Beginning in seventh grade, I began to study Swedish at school. I had decided to concentrate, and not let it suffer the same fate as my first attempt at French. The first year went well with a delightedful teacher. She wasn't interested quite as much in Swedish as she was in Italian, and in addition to teaching the seasonal festive songs customary for language education in Swedish, she made sure we knew them just as well in Italian. She also warned us of "fake pizzerias" in Italy, where they sell cheap supermarket pizza to unsuspecting tourists. Invaluable information indeed.
The following year however introduced another old teacher for the students to prey on. She was our new Swedish teacher. In some ways she seemed experienced, yet she had to be at least half deaf not to go insane due to the relative chaos which often ruled the class. Either than or nerves of steel. Unfortunately she had about as much authority as one of my Danish generals in Medieval II (forgive the video game reference), who the game rated: "Young peasant girls laugh when this man tries to tell them what to do." In other words, very little authority.
I would very much like to blame her for the ensuing dip in my Swedish skills, but although it was often frustrating to try and study in such an atmosphere, I simly threw in the towel while some others with more wisdom persevered. In the end I did realise the error of my ways, and made efforts to catch up, the most succesful of them being near the end of the school year, which seemed to have had some impact due to decent grade from Swedish.
Her lessons weren't all doom and gloom though, as her personality did have its quirks. The most notable of these was her slurry English pronounciation, which while pretty good for a grandma, was amusing nonetheless.
Pleaseplease (Origins of nickname revealed later, read on!): "So, the Swedish test will be on the tenff" (coinciding with my birthday -_-)
Me: "So when was the test?"
Pleaseplease: "On the tenff."
Me: "Err, when?"
Pleaseplease: "The tenff" *smiles happily*
For some reason I found that rather amusing, and tried again next lesson, but only managed to ask once due to the difficulty of keeping a straight face. She was very intent on speaking English to us, it being an international school and all. We often begged her to speak in Finnish, as during the few occasions when she accidentaly did, it seemed her brain snapped into overdrive and she became sharp and completely comprehensible. On several occasions she asked our principal weather or not she could speak Finnish, the answer of course being no. I am still confident that had she merely switched her language to Finnish despite this, she would have ruled the class.
The second of her quirks was her statistically unbeatable record in politeness. A typical lesson would start something like this:
Pleaseplease: "Please, please, please, please everyone, please be quiet!" (You ought to get it now...)
Pleaseplease: "Ok, lets see your homework please."
James Blunt: "Ok... lets see..." *begins to slowly turn pages*
Pleaseplease watches intently.
Randm guy on other side of class: "Teacher!"
Pleaseplease: "Yes please!" *hurries off*
I recall I wasn't the only one who recorded the amount of pleases said in the back of our notebooks. Recently my first course of Swedish in lukio began. We have a sensible teacher (albeit with dodgy eyes... yes... always something wrong with them...) and the first course appears to be entirely devoted to consolidating already learned skills, which is excellent for me, and slightly annoying for those who have no need for it. I've also been studying some Swedish during mornings when my first course is at 9:50. I would hate to miss the opportunity to learn the language. So, despite occasionally dubious performance it does seem my Swedish future is bright.
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In the future I think I will do some more posts where characterful teachers play a role. We may all moan and groan about our them, but it is great to have teachers with personality to make our days more interesting. Did I say that to avoid having an angry mob of teachers demolish my house after featuring them in my blog? Yes, partly.
Also, if you are wondering where the previous Language Learning II post went.. keep wondering.
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