EN: Improve Your German for Free – Even in Switzerland!

Ittinger - my favourite Swiss beer, which I always order during our German Conversation at Brasserie Federal

This year I have started to work here in Zürich, so it is time I sum up how I went about improving my German before I found a job. Although I did not take any tests, I know that I made great progress during the autumn and I saw the biggest change in what previously used to be my weakest area, i.e. verbal conversation. If you live in Switzerland and would like to develop your German language, but at the same time need to keep costs down, I would immediately recommend you the following two opportunities:

The first one is linguistic training in pairs, where you help someone with your native language for eg. half an hour and the other person then supports you in the same way. Late last year, I used to have three active partners and learned tremendously much. In fact, I ended up having a waiting list of people who wanted to practise Swedish with me, so I could allow myself the luxury to only work with those who already had a high level, since that maximises the cultural interchange. In my case, that made me work with my German not only during "my" half-hour, but also when I was actively listening to and helping my partners with their difficulties in Swedish. Let us be honest, you need a vocabulary of a certain size for any conversation to be truly interesting - which in turn is a prerequisite if you want to strengthen your relationship in itself and your motivation to learn even more. I found my language friends through Sprach-Tandem.ch - a highly active on-line forum. It may sound strange but Zurich is full of native German speakers who want to learn Swedish!

The second one are the conversation groups within networks like InterNations and MeetUp. Here, time after time, I have been fascinated by how rewarding and fun conversations you can have even when there is not a single native German speaker in a group. Since everybody is in the same situation you are met by understanding and patience and, at least for me, this encourages me to try making up more complex sentences than those I would use when I first and foremost want to seem smart. MeetUp has the advantage that it is free, which means that many young people go there. My favourite, however, is InterNations for here the conversation groups are only a small part of more extensive networking activities - on the web-page as well as at events which attract a broad public. True, there is a membership fee, but you will rapidly earn back that money if you go on some of the network's popular parties.

This year I have less time for language studies, but still have the intention to continue exploring linguistic training in pairs as well as conversation groups – a few but very well invested hours per week.

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Svensk version