicer than that of Tescos in Milton Keynes!

I had my final oral assessment for L193 and got stage fright so not really anticipating a good result there lol.  It only lasted two minutes and consisted mainly of me saying "erm" and "wie, bitte?" which bummed me a bit because as soon as it was over I knew exactly what to say :( I have the L130 assessment tomorrow morning and this one is longer and a group session, I have decided there is no point worrying about it though, what will be , will be.

Uwe went back to work on Wednesday, and I haven't had the confidence to get out on my own yet, but tomorrow we are going to take the bus into town together so that I am familiar with where I am supposed to get off and not get lost, and my Monday challenge is to go buy some groceries.

We have friends birthdays to go to both tonight and tomorrow night which should be fun.

Time for a small update...

Well it is just under 5 weeks until I move and I have made a start on things, I have been furiously been copying CDs to my PC so that I can sell my collection at the car boot, I really hadn't realised how big my collection was! I estimate it at about 400, so even if I sell them all for 25p each that would be a nice sum.  I still need to sort through my books and I have a mountain of shredding that needs to be done, I could probably keep a hamster in a home for 3 years =P

In other news I got my result for U211 and I managed a Pass 2, which is brilliant for someone that had thoughts of giving up right at the start, so I am feeling quite proud of myself for even making it to the end let alone getting such a good grade, and I wasn't that far off a distinction!  My new course books have arrived for E301: The Art of English which is all about the creativity in the English we use everyday as well as in the more traditional literary sense. The assignment booklet won't be available until the beginning of September but I have looked at last years and they don't look so scary, fingers crossed for this year too then :)

Also a letter turned up yesterday from the Council and my German evening class tutor has nominated me for an Adult Continuing Education learner award! No idea what that actually is but I get to go to an awards ceremony about 10 days before I leave, how exciting!!

Anyways that is it for now, I may write again before I leave but if I remain quiet I hope you'll forgive me :)

The First Goodbye

On Thursday evening as it would have been our normal evening for a German class most of us got together for our usual end of term curry.  The food and conversation were flowing freely and Rosa our teacher managed to charm the waiters into giving her one of the gorgeous wine glasses they had.  At the end of the meal a fuss was made over my leaving, which was quite sad as we have been together learning for about 2 years and these were some of the first people I had social interaction with after my breakdown and they have helped me grow so much.  Oddly the class is pretty much all men apart from Mum and me, I say oddly because I have done quite a number of evening classes over the years and women have always made up the majority.  I'm not sure if that is related but they have also been the best people I have taken classes with, which is why I extended an invitation for them to look me up if they happen to find themselves in Stuttgart and was even more pleased when they immediately started planning a class trip to see me some time next year lol.

I got a lot of hugs goodbye and felt very special... unlike my Mum who spent all of Friday being sick which she is attributing directly to the food she ate =P

Progress Non Update

Well I wanted to be able to come back and tell you all sorts of things I've been up to in preparation for the big move... but well I haven't really done anything.  I spent last weekend in bed feeling sorry for myself having a stomach bug followed by a migraine and decided that as I only have a few days left being 32 that I could spend those wasting time and start properly putting effort in as a 33 year old, as 33 year olds seem much more sensible than 32 year olds!

So instead I have been drinking Mojito's with their minty summer goodness and actually learning some German "einen Mojito, bitte."  I have been going back over some of my earlier German books to give myself a boost in confidence with how much I have actually learnt, in the face of the newer stuff which I am struggling to get to grips with.

One of the multiple choice exercises in the book was a picture of a sign saying "Ausfahrt" (a) excursion, (b) Motorway exit or (c) rude noise.  I must admit to giggling at those signs and couldn't stifle my hysterics when Uwe's Mum asked an innocent "Hattet ihr eine gute Fahrt?" on our arrival back in Esslingen from our long weekend in Munich.  I always have a quick glance around the room when my German teacher says "könnte" for flickers of amusement but it seems just me, although as I sit next to my own Mum during the lessons I have to contain that more for fear of getting smacked and tutted at!

I get knocked down, but I get up again...

Most of the time I am excited and motivated about moving to Germany, but every so often I am reminded about what an absolutely mammoth life changing decision I have made.  Yesterday for example we had dinner with Uwe's family, seven of us in total, the food was lovely and I wish i could comment the same about the company. Now don't get me wrong I didn't hate the company, far from it, the lack of commenting is because I didn't understand the company.

I had really hoped that after a year of learning German that my understanding would be better and I would have the confidence to open my mouth and let some words of my own come out. Unfortunately none of the conversations over the dinner table involved booking hotel rooms or purchasing a train ticket, well unfortunate from my grasp of the language side of things anyway.  I could understand the odd word here and there, but mostly I was blankly smiling at people wishing that Star Trek universal translator thingies had been invented.

I think what disappointed me most was that even the few questions aimed at me sparked an internal panic, Uwe's half sister asked me when I flew over to which I turned immediately to Uwe and said "ummmmm Mitwoch?" I understood the next question too about the weather and I really should have been able to answer it had I tried but I didn't. Instead I ummed again at Uwe and he took over answering for me, which I was mighty relieved at.

I was pretty depressed by the whole thing, and I really don't know what is stopping me. Yes part of it is this panic, but I think part of it is because I don't want the attention on me and on my inability to speak their language.  Everything will take 10 times as long because i can't get my point across.  I totally understand why babies scream to get their point across, I felt like crying the entire time :(

I was totally exhausted after the experience but it isn't going to stop me, it just reminded me that things are a lot harder than I sometimes remember but I will get there in the end.  Although it didn't seem like it I am pretty sure I understood far more than I did a year ago, it's just that I still don't understand enough to be useful yet.

Well I had been hoping to have results for both my assignments in English and German by now but alas I do not. I am happy to report that I did exceptionally well with my German and got 97%, although when converted into final marks it sounds a lot less impressive as it was only worth a max 5% of the continuous assessment mark, which in turn is only 2.5% of my overall score.  Anyway if I get stranded at an airport or need to spell my name or give my telephone number out I am golden apparently...

English is a rather irritating story.  I had hopes that because we had a tutorial yesterday morning that like last time the results might materialise some time on Friday.  They did not.  When asked our tutor said that he had marked them and it must be a computer glitch that we hadn't got them, benefit of the doubt things like that can go wrong. However shortly afterwards he said that the cut off was 24th November and that he'd sent them off about 10 days afterwards which was around Monday... hang on... but yesterday was the 10 day mark.  Okay so he's an English teacher not a Maths teacher, number of days might escape him.  So can he give us our marks individually? Nope they have to go via the system, he isn't allowed to discuss our own marks with us on a one to one basis... erm... oookay.  Lastly, we did have a small discussion at break between us students about the last TMA and the fact we all posted so we could read each others, and bearing in mind this guy is quite passionate about linguistics he didn't mention anything about any of our postings, such as variety, interest etc.  So conclusion? I must admit to thinking he hasn't looked at our assignments yet, let alone marked them.  Oh well the OU says that we should expect to get results back up to two weeks after submission, hopefully I'll have them before Wednesday.

Apart from the non marked assignments the tutorial was pretty useful with regards to the assignment due in January, I just need to find a program to transcribe.  I was thinking of Jeremy Kyle because it is at least linguistically interesting but he's gone and changed the format of his show, they've given him a desk and everything now! I will need to have it transcribed by the time I go to Germany or find a suitable clip I can access while I am over there, otherwise it might put a spanner in the works.

Sorry for the somewhat boring post... seems I needed a rant!

Was ich heute gelernt habe

Today was my first tutorial for L193, I was a lot more nervous about this then I was for the English one even though I was pretty comfortable with the topics covered in Thema 1.  I think it is because the dreaded speaking is involved, and with language classes you're usually made to get up and wander around asking everyone the same questions, which we were and as usual it wasn't as bad as I anticipate it to be.  It is always good to meet people that are also learning and sharing tips.

I did learn a few new bits of vocabulary which I have written down and will add to my flashcards, speaking of which I was recommended a site called Quizlet to use which has the L193 vocabulary set up by a course tutor but it can also be used by everyone to create groups and add vocabulary for any subject they like, I will add this address to my links on the right hand side. There are 299 terms in the set and I managed to get 59% (177) correct in the first try, so will be doing that as often as possible, a lot of the wrong answers were due to giving the wrong gender article or spelling mistakes rather then not knowing the word at all, which was encouraging.

In fact I was so encouraged I have submitted the first TMA which has 4 parts to it, Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking but we are only marked on the Reading and Speaking parts this time.  I think I did okay in the end, I am happy with what I submitted but time will tell, this first TMA is only worth 5% of the continuous assessment mark so not much pressure if I find I have messed it up.

I have now posted part 2 of U211's TMA02 and submitted it as a whole, and the deadline isn't for a few more days yet which is very pleasing.  I had been absolutely dreading part 2, and I changed which person I was replying to more than once and even after I had settled on the word I changed the angle I was taking with the investigation and stumbled on some really good finds.  I really hope I have done well in this TMA as I worked hard with the research aspect and really enjoyed it a lot so it would be a shame to find out I have done poorly.  Just playing the waiting game now I don't expect to hear anything for about 3 weeks... will I be able to stand the wait?

Nine Months

Well, after some discussions, a few days ago we finally set a date for me to move to Germany, and it is a lot sooner then it was going to be, nine months today in fact.  I am very happy to actually have a date pencilled in the diary, by that time both U211 and L193 will have finished and I will be quite far through L130 too, and I am happy that I should have enough German to get by and really the best way to learn a language is to immerse oneself in it.  I am of course even happier that I will get to go to bed, with and wake up next to, my lovely German boyfriend.

I have already started gathering useful information such as German bank accounts etc, and after Christmas I shall start my 6 month de-cluttering project!  I do have too much "crap" around and I want to move as little as possible to make room for other essentials like Newkie Broon and English Mustard to last for quite some time :p

Getting Ready for Study

So it took a while for the OU to get themselves sorted when allocating tutors but it looks like everyone has been allocated one now and tutorials all set up before U211 starts on Saturday. I have 8 tutorials which is about once a month which are very local to me, and there is one day school which is about 60 miles away, I am not sure if I will attend that one as I can't drive and going by train means trekking across London, but as I get closer to that I'll make a firmer decision, I might feel that I need the guidance. I am not sure what to expect really but my first tutorial is in a couple of weeks so I'll report back then, so far although the general forum has been very lively the tutor group has been silent.

I have also signed up for another 30 point German course L130 which starts in February, after looking at the L193 texts it covers a lot of German I already know so I feel confident enough to take on a second course, I am also starting my evening class tonight, so all this German some of it should get inside my head!

I have started getting to grips with Grammar too, some of it makes my head hurt but someone posted about some great youtube vids of an old American Cartoon which actually really helped me, here are my favourite ones!

Why Were We Not Taught Grammar In School?

Okay so that is not strictly true, but why are we as native English speakers not taught formal grammar? Well I read in one article that it is because in the 1960s and 70s it was decided that it stifles creativity. So instead we are taught that something is a "doing word" or a "describing word" or a "naming word". We know that you have to say "the brown dog" and not "the dog brown".  If you listen to children learning the language it is clear that they have applied some rules through association, past tense is very often given an -ed and through hearing them say "I runned" or "I goed" it is clear that they have recognised the rule, now to teach the exceptions.

Yes most of us know that a sentence needs to begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop, we understand there is a need for commas and question marks and often a whole tirade of exclamation marks. After some thought I can come up with the correct definition for a Verb (doing word), Adjective (describing word) and Noun (naming word) but I can often have trouble associating an actual word to a group. I have no idea what an adverb is, or a split infinitive, or a pronoun, or the genitive case is.

My boyfriend who learnt English as a second language has no problem understanding grammar and through playing online games it seems a common view of the non-native English speakers that the English have no grasp of their own language. Something that often brings a violent reaction in chat is when someone uses the phrase "would of" rather than "would've", personally I forgive this error completely because it is more of an accent issue.  When speaking the "'ve" part is pronounced "uvv" which sounds a lot more like of then it does have and in English it doesn't sound completely alien to say "I would of done it" then say "I would from done it" the problem comes when translating it back to another language like German when "of" can also be translated to "from". Maybe I am more forgiving because I was 12 when I realised which the help of Richard and Judy that "this morning" was spelt that way and not actually as people with my accent say "the smorning".

I am not so forgiving about "they're", "their" & "there" and "your" & "you're". Yes they do pretty much sound the same when speaking, but this is much more common and corrected a lot more often then the "would of" situation. I was quite pleased when I managed to explain to get through to one young lad and he started using you're correctly, until someone else in chat used "your" in the correct context and he helpfully chipped in that "your is not an actual word".  After hitting my head on my desk I went back to the drawing board. But the question is if we went back to a time when we were taught formal grammar would our language skills in the age of instant text be any better?

I am sure that anyone that is familiar with grammar is probably shaking their heads at my postings, with my ignorant mistakes I undoubtedly make. It annoys me, but never before has it really stopped me until a couple of days ago when I was trying to get ahead with my U211 and I came across an exercise about changing words by adding morphemes (e.g. -er, -ed, -ing) and part of it was to say what the word had changed from and too. I couldn't do it. It frustrated me to the point of tears, yes perhaps that was a little over the top but I have a fragile disposition at the moment.

My lack of understanding Grammar in English has a knock on effect that I find it hard to understand Grammar while learning German, something which I had become increasingly frustrated with and not associated the two as being related. I relaxed a little last night when my L193 Beginners German course books arrived last night and in the Other Resources section a book called English Grammar for Students of German with the description "This is a guide written in plain English aimed at people who have no previous knowledge of grammar in any language" was recommended.  The fact that this book exists made me realise, yet again, that I am not alone in my complete lack of understanding of the subject.

I have decided to put my studies of U211 on hold, the official start date is not until 2nd October anyway, and I have ordered a grammar guide with a workbook in an attempt to teach myself in the hope that it not only helps my understanding of the course but means that my TMAs will be of a higher quality and correctly structured.