Hi all,

I thought I'd relieve the cabin fever a bit and finally bite the B2 German bullet.

Migros Klubschule have a quite comprehensive range of online courses advertised that look interesting. I had good a experience with them when taking my B1 diploma - though that was traditional classroom-based.

The MKS website doesn't say much about the exact format of the online version - though I assume it is a combination of teacher-led via Zoom or similar and homework / self-study.

I'm wondering if anyone did one of the MKS online language courses recently. Did you have a good experience? I realise much can depend on the teacher / other students etc but would appreciate your impression.

Cheers,
Nick

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I'm in a mini course right now.

It's zoom based with screen sharing when the teacher needs to explain something visually.

My teacher sends additional material, handouts etc as pdfs by email before the course begins.

We used to be a classroom-based group, but quite a few people stopped coming when the transition to zoom started as they didn't like it. So now the rest of us pay a bit more (well quite a lot more) to keep the course viable.

Thanks for the reply - is that with Migros Klubschule?

Do you find you are absorbing the material OK?

Cheers,
Nick

Bravo- good on you.

A great time to learn - doing a course on acupressure here, very interesting.

I am currently doing the Migros online course B1, part 3, twice a week in the evenings. It is a small group (3 of us) of motivated students and our teacher is good. We spend our 2 hour lesson on Zoom and then have homework as well. Sometimes it can be a bit like pulling teeth, with embarrassed silences, but most of the time it is fine. My computer sound quality can sometimes make it a bit harder to understand.

I would recommend it.

For the expat community I don’t think the Migros is focusing on the right thing.

I think many expats want to learn how to live in Switzerland not how to conjugate the future perfect tense of the verb to procrastinate.

For absolute beginners key words, I want, I would like, may I, please, thank you, hello, goodbye, (and the variants). Moving up to role playing, going to the post office, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers .

Focusing on listening and conversation.

Oh, in case you care it is “j'aurai atermoyé”

Well, I'm no longer an expat and the day I stop learning is the day they carry me away in a box.

Yes, Migros Klubschule,

I must say I prefer a classroom environment as I find I learn from other pupils as much as I do from the teacher. And in the classroom you can often feel that the entire class is maybe uneasy with something or has not understood, just by the type of silence or people looking at one another with puzzled expressions. Either the teacher picks this up too, or otherwise somebody then asks the question. In Zoom it's not always so obvious.

But by and large I still feel I am benefitting from the course and absorbing the material well enough.

So agree- at school, I did not always like to learn, a lot of it made no sense to me really, and in those days, if you asked a question, you got a clip on the ear or the metal ruler on the finger tips. But as soon as I left school, I have found it amazing to learn- all sorts of stuff, so varied. And as you say, day I stop, is day they carry me away in that box (recycled cardboard).

So good for you.

I just finished up an online language course with Ecole Migros. As someone else said, it was Zoom-based with PDFs emailed after class for homework. I signed up for much the same reason as you, there was a long boring dark winter ahead of me and I figured I might as well spend some time on language learning!

I personally liked the format and don't see that much is lost from the in-person group classes, which I've also taken with Ecole Migros. But maybe it's also a generational thing.

As with in-person classes, a lot will depend on what your teacher and classmates are like. We were a small group of 4 students, some of us more B2 than others (that happens IRL too). But the teacher focused solely on grammar and listening comprehension, and I rather need practice with speaking and writing (although I admit grammar is a part of making that possible ).

I think I fulfilled my goal of keeping busy during boring COVID winter evenings, and in truth something is better than nothing when it comes to language. But I personally opted not to continue; I might turn to just online language exchanges instead, to "keep up" and keep busy.

Thanks all for the responses. FWIW I'm already doing Aikido classes online -mainly warm-ups and weapons katas, so what can go wrong with language?

I phoned MKS today - even though I already have the B1 since 2016, I have to to the online "Einstüfung" test - in case I am "better" than B2 (I hope I am not worse than B1).

I'll do that sometime over the weekend - hopefully I can book onto a course for end of Feb.

My main thing now is since doing the naturalisation and getting the vote, I'd like to be able to participate in nuanced political discussions etc without sounding like an eight year old.

Cheers,
Nick

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In my view , when it comes to languages , the teacher is primarily there to chew grammar , hammer vocabulary and hold the whip over you to drive out bad habits .

Conversation is something you perfection by socializing , or as in my case with a foreign language , by getting a tandem partner.

Do team sports , join a club , take dancing lessons , volunteer for a charity . All these are good and effective ways to meet and make friends with locals and improve your conversational skills as well as appreciation of local culture .

But everybody has their own learning style I suppose

... and teaching style!?!

Your description certainly does not describe mine!?! - we are not in the 50s anymore.

A while ago I was assigned by ORP to language lessons in such style. I didn't learn much.

This type of teaching and learning require some drama skills. I would struggle with such role playing even in my mother tongue. However when it comes to real life situations, I've been always able to manage through with so limited vocabulary and no grammar knowledge, just trying to mimic whatever people said like a joyful parrot which would bring me some clues to the meaning. The important thing here is that in such situations the people don't really bother teaching you anything, they just try (or rather are kind of forced to try) to understand you looking beyond the proper grammar and correct vocabulary and what not.

All right, the similarity between English and French helps a lot. It would be perhaps completely impossible to manage that way with German.

So I did the online assessment test and via that was advised to sign up to a C1 course.

In the test webpage, you can ask for a callback when you submit the results - my concern was I got the answers because something "looked right" - a skill acquired from reading 20min and similar over the years - rather than really knowing the grammatical rule behind it.

A teacher called me back and said they normally do some revision of grammar topics at the beginning of the course so I will have chance to catch up.

Probably online is not the most ideal but it will be something else to do apart from jogging in the forest and work.

Cheers,
Nick

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Be proud of yourself. Spotting the right answer by intuition shows that you have a very good understanding.

I know several expats who have been here for donkey's years and have good vocabulary, pronounciation and conversational survival skills but still fail to string together even a simple sentence without badly messing up the grammar.

I agree with Amogles. In German it's called "Sprachgefühl". Sounds a lot better, doesn't it :-)

I would try the C1 class. You can always drop out if you think it's too hard.
If you have some understanding of the language it can happen with multiple choices. Its usually the same for me. I am bad at grammar but if I can select an answer I often choose the right one, because it "looks right". You are probably not a person who learns trough grammar but by i.e. reading and listening.

Give it a go.

I am interested in one of the MKS intensive, beginner, online, language courses and would be pleased to hear from those who have attended.

Specifically :
Q1. I am keen to know how much of the course is orally focussed, with participants actually speaking. Eg: attendee has to ask a question or the attendee has to respond to a question.

Q2. How much of the time does the teacher speak the language being taught, vs how much time does the teacher revert to another base language to explain his/herself.

Thanks in advance

I tried to check pricing model for migros school, and it seems expensive. I've heard about some offline CH school model and it was even more expensive.

I use italki.com whenever I want to learn or practice German. I usually manage to find tutors/teachers for around 15-20 USD per hour, and whole time slot is mine, and of course we talk A LOT in that period.
Depending on your wants/needs and how teacher/tutor rolls, some offer extensive grammar lessons/exercises/homeworks, some only do conversation practice (but many take notes and comment on your mistakes / suggest corrections, or even correct you immediately if you want that).
Teachers usually offer structured lessons/grammar and tutors mostly offer conversation practice + feedback.

You probably can work in small zoom/skype group if you find other interested students at the same level and if the tutor/teacher agrees with it, but I think it really is huge benefit of having 1:1. Especially if you're easily frozen, having a kind soul helps with melting

Another place for practice, written and spoken is german learning discord server: https://discord.gg/german
Currently there's regular reading session, where they read book Momo and then discuss/comment/summarize
There's also option to just jump in voice channel and talk with folks
And many others

This one is free

Also, I've seen some meetup.com groups for learning/practising german in CH some paid, some free, but worth checking.

Just to clarify:
(1) It's French rather than German that I'm considering
(2) Having practice conversations with someone is great, and is definitely something to consider once one has at least a basic grasp of the language
(3) Teaching an absolute beginner to speak takes a special skill and experience. I encountered it once many years ago, and it is a rare commodity