TL;DR: Daily grammar exams make Jack a dull boy
Hi there.
I'm taking state sponsored Dutch lessons where I live. This initiative aims to include people from all walks of life, regardless of studies or ease with languages in general. It's a well intentioned initiative, but I find it painfully slow.
There was never much rigour going on, and classes dragged enough that I found myself reading the paper while waiting for people to finish their worksheets pretty much every day.
The choice of subjects doesn't really help either, we've been talking about sleeping issues for a week, last week we pretended to be a neighbourhood association and we spent the week before that talking about pet peeves on public transportation.
Suddenly, however, grammar became immensely important. We obviously learned some of it, but there were never strict controls or constant evaluations. Now we have a daily test on irregular verbs and we will keep having it until we all get near perfect grades.
These are not even verbs we are likely to use [to wallpaper is in that list] and we're not even expected to know what most of them mean.
I am losing sleep over that fucking list. And my results today were even worse than last week.
I've always had issues with syntax, and it was pointed to me in the past. I've worked on it and it is a lot better than it used to be, but in the last week it's gone from this is an area you need to work on to this has to be absolutely perfect by the end of the month or you'll be repeating this course in about 3 days.
I'm really at a loss here. I've been white knuckling my way through 3 levels of this and now I might not pass. Grammar is both unimportant enough that nobody cared to test it until now and important enough that knowing the imperfect for "giving birth" in the second person plural is imperative.
Most of my time has been spent on that list, instead of figuring out how syntax works. I got up early and went to bed late so I could revise it [which I now realise is counterproductive] and I have nothing to show for it.
I've done pretty well learning with a teacher on italki and by exposing myself to the language, to the point that most of my ease with it is a direct result of it, but I've now begun to hate Dutch with every fiber of my being. My brain will shot down at the first sight of it.
I cannot even drop out of it since I signed up with the unemployment office. I'm tired of talking about drinking milk before bed and weaning yourself off sleeping pills. I fail to see how any of this is at all relevant to my life
I have another exam Monday, pls help
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