Language Letters

Did you find anyone to practice your dialogue with in real life yet?

Apart from my colleagues, I haven’t really made any German friends yet, and yesterday was Saturday… But I really wanted to do this exercise with someone, so I decided to go up to an elderly woman I have seen sitting on a park bench a couple of times.

Wouhhh this was a real challenge for me, a REAL challenge! I really, really didn’t dare doing this at first. But I told myself: Come on, Alex, what’s the worst that can happen? Well… Worst case szenario, I won’t understand anything she says. I will make lots of mistakes and feel stupid. Maybe she won’t even understand me with my accent… This might really discourage me from moving on… Best case szenario, I will feel really good about having had my first actual conversation with a native speaker! I will like this feeling so much that I won’t be shy and start trying to speak to people all the time. That would help me a lot and make me advance much faster!

I thought: “Alex, you actually did just start out, so it is perfectly normal that you won’t understand everything and that your accent is probably not perfect… Oh, come on, you prepared well, it’s just the first time… Go for it!”

There she was, sitting on her bench as usual. I pulled all my courage together, shook my arms and legs to loosen up a bit, and sat down on the bench next to her. I thought about leaving it for next time… The words didn’t seem to come out of my mouth…. But when she gave me a friendly nod to greet me, in my head, I counted… three, two, one. Then the text I had practiced just poured out of me: “Entschuldigung, Ich bin neu in Deutschland. Ich lerne Deutsch und möchte einen Dialog üben. Darf ich Ihnen ein paar Fragen stellen?” - She smiled and said “Ja, natürlich, gerne.” - And I asked her: “Wer sind Sie? Was machen Sie gerne?” - “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” - “Haben Sie Kinder?” and so on.

We ended up having quite a good conversation! She replied to my questions and I told her a lot about myself as well. All in German!!! That’s insane!!! I am SO happy I did actually find the courage to talk to her! And she was even much more supportive that I thought.