EUPHORIA!!!

2011 June, 5:55 PM

End of business hours, Cacophony around the out-gate corridor as the employees were leaving for the day swiping their cards. On the right extreme side of the corridor, there was a big training room. Few of the employees were walking inside the training room, I was one among them. Sense of excitement, curiosity little bit of nervousness as we were about to begin our German A1 language training in the next few minutes. The training program had been organized by the employer and the visiting staff had come from the Goethe Institute, Chennai. We all came to know that the trainer was a lady. Discussion running very high in the class as she had to manage 20 grown men in who were mostly mechanical engineers from various functions. Unfortunately, diversity was missing with our batch. It was a nice comfortable classroom with a projector and AV setup. As usual, before the start of the class, we were doing the sanity checks of the AV devices. Found there was some issue with the device, I volunteered so had to rush to the admin team to request for help, on the way I had to cross the HR manager cabin. Curiosity running high to glance at the German teacher before the rest of the batch. I could partially figure out the description of the professor after glancing via the semitransparent stickering in the HR cabin’s glass door. The lady was wearing a saree with long free hair, couldn’t see her face. 10 seconds I could only grasp this information. Stopped at the admin section requested admin Muthu “ Andha speakerla konjam connection problem irruku, training roomku vandhu fix pannunga”. After a few minutes as Muthu was fixing the device, I had a quick gossip with my colleagues about the professor, loud noise at the doorsteps as the Senior HR person from the training department entered the classroom. Since we were working for a German automotive company, we had to learn at least the basics of Deutsch for two reasons, 1. we had a lot of engineering applications enabled in Deutsch also as a it could help us in day to day work. 2. German colleagues at Stuttgart/ulm were a little unfamiliar with spoken English.

 

HR manager started the speech with great excitement that our batch had been selected as the first one to learn A1 course with a visiting professor from Goethe institute. He also told that the success of this batch will help in creating successive future batches. As he was setting up the expectation on the training our mind was wandering to see the professor. With whatever first glance I had, I was gossiping with the guys in the backbench, yes as usual I was a perpetual bank bencher. The discussion was around if the professor was a middle-aged lady or a young lady? As the HR manager finished his introduction speech, he invited the professor. All our puzzling thoughts on the professor came to an end once we saw her. She was a lady in her early 50’s 😊very smiling and a divine face. She looked very traditional Indian women in saree. She started her introduction, hi all I am Swarna your German professor for the next 3 months and quickly narrated her work experience. As usual, there were few empty seats in the first row, she saw all the back benchers and invited us to get seated in the first row. Once we all sat and made ourselves comfortable, we started to give an introduction about ourselves and what was our expectation on learning the language. It was a weekly thrice 2 hours session between 6 PM to 8 PM on Mon, Wed and Thursday. So, the first one hour of the session went on the introduction and in parallel the book distribution (the following study material Studio d A1 Kurs and Ubungsbuch, small grammar book, and an audio CD).

 

The smell of the new book has always been nostalgic. The professor started our session with the basic alphabets, When we started with a- aah, b- beh, c- tseh d -deh.. it was kind of bizarre feeling as if like we were teleported to our kindergarten. The professor mam requested us to speak out loud as we read the alphabet. There was initial inhibition within everyone to speak out loud, we could hear some of the bold ones shouting loud, and most of us in a feeble voice. Then the professor became the real teacher, she opened her eyes with a fierce look and requested all of us to be louder. Then the next few minutes it was like a marketplace. All the guys started freaking out with no harmony, that moment whoever had crossed the training room should have felt that there were some grown men with a KG childlike enthusiasm. Yes, in fact after a very stressful day at the office this language class in the evening was kind of mediation to most of us. It was like a healing session as we had to switch to childlike mode. The language class had three major topics Grammar – Deutsch Grammar undoubtedly one of the toughest, audio/visual – covers Deutsch announcements from the airport, railway station or conversation between two individuals and video footage learning as well, Textbook chapters – Learning new basic words, about a place, city, restaurant menu, a café conversation, shopping items, clothes and few exercises from the textbook.

 

We all started enjoying the program so much that the atmosphere in the classroom on every class day evening had become electrifying. We even started to eagerly wait for the Deutsch class evenings. I remember it was a cross-functional team and we had people from various grades starting from a General manager of a department to a fresher. The professor mam ensured that we shuffled our neighboring partners every week. This allowed us to network with people across all levels and in hindsight, this relationship helped us in our day-to-day work. Deutsch grammar classes were one of the toughest ones especially when to use “der” “die “and “das” the masculine, feminine and neutral genders. Professor mam had profound knowledge and command over the language that she had ensured to teach us the grammar as simple as possible. However, when we interact with Germans, they too always felt that Deutsch grammar is the toughest thing to learn, and thankfully they have learned during childhood as their mother tongue. Yes, when you learn a new language it’s important that we learn it like a mother tongue especially like a child. If you have observed a child can pick up multiple languages during their young age. I think the main reason for a child to learn a language faster than an adult is that they do not apply any rational thinking. As an adult, our process of learning the language has been a little complex, whenever we had to speak something in a new language in our case Deutsch our adult human brain had to process that first in our native language then to English then to Deutsch. This process of decoding delayed our learning process which did not exist with a kid.

 

We had two or three dropouts from the course due to their busy work schedule but the rest of us were so glued to the Deutsch class, after a month we started slowly interacting in simple words in Deutsch. During the conference call with our IT counterparts in Stuttgart we started greeting and applied our Deutsch skills, the joy knew no bounds when we received appreciation from them. Sense of achievement when we got immediate acknowledgment from them also, we realized some of the cross-country barriers started fading away. The professor mam gave many surprise tests, invite someone in the front of a class to give a small speech in Deutsch on any random topic more like a table topic in toastmasters, Paragraph writing, poem writing, etc. We came to the end of the A1 program in the last week of August 2011. She told us that the evaluation for the aah eine (A1) had 3 sections 1. Viva 2. Paragraph writing & multiple-choice questions 3. Deutsch horen and scriben “listen and write”. She prepared us with two revisions before the final exam. We also had an external along with our professor mam during the final exam. It was butterflies in the stomach as the pass percentage was >=60. Finally, we finished our session and after few weeks came to know that I had passed with distinction, my final score was 82%. We all carried vivid memories from the training session even now, we could also apply our learning skills in our day to day work successfully. I traveled to Stuttgart the third time in 2012, this time I carried the pride of my Deutsch skills. I took the ICE train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart; I stood at the ticket counter and requested the gentleman, Guten Morgon, Zwei tickets nach Stuttgart. He responded with a smile, Wie ist Ihr Name? Ich bin Krishna, Ich komme aus Chennai India. He replied Sehr gut!! I told Guten Tag!!! Tschuss 😊

With love

Keestu