American Women's Club of Hamburg Currents Magazine January 2014 | Page 24

MEMBERSHIP

How I Finally Lear ned G er man
by Allisoon M.

I struggled with my German classes; learning
this language was a big source of frustration and
disappointment for me. Contributing to this
was the added stress of the high cost of these
classes. There were times I couldn’t believe I
was paying so much money to be so miserable!
After suffering through nearly twelve months of
intensive language learning classes, I decided that
I had had enough. The people who taught me
were great, and infinitely patient, but it was just
the wrong fit for me.
Although I had learned enough German to
get along fairly well here, I knew that without
daily exposure to German conversation I would
quickly lose my tenuous grip on this language.
My solution? Dialog in Deutsch. This awardwinning program is run by the Hamburg public
library system, manned by volunteers, and
attended by a fascinating group of people in
all stages of language acquisition. I’m a library
junkie, and, thanks to my library card, had
already been accessing the extensive collection
of language learning materials, sample tests and
study guides at the Zentralbibliothek. When I
discovered that there were free opportunities to
practi ce my conversational German with other
language learners such as myself, I was totally
on-board.

I went. The library volunteers often started the
conversation with a discussion about different
holidays, foods, current events, etc. and the
participants took it from there. New, unfamiliar
words are simply written on a small chalkboard,
and everyone participates. The different language
levels, cultures, ages and backgrounds of the
varying participants guarantee that we are all
exposed to something new with each session.
For me, it was the perfect solution to my dread of
language classes. It costs nothing to participate,
you don’t have to register or have a library card
to attend, and you can go to as few or as many
sessions as you’d like. These library volunteers
and fellow “classmates” turned out to be some
of the best teachers I could have hoped for. My
German is still far from fluent or perfect, but it’s
a lot better thanks to them!

Dialog in Deutsch activities are held in every
library branch in Hamburg. Some branches
have meetings just once or twice per week, others
meet nearly every day. I attended Dialog in
Deutsch at the Zentralbibliothek because they
offered multiple groups each day (several days of
the week, morning groups actually meet before
the library is even open). If you’d like to learn
more about it, click on the link here: http://www.
buecherhallen.de/dialog_in_deutsch/ and if you’d
like to check it out with a friend, feel free to give
What I discovered within these groups was a me a call!
diverse collection of library volunteers who
guided conversations, helped us to find words,
and periodically corrected our most atrocious
grammar mistakes. The beauty of this program,
though, was that this was a discussion group. Free
from the stress of learning a specific grammar rule
or preparing for an upcoming exam, the group
was able to explore a myriad of different topics,
and I managed to learn something new each time

24

American Women’s Club of Hamburg e.V.