Warning! Please take note of this seriously or else you gonna end up like them 🙄
In my previous blog where I have shared stories of their respective paths in developing German to greater heights, there are few students who did not achieve the level they desired. To be unbiase on this, right of the bet..., yes there are in some cases where it has been my fault, due to the uncomplete set of teaching materials and misguided teaching that has confused my fellow students.
On the other end, there are students that are not putting much effort into learning the German language, or one could say that he/she is not spending enough time to learn the language. So teaching the German language for 3 years and counting, here are the few unfortunate cases that I came across:
Determined to learn the language with intensive courses, but brings zero to negative energy to the lesson, sometimes even brining negative energy
This person brought a very high energy when he was taking his first lesson with me, so much so that I thought that this guy gonna excel in picking up German really fast compared to the rest of my students. And in the first 3-4 lessons it was going great, where he'll bring excitement to each material I'm teaching and sharing with me, even to the extent of giving me some tips to clarify couple of grammers really well! So where did it all go wrong?
He was later not focusing much on the lessons and materials shared, pretty much need go through the same materials that I have shared with him in the previous 2-3 lessons. And the reason for it was the timing of the lessons he arranged. He arranged the lessons right after his diploma studies, which he hated a lot and consumes much of his energy, so much so that it was visibly obvious by each lessons. And so, he shows up to the lessons completely exhausted🥱. I have asked him to reschedule the lesson to a later time where he can get some time to rest and recover before the lesson, yet he never took the advice seriously, because according to him he wants to be done with ''everything'' related to German, before spending the rest of his afternoons and evenings with his leisurely activities that are in German...
By all means you know yourself and how you can spent your time well more than others, but in his case he'll need to pick up the language as quickly as possible as he was about to be enrolled to a German speaking job and adopt to his current environment in Austria soon enough. He can only speak Spanish and doesn't speak any English. It's also that he hates the langauge tremendously, which is definetely a wrong mindset to learn a new skill like learning German, but the most ironic thing here that he's married to a German woman.😐 What bigger motivation do you need to learn the langauge aside from your life partner?!
Explaining the same grammar, giving the same advice as much repetition as possible and with different style, but still ended up being the same
He was speaking German very fluently right off the bet during our first lesson, has better vocabularies used, but the issue was his sentence structure. He spoke German with the sentence structure of English. And the challenge in helping him solving his issue was the tempo at which he spoke. I'm not joking on this, but he spoke German even faster than a regular native German speaker😲 So it seems that the issue doesn't seem to be a big of an deal to be resolved, should have been easy I thought...
So by each lessons, teaching him on the sentence structure, in all sorts of methods, whether its verbal, whiteboard, picture, real-life conversation practice, descriptive online notes in English, and even more. I mean I have pretty much tried all option to change his sentence strucuture one-by-one. And I even told him to speak slowly so that it can give him some time to think and speak correctly. However, things didn't change, he stayed the same, refuses to change his tempo of speaking German and kept asking explanations for the same particular section of the sentence structure over and over and over again by every lessons😭
Bottomline, you need to internally grasp and accept the fact that you need to make some level adjustments within and not to stay the same for each language you speak, no matter how many languages you speak.
I can give you the map to improve and be better and ace in German, but the bigger life-changing question here is.. can you do it?
Learned German and reached better heights (up to B2) in a few months, but later went absent for a few months, was inconsistent in learning the language, and eventually dropped level down to A1!
Compared to other 2 scenarios where the student lacked the right mindset to spend adequate time and improve, in this case I can't say that it's his fault that he couldn't pick up the langauge really well. The circumstances he was in made him to lose his competency of speaking German eventually and pretty much giving up to practice the langauge any further.
In the beginning, he was speaking somewhat a good enough level, say A2, and with some lessons, I saw a gradual improvement in him, where he rosed to B2 level. And later he has requested to pause the lessons for a couple of months due to changes with his job environment. Sure, it's not an issue at all, I only requested him to practice at least 15 minutes, or on a very busy schedule, a bare minimum of 5 minutes per day, so that he doesn't lose momentum of his German level that he has worked for and gained the result of it.
And couple of months went by, and he came back again, but his level dropped down quiet a bit, so it wasn't much of an issue to help him to get back to his previous level that he was at, which was at B1. But after just 2-3 lessons, he had pause again due to changes with his work environment, and when he came back this time, he completely has forgotten much of what I have tought previously, and his level dropped way lower, close to being A0. And he doesn't really like to take self-initiative anymore but rather to be spoon-fed for every lessons I'm teaching him, which was not the case previously.
I do really feel from the bottom of my heart sorry for him, as he couldn't control much of what he wanted to achieve. Sometimes, external factors like our day-to-day job can prevent us from learning new things or obtain new achievements. That being said, would like to advise those who are working and wants to learn the langauge, please ensure that your job don't overwhelm you so much that you just can't learn the language, where you cannot focus or give adequate time and effort for it...
At the end of the day, much of what you want to achieve can be helped a lot by others, but there'll always be limitation as to how much one can help you in your path of learning new things, even if he or she is very close to you or shares same values or suits your learning style or is very helpful to you.
Remember this, YOU ARE THE ONLY WHO CAN CONTROL YOUR OWN FATE.
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