ESN FINT (Erasmus Student Network of Tampere, Finland) and Complex ry (student society of the Leadership for Change programme at Tampere University) are organising small groups on WhatsApp which communicate about whatever topic the participants like in their target language with a native speaker and like-minded learners from Tampere University.
They usually meet once a week in-person at Telakka (a restaurant in Tampere and the best place ever, I can highly recommend the tea that you can get with your student ID for only 1€!!!) or online via Zoom. I got the chance to be a group leader myself and I’m now trying to teach others the beautiful German language. This is a story about how my first language group experience went down.
Hallo, warum lernst du Deutsch?
Before my first meet-up, I decided to prepare a small game, just in case we run out of topics to talk about, and because I wanted the whole experience to be as casual as possible. I had heard beforehand that Finnish small talk is not the most fluent – to put it lightly. That is why I scribbled about 50 questions in German on tiny pieces of paper, folded them and put them in a box.
These questions ranged from beginner’s level ones like “Why are you learning German?” to deeper ones like “What do you fear most in life?” (that one I wanted to hold back until I knew what kind of people I had in front of me).
But my worries were washed away when the first person arrived at Telakka, looking a bit lost and trying to find her group. She came to my table and asked where she could find the French language group, whose leaders had not arrived yet. So, she sat across my table and we chatted about her experiences learning foreign languages as a Finn and her goals with the language groups.
Ah, le français c’est très difficile
After the end of the German language group, we all joined the French table. I had learned the language in middle school, basically back in the day when the French Revolution happened, so it was quite a challenge for me in the beginning.
But I must say, it was a great experience to listen to native speakers and understand what they were saying! The group leaders were adapting to the overall level of the group and talked more slowly than they probably would have amongst each other.
We played a game called “20 Questions” or “Who Am I?”, in which we gave roles to each other and then had to guess who we were. It was very relaxing to learn new words through a game and the leaders had a lot of patience when we were thinking about an expression (like me who sometimes took a solid minute to form a question when it was my turn) and helped us with pronunciation and grammar when we asked for it. After an hour, the Portuguese group joined our table as well and it amazed me how many languages the others were able to speak to a somewhat fluent level. It was very impressive!
If you also want to join one of the language groups, just click here: Facebook event for ESN FINT & Complex Language Groups. Joining the WhatsApp groups is without any commitment and you can spontaneously decide whether you want to participate in a meet-up or not. For some languages, there are several groups with different levels so that there is a learning experience for everyone. And, as said, sometimes we offer an online version too, so even if you are not a student yet, feel free to participate!
Our current languages are:
- Finnish
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Korean
- Japanese
- Russian
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Chinese
I hope to see some of you at our next meeting!
– Gina
