Meeting number 10 marked the end of our planned meetings. While Alex and I hope to meet again between thesis work and exams we decided to end the blog here as we can not guarantee anymore entries.
Once again we visited Cafe Europa and our focus was once again on languages rather than culture. At this meeting we focused on meeting the learning intentions we identified at the beginning of the course and ensuring we had covered everything we wanted to learn from each other.
At the beginning of this course we were asked to develop a learning plan, in that plan I identified what I would like to learn from Alex and how I would measure that success.
My learning intention were to;
Understand the basics of German grammar and sentence structure.
Expand vocabulary
Gain knowledge of the German number system
Gain knowledge of German foods
And my Success Criteria were;
Be able to recognise written words e.g. food and common verbs
Be able to greet someone, introduce myself and say where I am from.
To be able to count verbally and write (at least to 10)
To be able to state and write the date and time.
Be able to order food and drink.
As we come to the end of our meetings I have realised that it was ambitious of me to try and understand German grammar and sentence structure. Instead I have focused on learning useful phrases and expanding my vocabulary. I am now able to introduce myself and say where I am from and recognise both visually and verbally words for food, everyday items and common verbs. I can also count to 10 and place a food order in a restaurant, although I have yet to do this in practice I at least know what to say!
For this reason I believe that my experience with the EOTO module has been a successful one. This experience has not only helped me gain a small insight into Austrian culture and the German language but challenged my knowledge of my own language and encouraged me to increase my knowledge of English and ask myself why I speak the way I do. In the beginning in teaching English I aimed to;
Understand and discover differences and similarities between the languages.
Discover the history between some commonly used phrases, the evolution of English.
Think more about how and what I say, different pronunciations of the same word.
Consolidate my knowledge of English grammar.
I have not only done this and more my knowledge of grammar and tenses has grown considerably as well as the origin of words.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning with Alex and I intend to continue practising German when I can. Hopefully I will find the time to visit not only Germany but also Austria where Alex and other people I have become friends with during my time here are from.
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