Tag Archives: language

Learning Danish – the Lærdansk Sonderborg Way

One of the blogposts that has had most interest in this blog mentioned the inauspicious start I had with applying for Danish lessons at the kommune. Inauspicious or not, I did manage to start learning Danish in January 2012. However, having been to Danish lessons for three years on and off, I must admit that it has only served for me to become more and more disillusioned with the whole process.

Let’s Start with the School

In Sønderborg the kommune pays for foreign students to learn Danish at Lærdansk Sonderborg. Essentially, this means that the school has a monopoly in the area. In practice, this means that the school will get money from the kommune regardless of the quality of the teaching, so there seems to be no benefit in investing in improvements. And when I talk about improvements, I am not referring to smart boards and the like, but improvements in the actual quality of teaching.

Quality of Teaching

Where do I start?

Probably one of the biggest downfalls is that there is no emphasis on the basics. People at very different levels are in the same class, all doing the exact same work. E.g. when I started Danish, there were people in my class who had started Danish 3 months earlier. This meant I never got the basics. And there were still people joining 3 months after I did. In fact, I never ever heard the alphabet in class! This lack of basics means that it is next to impossible to understand the more nuanced areas of the language.

This is combined with an education system where there is no progression between one lesson and the next. It is not a course programme that builds one lesson on the previous, such that you continuously build on previous knowledge. Instead, what you get is 10 minutes about nouns one day, and 10 minutes about nouns one month later. And you would have probably missed the first 10 minutes because you hadn’t yet been put in the class.

The Teachers

During my time at Lærdansk Sonderborg I have been with three different teachers. I can sum up these teachers in this way: One came to class completely unprepared (but made sure we had fun). One came slightly more prepared (but was palpably disinterested in most of the students). And the third printed a lot of papers to give out, but there was no obvious explanation as to what we were being given and why. Teachers playing on phones, leaving the room, or showing us films with very limited if any follow up discussions all happened on regular basis.

That said, I have heard of some very good teachers on the grapevine too. Unfortunately, these seem to be very much the exception rather than the rule and I have yet to come across one.

What did I Expect?

What I expected when I started classes is the following:

  • I expected to learn something new every time I went to class. I expected this to be following some input from the teacher over and above being given a worksheet and being told to get on with it.
  • I expected the teacher to come to class prepared with a clear plan to make sure that the students are slowly but surely building their knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and confidence in the language.
  • I also expected homework that helped us consolidate what we had learnt in class, if we so wished. When I asked for this I was told “You don’t have time for it as you work”.
  • I also expected students who were there primarily for the learning (although making friends is an added bonus). This was something that, overall, was true.

Of course, it could be that my learning style is completely unaligned with the Danish teaching style. However, by speaking to a lot of other foreigners, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Or you might say I am expecting too much. After all, the school is free so I should be thankful for whatever I am getting. However, it is not free. I am paying for it from my taxes. You are paying for it from your taxes.

My Danish teaching has not all been this uninspiring. The best (in an, admittedly, poor pool) was with a private teacher through work. It is, obviously, not completely comparable, but the things that really helped were that the teacher asked me where I felt that I needed help, and listened to me by setting clear goals, and an emphasis on ensuring that I had understood what I had done by setting consolidation work. This rarely (if ever) happened in Danish classes at Lærdansk Sonderborg. No questions (or apparent interest) in where we needed help, and a topic was only tackled in one individual task rather than in a more holistic way.

Where am I now?

After 3 years of being in the system, spending most of the time not actually attending lessons, I have now passed my Prøve i Dansk 3 exam in November/December. This is the exam taken at the end of the course that shows proficiency in Danish to a B2 level according to the Common European Language Framework. You might, therefore, say that I reached my aim. However, I would say most of what I learned I learnt from a private teacher, my work colleagues, and from the Netdansk online teaching system, rather than the teaching actually at the Sonderborg Laerdansk school.

A version of this blog post was sent to the school around the time I decided to stop attending classes, with clear information that I was happy and willing to discuss my issues with them in order to make things better. Unfortunately I never received a reply besides that it would be forwarded on within the school.

A crash course in Danish – for fans of ‘Forbrydelsen’

The Danish TV-series Forbrydelsen (or The Killing as BBC has named it) has found a fairly big audience in the UK. The third season is making waves across Denmark and soon our friends across the North Sea will get their thrills. To get people warmed up The Guardian has made a crash course in Danish for fans of The Killing with Jesper Hansen from Scandinavian Studies at UCL (go UCL!).

The video is fun but the best part are some of the comments. Here are my favourites.

Gubl4kii: Jesper, A suggestion: please would you be able to speak the Danish phrases at a slower speed as well as at the normal/usual speed? It would really help! Mange tak!

Jon Østergaard Eilenberg: I hate to break this to you, but actually he is speaking very slow and clear. Normal speed would sound like a mumbling machine gun gone out of control.

I wonder how poor Gubl4kii feels now?

flake: I don’t think it’s actually possible to “learn” Danish. I often doubt whether the Danish actually speak Danish or not, I’m not sure but it might just be 5 million people trying to fool each other into believing that they understand what they’re saying to each other.

I’ve wondered about this too flake! My evidence confirms your hunch! Returning to you flake:

flake: …Yet still, I definitely feel that the whole language (as spoken) is one giant prank on foreigners (and that apparently includes the rest of Scandinavia too).
At least you have the fat tax. Gives me something to laugh about.
Lovely country.

Unfortunately, there is not so long for the fat tax now. So where does that leave us?

Vergilius78: – I dunno, to us Danes, almost all Brits sound posh and extravagant simply because you have far more tonal range in your language. Contrariwise, we sound depressed, insecure and uninterested to foreigners because we have so little 😉

English has the tonal range but Danes have the vowels. Maltese has neither. Oh boy! No wonder I struggle.

Oh! And what Danes has this guy met? I wonder! Maybe he can send a few my way?

nuisverigeI thought I was the only non-Dane who actually liked the sound of Danish and enjoyed speaking it. I have no problem understanding spoken Danish, so long as they speak very distinctly, and nice and slowly so my brain can catch up.

And one question which has puzzled me for a long time puzzles halfdan as well:

halfdan: So somebody tell me why Danes can’t pronounce ‘Viking’ the English way? It always comes out as Wiking… The strange thing is that I used to teach this… “Say Viking”… “Wiking”, “Say ‘vej'”…”Vej”… “Now put the two together…vej and king”… “Wiking” ! I kid you not, this actually happened.

Interesting to see such a discussion going on about the Danish language on an English newspaper site. It seems as though The Killing guardian blogs for the previous series were quite heavy on Danish stuff too. So maybe I should keep my eyes open for the upcoming one. Can’t wait for the new series (subtitles and all).

Join a Danish Conversation Group?

I have now been in Denmark for around 10 months. Of these, I have spent around 9 months in some kind of Danish language education. However, my Danish is far from at a level where I would hope it would be! I can communicate somewhat, but nowhere near correctly, and can probably not understand more than 20% of what is said to me.

I am used to ‘academic’ stuff coming relatively easily to me so, understandably, I am getting quite frustrated at my lack of progress. I have realised that the lessons on their own are probably not enough. I need to be exposed to talking and thinking in Danish before I can progress further. Ideally, this is to be done with people at similar level as I am with a similar interest in improving their Danish, as otherwise it is too easy to switch to English.

One of the ‘good ideas’ I had come across in the ‘Worktrotter’s guide to Denmark‘ is the organisation of a Danish conversation group and I think it is now about time to do something about it. There is a similar group in Sonderborg, called Cafe International, that started a few years ago. However, their Danish is by now way advanced for me, and they have progressed to doing activities, like listening to a talk, or having a museum guided visit in Danish now.

So I decided that maybe it is time to start a new conversation group. A first meeting to discuss what will happen is being organised on the ‘Newcomer’s Network‘ facebook page. We plan to meet on Monday 17th of September 2012 at 6pm at Cafe Figo to discuss the way forward. If you are interested in joining do leave a comment here or on facebook and I will get back to you.

learn Danish

Learning Danish

The Danish government offer free lessons to all foreigners during their first three years in the country. Learning Danish is a requirement for non-EU citizens. However, although this is not my case, I started Danish lessons at the beginning of January.

Danes like to think that Danish is a very difficult language to learn. However, the CIA thinks otherwise, ranking it with the easiest languages to learn – so there is a lot I need to live up to!

learn Danish

Cartoon by Jolik

So what is my opinion on what I have seen so far?

The service provision

Danish for foreigners is taught in a number of schools in Sonderborg. However, for some reason it is only one school that is subsidised by the government. As is often the case, lack of competition does not tend to result in an optimal outcome.

Furthermore, as learning Danish to a certain level is a requirement for residency for non-EU citizens, the system is built on a series of module exams. I am perplexed since teaching to the exam is frowned upon for Danish citizens, so why is this the education offered to foreigners?

The lessons

Going from university level education to Danish lessons, where I am essentially at the level of a primary school kid (if that) has been  a shock to the system. Nevertheless, luckily our teacher has taken up the challenge of answering the questions we come up with. Him knowing a number of other languages also helps him show us the links between Danish other languages we know.

Verdict (so far)

The system so far feels quite chaotic, and not particularly well-equipped to handle well-educated foreigners. However, I HAVE actually learnt some Danish, which means that the aim is being reached.