Classes
Sorry about the long wait, I said that I would write about my first class a couple days ago...Well, here's the scope:
So far I've had 3 classes. On Monday I had Text Analysis (Textanalyse) which seemed like it would be alright at first, because in the course book it even said that the course was only for students that didn't speak German as a mother language. But....out of the 40 people in the class, half them of them were Austrian. Yeah. Not cool... When we actually started analyzing texts, all of the students in my program and all of the other non-native speakers couldn't get a word in egdewise...or not even understand a word for that matter :P All of the students are Austrian, I'm guessing, so that makes them even harder to understand. It didn't really even seem like any of them tried to slow down or speak High German, which was really frustrating. So, apparently the regular text analysis class for them is full. But, the rest of us feel like we shouldn't suffer because the other class it full, this was supposed to be a class for us. Our director, Antje, suggested that we remind him of that, so I guess we'll see what happens there.
Antje's class seems pretty good. It's just Austrian Identity after 1945, so culture and history. That should be good, because I know a fair amount about German history after the war, but nothing about Austria. We already had some reading for her class, which is twice a week, but it wasn't so bad. Today we were supposed to make questions from the reading to play Austrian Trivial Pursuit, so that should be interesting.
The third class is my German as a Foreign Language class (Deutsch als Fremdsprache-DAF), which I'm going to have three days a week. There's also a language lab hour that I have to do too. That class seems pretty good, it's huge though. The professor is very nice and funny and all of the students that I have talked to in there so far are really nice. I met a girl from Poland that can speak 5 languages, which was pretty cool. We had a lot of work for that class though last night, which was also the first night, so I don't really know what that's gonna mean for the rest of the semester O_o
I was supposed to have my first German Etymology class today, which I got up pretty early for. I even got over to the University buildings 15 minutes early to find the room, but that actually didn't do any good. I got to the Germanistik (German language) building, where I assumed that it would be, looked aound and couldn't find it. I asked a few people and they sent me over to the Anglistik (English language) building. When I got there, it wasn't clear at all where rooms were, so I asked 2 people. One told me I had to go to the Slawistik (Slavic) Building, which I knew couldn't be right. Another told me to go back to Germanistik :P So, I left the second building and decided to try another building nearby. It looked promising at the door because it said Linguistik (linguistics). So, I went in and it said the room was on the first floor (which in crazy Europe means second floor). I got up there and found room 320, but I needed 321. I saw another girl looking confused and she asked if I was looking for the same class. So, at least now I was not alone. We found the actual room, but no one was there. So, we went to the secretary and asked her where the class was and she said "Oh, that professor's working on a project, you're class won't start until April 19th." . . . . . Yeah. So, that was kind of pointless this morning, but at least I know where the class is going to take place...on April 19th...
So far I've had 3 classes. On Monday I had Text Analysis (Textanalyse) which seemed like it would be alright at first, because in the course book it even said that the course was only for students that didn't speak German as a mother language. But....out of the 40 people in the class, half them of them were Austrian. Yeah. Not cool... When we actually started analyzing texts, all of the students in my program and all of the other non-native speakers couldn't get a word in egdewise...or not even understand a word for that matter :P All of the students are Austrian, I'm guessing, so that makes them even harder to understand. It didn't really even seem like any of them tried to slow down or speak High German, which was really frustrating. So, apparently the regular text analysis class for them is full. But, the rest of us feel like we shouldn't suffer because the other class it full, this was supposed to be a class for us. Our director, Antje, suggested that we remind him of that, so I guess we'll see what happens there.
Antje's class seems pretty good. It's just Austrian Identity after 1945, so culture and history. That should be good, because I know a fair amount about German history after the war, but nothing about Austria. We already had some reading for her class, which is twice a week, but it wasn't so bad. Today we were supposed to make questions from the reading to play Austrian Trivial Pursuit, so that should be interesting.
The third class is my German as a Foreign Language class (Deutsch als Fremdsprache-DAF), which I'm going to have three days a week. There's also a language lab hour that I have to do too. That class seems pretty good, it's huge though. The professor is very nice and funny and all of the students that I have talked to in there so far are really nice. I met a girl from Poland that can speak 5 languages, which was pretty cool. We had a lot of work for that class though last night, which was also the first night, so I don't really know what that's gonna mean for the rest of the semester O_o
I was supposed to have my first German Etymology class today, which I got up pretty early for. I even got over to the University buildings 15 minutes early to find the room, but that actually didn't do any good. I got to the Germanistik (German language) building, where I assumed that it would be, looked aound and couldn't find it. I asked a few people and they sent me over to the Anglistik (English language) building. When I got there, it wasn't clear at all where rooms were, so I asked 2 people. One told me I had to go to the Slawistik (Slavic) Building, which I knew couldn't be right. Another told me to go back to Germanistik :P So, I left the second building and decided to try another building nearby. It looked promising at the door because it said Linguistik (linguistics). So, I went in and it said the room was on the first floor (which in crazy Europe means second floor). I got up there and found room 320, but I needed 321. I saw another girl looking confused and she asked if I was looking for the same class. So, at least now I was not alone. We found the actual room, but no one was there. So, we went to the secretary and asked her where the class was and she said "Oh, that professor's working on a project, you're class won't start until April 19th." . . . . . Yeah. So, that was kind of pointless this morning, but at least I know where the class is going to take place...on April 19th...