German at School

Third Language and selecting German

Everyone aware of the CBSE school system, knows that we had to select a third language to study during our upper primary and elementary school years (classes 4 to 8).

Entering into fourth grade, a circular was floated at school, in which we had fill our choices. Confused between German and French, I settled with German eventually. Mainly because most of my friends were taking it, and also, German had the most students in the entire grade.

What follows is my roller-coaster experience with the language, and how I managed to sail through.

The thrill of the chase

It is completely natural to get excited when you start something new. Happens with everyone. Happened with me as well.

The first day, a nine year old me, was really excited when the German lesson started. Learning the German alphabet, counting, and other things felt inriguing and interesting. Moreover, there was no pressure to excel, because it was a non-graded unit in grades four and five. The content was light, and it went like a breeze. I was enjoying it, and I decided that I would learn the language as much as I can.

After two years, I could form basic sentences and write short paragraphs, and atleast, could express myself in German.

The calm

Sixth grade. I was enjoying learning German, though it had become a graded unit now, and the naive me thought that it would be a breeze like the last two years. And this year it was. Was able to answer the questions, solve the exercises, and score good grades in the exams as well. Didn't put in much effort but still got the best grades.

But little did I know that I was just able to correlate some things and get the answer to some questions by pure intuition, and hit and trial. Just found out some patterns. No learning of language took place this year.

This thing I didn't realize after this grade got over. The next section describes the anecdote when I actually began suffering because of this.

Signs of the storm

Seventh grade.

German was still a cakewalk, but I was too innocent and naive, to know and understand what was actually happening. The hindsight bias was building inside me, but I was swaying more and more away from it.

The first half was like sixth grade - went like a breeze. Nothing to worry.

But, it was a time for a reality check.

The actual German-phobia started grappling the students in the second half of the seventh grade. This was when real communication and grammar began to be used and applied.

The struggle with understanding the grammar had begun. Our German teacher (who was the only teacher in the school who dealt with German at that time) didn't know how to make the content understandable to the students, and just read the book and spoke in German.

She used to tell us that while she is teaching, our antennas should be pointed towards the source, from where the signals were coming, i.e. the Lecture. For other classes, the request code was a 200 OK. In German, it was a 400 Bad Request. How can it be 200 OK when Khali ki behen (Khali's sister) is teaching? She was called so because of her tall height and bulky body, and a face structure similar to the great WWE wrestler.

What our teacher taught us went above us. The book became my sole companion, along with Google Translate (Now I feel that had ChatGPT been there, my life would've been easier). Accusative grammar rules and pronouns and articles started giving nightmares.

This was the first time that I had to study before the exams, and I practiced the questions which were not given to us for homework. Ended up with an above-par score. Better than what I was expecting, but still, far from the top score.

The language that seemed a piece of cake till then, suddenly started feeling like a tough nut to crack.

It would get only harder from now on. If seventh grade was a forecast, the coming year would indeed be a tough storm.

The initial winds

In the eighth grade, we had communication and proper grammar in syllabus, and the entire book was based on the grammar in the Dative case. It was a significant level above the previous syllabus, and our previous tactics didn't work. Pattern matching stopped working.

Cramming articles, forming questions for answers, completing sentences and writing long emails and paragraphs started giving trembles and jitters.

We had to describe about health, illnesses, wellbeing and other things. And that involved communication skills which we didn't have. Imagine yourself in front of a German doctor. We had to do what one would do in that case.

As for the homework, we couldn't make out the heads or tails of it. The hacks we used earlier started failing. Everything seemed falling off.

Making the most of punishments

If you didn't get the book, you were made to stand out of the class for the entire period. It used to be humiliating, as usual.

But not now. It became a new ray of hope. As they say, adversities are opportunities, or can be converted to them.

One day, I accidentally forgot the book at home. I was made to stand out. The next day, I had a mathematics quiz. I had some sheets with me, and in the forty minutes, I solved a good number of questions.

The bell rang, and I went inside. People were saying various things but I was deep in thought, thinking that had I brought the book, I would've wasted those forty minutes. At least I utilized them that day.

I started deliberately forgetting the book and standing out of the class and doing my own work became the new norm. Some friends also followed suit.

Soon, three-fourths of the class started standing out, to utilize the time. This happened for about two months, when the teacher understood our tactic when one day she was leaving and I was discussing a math problem with a friend, and she overheard it.

She redefined her punishment.

Now we had to stand in the class, holding our ears and facing the class. This was even worse, because not only we were made to feel ashamed but most importantly, we couldn't utilize those forty minutes.

At least for two months, we could bunk the classes without bunking them! No proxy needed as well.

Minting dollars through German tuitions

Luckily, there was a girl in our class who attended German tuitions. That became the only way to learn and excel, as school teaching was very subpar.

But I stayed away from it. Not only because it would take away most of my time, but also because I had lost interest in learning German by then, and wanted to get done with it.

Above all, the tutors charged an exorbitant 300 rupees per hour! Education is turning into a business in the country. Increasingly, societies are becoming more capitalist. 

This was the minimum rate. It is much higher, and these figures are from 2016.

The copying algorithm: Plagiarism in O(log n) time

That girl used to solve all the exercises on her own (only she could do so, in the entire class). A guy took the workbook from her and copied the entire solutions. Now, there became two workbooks in which the exercises were solved. Two people copied from them and there were four. Four copied and there were eight. Then sixteen, thirty-two and so on.

Our class had a strength of 37 students. It took just six rounds of copying for the entire class to complete the homework.

When there are n students, it would take O(log n) time. A very little bit of mathematics and algorithms knowledge is needed to figure out this, it is easy to do so.

This was fun! And the fact that it used to be done at the last minute just before the German lesson (usually the lunch break or the games/music period) made the thrill more nail-biting.

End result: Sabka saath, sabka vikaas. (Everyone's support, everyone's development)

Error in user input - the bug magnifies

A popular Hindi saying: "nakal karne keliye bhi akal chahiye" (brains are needed to copy as well).'

One day, it really held true for the entire class. Lekin bhai, akal nahi thi German ke maamle mei, isliye to nakal kar rhe hai. (But brother, we didn't have brains as far as German was concerned, that is why we were copying.)

There are three articles in German, "dem, die, das".  In an exercise, we were asked to mention the articles as well.

The first guy, misread the article "dem" to be "derr", while copying the solutions from that girl's workbook. She had also written it in such a handwriting that it was hard to make out. But we had no other option.

The copying algorithm kept on running, and the bug magnified with each iteration. Just like an incorrect entry in the input causes a very wrong and different output.

But nothing could be done.

Cricket and Music

Surprisingly, the teacher, while doing rounds of the classes and checking the workbook, didn't pay any attention to anything that was written in the workbook.

What happened that day that the copying algorithm didn't run completely that day as well. Everyone didn't copy all the solutions, and some pages in most workbooks were left incomplete.

All of us opened the pages which were complete, and the teacher was just looking, checking if it was filled, and passing by. Even she might not want to check the humongous amount of homework which she gave us. That German lesson just ended in a sign of relief!

A rule of thumb was made that day: Just fill the workbook. Doesn't matter what is written. Doesn't matter if it is 100% complete. Show the completely filled pages, flip some. Let her pass. Don't panic and be fully confident.

So we started a new thing: filling the spaces for the solutions with anything we wanted.

A cricket fan, I filled it up with Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, AB de Villiers, David Warner, RCB, CSK, Thala, Dhoni, hundred centuries, winning the world cup and so on. The music and poetry aficionado walked the footsteps of Taylor Swift and wrote her own songs and poems.

Our German workbooks became our creative spaces and everything interesting was happening in them. At that point, to find the most interesting stuff anywhere around, we just needed to open the German workbooks of anyone. Anything except German could occupy the spaces.

A problem was solved, but many more would come. It was a hack, not a permanent solution.

Eat cake if you can't purchase bread

This is an infamous, controversial statement by Marie Antoinette, Queen of France at the time of French Revolution. When the commoners were asking her about the rising bread prices and hyperinflation in the country.

Our teacher just did this.

A student asked her how to improve communication skills and understand things in German, when he wasn't able to grab the concepts and struggling with the basics.

She replied, "When you are struggling with German, speak in German". Imagine how that guy would've been pissed off at the taunt. Rubbed salt into his wounds.

Half the time, she was speaking in German, as I told in an earlier section.

Mid-Term Exam

Just because our teacher didn't pay much attention and didn't say us anything or scold us, that didn't mean that she didn't know of our tactics and would have let us escape easily.

Something was cooking, to teach us a huge lesson. It was way worse than any scolding or punishment. It came to our realization when we had a look at the mid-term exam.

The exam was nastily difficult. Words, questions, rules and things that we hadn't heard or read anywhere earlier. Even harder than the workbook questions. And we had to solve them. Couldn't get away with English songs or cricketers.

Needed our knowledge of German, whatever little we had for this paper, to click and pull us out of the grave which we had been digging for us since the last six months.

Tried making out different combinations and working out possibilities, looking for hints and clues. The paper was more mathematics than German.

Two hours went by. Fingers crossed.

An eye-opener

The results of the midterm were out in a few days.

My marks read:

English - 83/90

Hindi - 84/90

Maths - 90/90

Science - 90/90

Social Science - 86/90

Computer Science - 60/60

German - 25/60

German was crying in the corner, I had just passed. We had to get 40% to pass the subject and clear the grade.

I had really good grades in the other subjects, but German was like a black patch on a white sheet. And adding to the woes, that girl got a 59/60. Yes, I am correct. More than double my score. I hadn't scored that low ever in my life.

My reputation was at stake now.

I was too scared to show the copy to my parents, but garnered enough strength. Could give an excuse that the paper was tough (which was true), and also, all my friends got similar marks.

And so German became like the beast that followed the runner in Temple Run, the popular video game most readers might know. And somehow I had to escape it, atleast it was finite. Else it would become an infinite run like the actual game, which no one would want. It would be better to study hard for the subject which you have messed miserably and any, you would foresake after six months.

Return of the algorithm

Now that the fear had set in, and the syllabus was getting even harder.

We had things like telling the way, asking for directions, writing travelogues in German - for which we had to get our fundamentals cleared in communication and grammar, to an even better extent.

It was hard to imagine two years ago that the subject that would go like a breeze and I would enjoy it, would engulf (not only) me two years later. But reality it was as it was, and I had to accept it, and find a solution to it.

Six months, we paid attention to the classes (kind of a show). Though still, nothing was going inside my head, but atleast, we would impress the teacher and show her that we are hardworking and understood after the blip in the mid-term.

The copying algorithm returned, and cricketers and singers left our German books.

The in-class assignment and the orals showed that though we had improved (or maybe the papers/questions were easier), there was still a long way to go. All of us collectively prayed for the end-term paper to be easier. The mid-term was indeed a nightmare.

Passing or acing?

End-term exams were round the corner. The terror of German had grappled us for six long months. There was a sword hanging right above our heads. What if we fail German and are unable to clear the grade? What if we have to repeat the entire eighth grade?

I had made up my mind. I would study once and for all. In ninth, anyway, we had the choice of continuing with or opting out German, and taking Hindi as the second language.

It would be obvious for the reader to guess the choice if he/she has come this far reading till here.

Still, those workbooks and the worksheets were bamboozling. If I would have just passed the course, it would have drastically affected my percentage. Decided to put my nose to the grindstone. Worked hard. But to no avail. And I had to perform extremely well in the end-term to cover up for the mid-term and save my percentage. I had taken up the challenge but my feet were slipping away.

Trust me, I didn't work hard and struggle that much while preparing for JEE, as much I struggled to clear that German exam. JEE prep was a struggle to fine-tune myself and improve my technique, and get better at the subjects and problem solving skills. The struggle during German was to understand and save my face from humiliation.

Only a miracle in the end-term could save my grades in German and my overall percentage. And that miracle happened eventually.

A student guest

"Where there is a will, there is a way" - Avicii.

I spoke to my parents. I had to do well in it. They could understand my pain and worry, and seeing my marks in the other subjects, they found it to be genuinely concerning.

My grades were improving up gradually, but I still, needed to pull off something insane.

In school, we used to have that parents-teacher meeting once in every three months, and one just before the exams and one just after the exams.

My parents met the German teacher, and seeing my progress and hardwork in order to clutch up, she was courteous enough to offer me a help session at her place one day. She also held German tuitions at her place.

All is well that ends well

I had that session, and she cleared my doubts and offered me some more questions to practice. I did them, I had to.  Plus 1 to my parents, they arranged that help session for me and helped me convey my demands, when I was already running low on confidence.

The end term paper was much easier than the mid-term. I could solve the paper completely, and found that only 1-2 questions were incorrect, after a discussion session.

End result: I had similar marks in the other subjects in the mid term (some were better :p). But German was a landslide improvement. I had 57/60! I was happier, and much relieved. Free like a bird!

Later, what I found out was actually insane.

The questions that came in the exams were actually those questions, that the teacher gave me to practice during the help session. The paper was leaked to me ;) I couldn't be more grateful to anyone that day. When you work hard, the power of the universe drives you forward. And I had that power.

Really happy and relieved after filling the choice of the second language for ninth. Went ahead with Hindi, and left German.

More than glad to close that treacherous chapter of my life.

Mid-term was like the 36 all out in Adelaide. Now I had conquered the fortress Gabba. (cricket fans can relate)

I finished it off in style.

Peace.