Sprogskolen - Hjælpe mig

In Australia all our sprogs(kids) go to school, so what's so special about this one.

Well Sprog = Language in Dansk. So yes I'm off to language school to attempt to learn Danish.

In Denmark it is law that all Kommune(local governments) provide danish lesson to residents for free. So this is where the taxes go. So i emailed the school and set up a preliminary interview where they enrolled me in the stream (No3) designed for those with second language already and/or those with degrees. My class size is about 10 students to one teacher and classes run from 8am to 1:30 pm Mon, Thu and Fri. Here goes.

Its been about 25 years since I've been in  a real class room (endless corporate and business type training aside) and its is somewhat daunting. It is my first day but its the third day for my class mates as I enrolled late. Missing two days was a bit of a pest as I was immediately bombarded with Danish and when I questioned or just looked as if I was in pain the teacher would explain "don't worry we  covered pronunciation the other day" same for vowels, numbers, days of the week etc.

What have I got myself into? out of the six hours on day one i think I was enthusiastic for about 30 mins. We switch between Grammar, pronunciation, reading , speaking, writing with such speed that I'm struggling. The bits where I felt enthusiastic were when I realised I knew more than some of my class mates from having spent some time on Duo Lingo (an ipad app for learning danish and other languages). I found out the the teachers all recommend this app as it is a very simple way to learn without any formality.

The grammar parts are interesting but difficult for those of us (ie Australians) that were never taught the language and terms of grammar (ie possessive, third personal, genitive, conjugation etc etc).. The Australian education departments have a lot to answer for deciding to exclude this. It makes learning other languages harder. I suspect the reason for this exclusion its just curriculum change for the sake of it just to keep the academics and bureaucrats feeling in work and feeling important. After all if there was not constant change of approach and opinion what would they do? Or possibly more likely none of the teachers understood it so they thought "lets get rid of it" and now its impossible to go back as even the teachers haven't been taught it.

Oh and the coffee is so bad at the school Kanteen that many go across the road to the Servo (Petrol satation) for coffee, WTF.

god aften