Subscribe to my feed1 April 2008 - "Deutsch ist schwul"
In just over one weeks time, I will be expected to recall pages and pages of my German speaking answers for a GCSE exam. I’m just wondering how anyone can think that it is possible to learn over thirty question answers (each of which are at least a paragraph long), a two page presentation and presentation questions?
I personally find it ridiculous that they assess how good you are at a language by how well you can memorise the answers to questions such as “what would you do if you had a million pounds?” or “what did you do last weekend?”. Sure, when learning languages, memory is a key skill but when if it ever came to a real life conversation with an actual German person, you would have to make up your answer on the spot not recall your answer from memory. And I seriously doubt that upon visiting Germany, I would ever be asked what I would do if I had a million pounds.
However, the ranting of a fourteen (soon to be fifteen!) year old girl on her little blog on the internet isn’t about to change things… so I guess I’d better go and revise. Sigh…
Rachael said on the 1st April, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Ich liebe Deutsch! Deutsch ist sehr gut.
Als Ich in Frankreich war, habe Ich froschbeine probiert, und es hat mir sehr schlecht geschmekt!
Viel gluck!
Holly said on the 1st April, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Good luck for your exam!
isha said on the 5th April, 2008 at 5:46 am
oh yeah, memorizing and the eagerness to learn will definately help you to learn such language. goodluck w/ that!
morgan said on the 7th April, 2008 at 2:13 am
Wow. And I thought that was just my school.
I learnt French for a while and all I learnt (actually learnt) was how to tell people my name. We had little test things where the teacher would ask you questions from the textbook and you’d say the answer from the textbook. I mean, how is that supposed to teach you?
Good luck on your exam, though.
Shichi said on the 9th April, 2008 at 4:12 am
Learning a language sure can be difficult [I am learning another language myself, and I’m just self-studying for the moment], especially when you don’t have an actual person to talk to.. but it’s rewarding when you succeed in learning it. Good luck on your exam!
Jmar said on the 10th April, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Learning a different language is difficult. I actually tried to learn Japanese and Korean. I even bought tutorial books to learn those languages, but until now, I don’t know how to speak neither Japanese nor Korean. I only know some words and a bit of lines. But I don’t know how to converse with any of the two languages. So I ended up giving up on learning them. I guess knowing my own language is already enough for me.
Well good luck with the exam!
tina said on the 10th April, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Aww a german exam!
Good luck with that! I agree on the fact that the things you learn in class are often not very helpful in actual conversations.
Anyway,I wish you wouldn’t use the word “gay” out of context (even if you translated it to german) because well it’s offensive.
just a little side note
Wrhona said on the 21st April, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Man, that is nonsense. Nyaaahh…
Well, maybe you can write your feedback in that class or something? so they’ll know?
Vickie said on the 2nd May, 2008 at 12:52 pm
My school used to make us memorise answers to set questions when I learnt English. But I never did, always made up my own answers and still got the grades. Surely they won’t take marks off if you answer it in another grammatically-correct way? Then again, I don’t really know anything about GCSEs. Good luck, anyway!
Candygirl said on the 13th May, 2008 at 6:53 pm
That´s just too much!! =/
I guess that they just intend to practice but it´s ridiculous, your right that you shouldn´t memorize all that since it won´t present the same situation with a german person..
Anyways, good luck with everything!