Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Skolan i Sverige (School in Sweden)

So I started school in Sweden. Yeah school, and it looks like time has stand still in the last 30 years. I go with the bus every morning to my class in town. The bus takes me there in about half an hour, and with walking to and from the bus and waiting time it takes me a little less then an hour to get to my destination every day. Well let me tell a little bit about my class. I sit in a class which is the class where will be determined if you are ready for the fast track or the intermediate track to the swedish language. But it's kind of funny.. 'konstigt' We have two teachers (yeah they both work part-time) and one has been a teacher since the mid 60s and the other used to work with little children. Well it shows. On the Friday before I started I had with 2 other guys an introduction meeting where we were handed out a pencil. So this Monday pencils were individually handed those who had not received one yet. After this routine on deciding who already had one and who not, there was a second round of items that were being handed out: the erasers. Again the same routine.. those that had not yet received one got one (including me.. yippee!!) and those who had already been given one in an earlier meeting were carefully being skipped. Then there was a problem.. They had ran out of ruled writing pads .. they only had writing pads that were for graphs.. So with the announcement that we would get our regular writing pad later we were given our checkered ones. Then another routine of handing out binders and we were set.
The classes itself are just like the teachers: slow.. We start every day at some time after the scheduled 8:15 a.m. and at 9:30 we have our first coffee break that last a little longer than the scheduled 15 minutes. Then we continue till 11-ish, we have lunch till noon and after lunch we work about an hour to have another coffee break and we finish our day at 2 p.m.
And of the time in school that we don't have a break we have 50% at least what is called "Eget arbete" which means study/work by yourself. The other time is when the teachers actually try to teach something.. maybe it's me, but when we covered the pronounciation on Tuesday of the letters A O and Å, I don't think they have to be rehearsed again on Wednesday... they are only 3 letters. Thank god not the whole alfabet are vowels, but there are still 5 more vowels to go..
To give you the literal excersize of today we had to listen to the teacher say the following:
1. Moooooooooo... Moooooooooo... (here we had to write "mo")
2. Mahhhhhhhhh... Mahhhhhhhhh... (here we had to write "ma")
3. Moeeeeeeeee... Mowwwwwwwww... (here we had to write "må")
4. Soooooooooo... Soooooooooo... (here we had to write "so")
5. Sahhhhhhhhh... Sahhhhhhhhh... (here we had to write "sa")
6. Ahhhhhhhhhl... Ahhhhhhhhhl... (here we had to write "al")
7. Ooooooooool... Ooooooooool... (here we had to write "ol")
8. Bowwwwwwwww... Bowwwwwwwww... (here we had to write "bå")
9. Sowwwwwwwww... Sowwwwwwwww... (here we had to write "så")
10. Boooooooooo... Boooooooooo... (here we had to write "bo")
11. Oohhhhhhhle... Oohhhhhhhle... (here we had to write "ål")
12. Bahhhhhhhhh... Bahhhhhhhhh... (here we had to write "ba")
I wonder what surprises await me tomorrow.

4 Comments:

At Wed Dec 07, 08:45:00 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Poor you. I doubt I'd have the patience to sit through such a class but I admire you for being so diligent about learning how to speak Swedish. Though at the rate you're going now I imagine you will have moved elsewhere again before you've even covered the entire alphabet :P

 
At Thu Dec 08, 06:20:00 AM PST, Blogger Agnes said...

Hi T! Sorry I've missed out on so much. Your school story is terribly amusing (if I may laugh out loud at your misery).
So what you really need is a copy of The Sound of Music in Swedish?
Fa-so-la-te-da? A deer, a doe, a female dear?
You'd have it down in no time.

I'd say you should be pushed to the advanced class.
Are there textbooks for this class?
Feel free to skip ahead.

 
At Wed Jul 11, 11:31:00 PM PDT, Blogger ignipott said...

... an italian blogger was here...

...come to meet me at:
ignipott.blogspot.com

 
At Thu Apr 10, 08:32:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi,glad to hear your story.
thanks for sharing

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