I’ve previously blogged about my slow start to learning German in Berlin, but as I wrote, I hadn’t been going to too much effort in order to learn the language of the country I now call home. Well, that’s now changed! I’ve signed up to language classes and I’m starting to actively learn German. Finally, right?

I had a look through German language schools in Berlin to find one right for me. I’ve got a pretty small budget, and I needed a class that fitted around my work schedule. So I needed evening German classes, in a convenient location to my work, and I didn’t want to pay more than about 250 euro.

A few language schools that I looked into:

Expath Berlin

• Based in Neukolln and Mitte
• 150 euro for 5 weeks of evening classes, 2 nights a week

Deutsche Akademie

• Right near Alexanderplatz
• 225 euro for 4 weeks of evening classes, 4 nights a week

Kapitel Zwei

• Right near Alexanderplatz
• 222 euro for 4 weeks of evening classes, 4 nights a week

I ended up going with Kapitel Zwei. I initially wanted to go with Expath (couldn’t say no to those prices!) but they didn’t have an availability for the class I wanted, while Kapitel Zwei still had openings.

After a week of classes, how is it going?

Well, I’ve realised that the cost at face value doesn’t include the textbook, which at K2 is 20 euro, and there’s a new one every month. There’s no option to buy the textbook beforehand, or to get it secondhand, which seems a little wasteful to me. I thought Germany was good at recycling?

The classes so far have been about 80 – 90% immersive, meaning that for the most part, our teacher has spoken completely in German, except to explain a bit of grammar that would be impossible to understand otherwise (and let’s be honest, still remains pretty impossible to understand even in English).

 

I’m starting at A1, because I haven’t done a structured German course before (just what my work offers me, which is one hour a week, plus doing the Babbel course), but of course the first week of A1 has admittedly been a little easy for me. Starting with Hallo, ich bin Ellen, is a little slow. But we’ve also done some solid groundwork for grammar that I’m sure will be handy to know later on.

Have you been to a language school in Berlin? Any particular ones to recommend? Any tips for how to cram more vocabulary into my brain? HOW to learn der, die, das? Let me know!