Learning a foreign language.

Coming from a country where many languages are spoken, one would expect me to be multilingual, but unfortunately this was not the case. I could understand two of the three major languages spoken in my home country, but I could not speak back or express myself in those languages. With this in mind, I thought that learning a language was something that I could not do, but this turned out not to be true.

When I finished high school, I had to figure out what to do with my life. One thing led to another and I decided to study in Germany and in German. This was a challenge that I was willing to take on, even though I knew that I was not good with the local languages in my home country, and that my attempts to learn a foreign language in elementary school had not been successful. I searched for language schools and came across the Goethe Institute, the German Language and Cultural Center.

While researching on the Internet, I saw a lot of comments from people saying how difficult the German language was, but this motivated me the most to learn the language. I was lucky that the German language has a similar alphabet to English my first language because I feel it would have been more difficult if the alphabet was different like Russian or Mandarin, that said I guess what was strange was the grammar but that was not a problem because I am someone who loves to learn structure and that is exactly what grammar is all about, the structure of a language. The next challenge with my language classes was that they were not intensive, I had classes twice a week, so it took me longer to reach the level I needed to apply to universities. In total, I spent 2 years in my home country before I reached the B2 level of language proficiency.

In my home country, my strengths were listening and reading and my weaknesses were speaking and writing. Thanks to my exposure to the language in my home country, when I arrived in Germany I was able to speak the language from day one. I remember asking for directions at the airport. Although I was not fluent, I made an effort to speak what little I knew.

With time I got better and better at the language and being in the native country helped a lot because I use the language every day. I also have my studies in German and this helps in my fluency with the language. I now have the C1 level which is the highest level of fluency you can have as a non-native speaker. C2, which is the highest level, is when you speak like a native speaker. I still make little mistakes with the language but I guess my fluency makes up for it.

You never stop learning and the same goes for learning a foreign language. However, I should add that it takes a lot of dedication to learn something new.

Thanks for stopping by.

JaySays