Foreign Language

As embarrassing as it is, when we first arrived in Germany over 4 years ago, I was not totally new to the German language. In fact, I had taken 3 years of it in high school, and then two more Semesters of it in College. I've often wondered about all of this time in German class. I actually got very good grades in it, but once arriving here, hardly anything came back to me. I wondered if I had just forgotten all of it, or if I was just plain dumb. It is such a hard language, and I am always struggling to learn more. Fast Forward to today, where my daughter is now taking High School level German 2. Now it all makes sense as to why I can't speak German, even after all of those years of classes: it is because of the curriculum.

To explain this better, I will reverse a bit and tell you how Camden "learned English" last year in the 5th grade in German school. The text book had oodles of English vocabulary, and then oodles of stories in English (it was after all an English class, so it would make sense that the curriculum was not in German). His class was also "taught" in English - even though it was only 5th grade.  Bailey is taking German 2 (she can't take German 3 because as an 8th grader, she is not allowed to). We looked at the back of her German book (at what she will be learning at the end of this year), and it is soo basic.  It is mostly written in English with lots of fill in the blanks for German vocabulary.  It doesn't help you at all to learn like that, because an English sentence cannot be translated verbatim into German (you have to understand the word placement). So far, the class is taught completely in English also - even though they are all 2nd year German students. As depressing as it is, it did give me a little relief, as now it all makes sense why nothing "came back" when we first moved over here- it is because I never really learned anything to begin with. It does make me ponder though - why is our curriculum like this, when other countries are really learning languages??????It is crazy to think too, that this year (in 8th grade), all of Bailey's old German classmates will be beginning their 4th language! They obviously have English and German, and then they can choose the other 2 from either Latin, French, Italian etc. CRAZY!!!