The first session this month began with a conversation in German about the need to speak the language more often. We agreed that the understanding and thinking of the words is there, but it is at times difficult to “say” the words out loud. The only way to do this is to gain confidence with conversation, which we are doing more and more.  Our vocabulary continues to grow, with new words including many different types of plants, herbs, vegetables and garden tools.

​During the second session we individually read garden stories, different gardening words and a song out loud. This enabled Pronunciation to be corrected and new words to be learned.

Janet Martens

We are now halfway through the first semester. The small size of the group means that it is run as an informal tutorial. Each time we have conversation in German. One of our members whose first tongue is German has a particular interest in our pronunciation. Pleasingly, there is now often just one or no correction required.

Our comprehension lags somewhat, but our vocabulary is ever expanding. This month the theme was around major life events, particularly death and dying. The focus emanated from discussion around the many POW camps around Tatura in the 1940s, the video and photographic records in the Tatura Museum and the subsequent German War Cemetery there.
Members contributed a piece about the train numbering system for reading and translating and another by T. S. Eliot for dictation and translation.

By way of revision, we did a large word find puzzle on new words thus far. Two more songs have been re-visited.

Pauline Bailey