I attended my intro to my Dutch learning course today. The one ironic thing about it is the letter to invite me to the intro (to learn Dutch) was in Dutch. Go figure. But lucky of course Alexander can translate for me.
When I attended they spoke almost completely in Dutch, although the teacher did clarify things in English for me occasionally. I struggled to follow along and it turned out that most of the group have been in the country for years………some 4 years or more. They could already speak Dutch and communicate, but their Dutch just wasn’t good enough for them to get Dutch citizenship, hence they were doing the course to better their Dutch. I think there was only 1 other person that was in the same predicament as me and knew very little Dutch.
Later we were paired with another person, and we had to ask each other questions on a list, which luckily I understood most of them. We had to answer in Dutch and then tell the group about the other person. As far as I know I was the only English speaking person in the group, so there was no cheating possible. Most of them were Turkish…….I think there was a Chinese lady and I can’t remember the rest.
I didn’t feel terribly comfortable, but the lessons commence next Monday in the evenings, and apparently that group is more at my level, so I’ll learn faster that way. It’s going to be difficult, cuz with the evening routine with Connor and gym stuff etc, I would find during the day much better (assuming child care can be arranged). However apparently the morning group is a more advanced level for me and may be too difficult, meaning it will be harder for me to pick things up.
So in the meantime I’m going to start with the night group for a few weeks and see if I can get childcare to get into the morning group. Perhaps by that stage my Dutch may have advanced a bit so that it’ll be easier for me to follow along in the morning group. The teacher felt that it would probably take me 3 months to get to that level, but we’ll have to see because if I get the opportunity to teach gym classes I would really like to keep the evenings open.
Anyway, in the meantime I’m going to do a bit more revision of my Dutch book (which I’m ashamed to say I haven’t studied in the last few weeks, being sick and all).
Sounds really complicated Mel, good luck with it all