Last year, in September, I started attending Danish lessons. The other day it occurred to me just how fast I have progressed. Last September Danish sounded like white noise to me. When people around me would be talking in Danish I wasn't getting anything. Today, 9 and a half months later I am ready to start reading books in Danish (real books, with the help of the dictionary of course), I can hear what Danes are saying and depending on the topic of conversation I can understand, from the general topic of the conversations to the details, but I still need to focus. If my mind is wandering I still get very little. But the point of this blog post isn't bragging.
When I was finishing elementary school and I needed to choose high school, one of the important criteria for me was the second language. I wanted to avoid German, I didn't feel like learning German and I was lucky. There was an option to sign up for the class where primary foreign language was English and secondary foreign language was Italian. I immediately jumped for the opportunity.
As it turned out, maybe I wasn't lucky at all, maybe it would have been better if I went for German, despite my reluctance. At least today I could say that I know two foreign languages and am currently working on the 3rd one.
I was motivated to learn Italian, not as I am today to learn Danish, but I was motivated. I was always a bit of a geek for learning and school and social and humanistic sciences always appealed to me. But today, the only thing I can say in Italian is "My name is Bruno." I don't even remember how to spell it though. And the lessons were equally intensive as I have them today in language school, two times per week.
The problem was that we had a horrible teacher. She neither could teach nor keep us in check. Every class was mayhem and it was like that for 4 years and we weren't happy with that either. There was a couple of students in my class who learned Italian in the elementary school. I remember one of them saying to me at the end of the fourth year that now he knows less Italian compared to when he finished elementary-school.
So after four years of learning Italian from a person who wasn't supposed to teach, I got nothing. After 6 and a half months (from September 1st to middle of March when school stopped because of corona) of learning danish, taught by good teachers, I got enough knowledge that by working at home I brought myself to the level where, with the help of the dictionary, I can read real books in danish and news. Tthere is still a lot to do for me. But compared to where I was at the beginning of September, today I am light years ahead.
The tragedy of Croatian educational system is that bad teachers that unfortunately work in schools, like my Italian teacher, are not uncommon. While I was working on university I was talking to my students about it often and there wasn't one student who didn't encounter at least one, sometimes more teachers who were like that. The problem is that, as I was joking around, when you get a permanent employment contract in Croatian schools, you can get fired only if you kill a student or arrive into the classroom naked. How it is in Denmark, I cannot say. My experiences for now were positive but very narrow in scope to make an assumption on a bigger scale.
The tragedy of Croatian educational system is that bad teachers that unfortunately work in schools, like my Italian teacher, are not uncommon. While I was working on university I was talking to my students about it often and there wasn't one student who didn't encounter at least one, sometimes more teachers who were like that. The problem is that, as I was joking around, when you get a permanent employment contract in Croatian schools, you can get fired only if you kill a student or arrive into the classroom naked. How it is in Denmark, I cannot say. My experiences for now were positive but very narrow in scope to make an assumption on a bigger scale.
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