Thursday, September 9, 2010

Hate it when I'm right

Last night I attended my first class for "Svenska A". And sure enough, all my colleagues from the Svenksa Som Andra Språk "Grund" course had all been "invited" to join this new higher level class. Meaning that they no longer need to hold the grund class in the evenings. Saving a bit of cash. Not that I really care, so long as it helps my language skills, but it wouldn't have hurt them to have fronted up with the real reason from the start. So, what seems to be the difference. Hard to tell from the first evening, but it does seem to follow along the same self study plan as the Grund course. It seems to be a bit more practically based, concentrating on actually using the language, rather than learning it. If that makes sense. Learning appropriate language useage for different situations and envirnoments. I need to focus more on my grammar and sentence structure, particuarly when things start getting longer and more complicated, so I'm hopeful that there will be a bit of time spent in that area. Once I've got the grammar locked in tight, then is just a matter of learning more words. Just, he says. I remember a tutor telling me that there are something like 250,000 words in the Swedish language and, of those, about 50,000 words are used on a daily basis. I figure that I'm good for about 17 of those 50k words. The good news is that, like the other Swedish language course for immigrants, there's no fee to attend these classes. The not so good news is that I'm shelling out nearly 1000 kronor for course textbooks. But I had a good look through the teacher's copies, and they look like practical language books that I really would use. Like SFI and SAS grund, Svenska A doesn't have a defined course time limit. You keep on studying until one day, God willing, the teacher decides that you've reached a satisfactory level. Then you move on to the Svenska B level coursework. In the same class. A bit like moving from course C to course D in SFI. Svenska B does have a final examination, which is taken at the same time as all Swedish high school examinations. So that was my first 2 hours of Svenska A. It was basically an introduction meeting, introducing ourselves and talking about the course. The teacher had a list of prepared questions that she asked each person in turn. The first question was which TV programme was our favourite. Unfortunately I was the first to be asked. Had I known that everyone else was going to give good adult answers such as "the news", "current affairs programmes", "wildlife documentaries", I may not have responded with "Family Guy". Way to go dumb arse on the first day. I have some homework for next week. I have to write a page about what my goal is for the course, in Swedish. I think that my goal is going to be to be capable of writinge a page about what my goal for the course is, in Swedish.

No comments:

Post a Comment