Awful language lesson

[Booboostwo]

Not a huge issue but WWYD I suppose:

I have struggled to find a German tutor online (a lot of people offer lessons but many know nothing about the A1 exam). I am on my second tutor who finally seems to know the exam, we've had 6 lessons.

Today she came up with an apparently German joke which was racist against Jews. I told her I did not think it was very funny and was happy to move on, but she pressed me on why I did not find it funny and I said it was racist. Then she asked if I was a 'leftie' and I asked her why she would ask that. She said it was because lefties tend to not be racist and I said everyone should not be racist regardless of political choices.

We moved on with the lesson. Then she gave me another piece of cultural background, she said that Turks call Germans something which again IMO was racist. So again I said I did not need to learn about that as it was racist and she said it was funny. I said immigration is a complex issue and best not to call either immigrants or host people derogatory terms, and she said that she was OK with Turks because in her country, Hungary, the main problem are Gypsies who won't integrate! To which I said maybe Hungarians should learn about Gypsy culture instead and tried to move on with the lesson.

I do think cultural examples are important in learning a language but she's a raging racist isn't she? I have to cancel my next lesson and find another tutor, don't I?

Agree with pp re. going straight to A2, not point in doing A1, really.

The Goethe Institute does over online courses and there appears to be a free trial as well:

www.goethe.de/en/spr/kup/kur/doln.html

Argh, offer, not over, obviously.

Have you tried finding a 'tandem partner' who'd be willing to communicate online and wants to improve their English / French (if your French is good enough)? Not sure how much someone at A1/A2 level would benefit from this, but might be worth a try to help with the speaking part and it's free.

OP - there are lots and lots of native speakers offering tutoring without having the first clue in how to get a student from A to B. Choose someone with teaching qualifications as a minimum. If you just have a native speaker their language skills will obviously be excellent but if they have no experience of exam prep or how to build learning logically, you may well go round in circles and never learn what you need to learn to successfully pass an exam, even a basic one. Also choose a tutor who asks initial questions about your prior learning, your motives for learning and what you are aiming to achieve over what timescale. You should always ask about exam prep experience and their success rates. This will help weed out those native speakers who are just trying to make a few easy bucks.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get away for four weeks.

Thanks Taxiplease I didn’t know about this. I was looking at the local Goethe site which was a silly thing to do!

Yes I think that is part of the problem Sotiredofthislife. I had high hopes for this last tutor because she is an actual foreign language teacher at an evening school but the racism is hard to put up with.

In moneymatters - there is a thread called something like £10 a day in August. On there, there are a number of people talking about a platform where they teach foreign languages - not sure if any of those people could help as they clearly know a bit about the different platforms?

Sorry - a bit convoluted but hopefully makes some sort of sense!

Goethe online

Cost of living is quite high in and around Frankfurt, if that's an issue. The Ruhr area is very multicultural and easy coimmuting to places with jobs.

Tandem schemes I know tend to say it only really works from B1 up.

I can reccommend a teacher called Ivana who works for the company learnlight. Be a bit careful with learnlight though as some of their tutors are awful. If you decide to sign up with them insist on having Ivana. Classes can be donee via skype or telephone and thry have an online platform with various exercises for you to complete each week. If you are interested but don't want to sign up via learnlight I can ask Ivana if she does private tuition outside of learnlight. Let me know if you want me to contact her for you.

I would say that as a beginner you do need to learn the dative, and it will be much easier now than putting it off to some mythical point when you've learnt "basic conversational German without the dative". It's a unicorn. It doesn't exist!
Trying to work around the dative isn't much different from trying to teach basic English without using "me" or "him".

Your teachers still suck.

I recommend you buy the book "Living German". It will teach you how to construct sentences and the role of the dative very simply and easily. Then you can get on with speaking practice.

Even your example Hello, how are you?" uses the dative. Anyone who spends 3 months teaching you to use it is an appalling teacher.

I can and have taught people how to use it in five minutes, and I'm English with a German A-level.

Not as expensive as Munich though Catte ! Munich is pretty much the most expensive place in Germany. Also not especially multicultural for a reasonably big city, and an incredibly difficult place to secure rented accommodation - there just isn't much available, and most landlords avoid renting to foreigners, though if the children's father lives with the family and is half German and speaks German that would avoid that problem (it's more a pragmatic approach because long term tenants and no communication issues are easier than foreigners who are expected to be difficult to communicate with and to leave after a year or two).

www.financescout24.de/wissen/studien/lebenshaltungskosten

Everything I wanted to say about learning German has been said.

If you do decide to go to Frankfurt i wouldn't worry so much about your German skills but your English which seems fine. I used to work there and if you work for an International company English is pretty standard as the language of communication. (but it is hideously expensive and with a lot of banks and such moving out of London and basing their Europe HQ there, there is a definite shortage of affordable apartments unless you want to live quite far out - although public transport is very good)

Hi OP,
I did an A1 course where the teacher used the Lagune 1 book. So I bought the Lagune 2 (Kursbuch and Arbeitsbuch) and went through it on my own. Passed A2 with 93/100. Used the busuu.com social media platform for exercises and chatting to natives and ended up meeting DH on there (not German )

Thanks, I’ll look into that.