Learning isn't just about shining at exams

The best way to learn a foreign language is to practise with a native speaker. So I was delighted when a group of students invited me to an event called “All You Can Speak”.

Their project, I discovered, was all about pairing up students of different “tongues” languages, and taking turns to speak each other’s native language.

We kicked off with a Round the World Quiz where you had to answer questions on different cultures.

A charming Chinese student helped me with the quiz and, for a brief moment, I toyed with signing up for a Cantonese tete-a-tete. 

Answer all the – rather difficult, I thought – questions and you could win some great prizes. Things like PÖNS dictionaries and Cinemaxx tickets. Lots of winners, it seemed, were looking for a Spanish native-speaker. English came a close second, with Chinese hot on its heels. 

Interestingly, the easiest foreign language for Germans to learn is not English at all. It’s Norwegian Bokmal. For English natives, likewise, it’s Afriakaans. In any case both German and English have more in common with Norwegian than with each other. 


If English is a battle why not try Norwegian?

                                                          
We tend to see language learning solely as a key to academic qualifications and business success. We focus on tests and end-of-course-exam grades, rather than the learning experience itself.

Learning another language, however, can help us better understand other cultures – some often very different from our own.

It was good to be reminded about this at “All you can Speak.” And to forget all about tests and end-of-everything grades for just an evening.