I work as a German teacher, in a Finnish-speaking preschool group in Finland. When I first started working in that group, everything was new. A new education system, a new team, but most of all, the language was new. A language that I couldn’t derive from anything I knew or understood at the beginning. I set myself the goal of learning the language. By the end of my year abroad, I want to be able to speak simple sentences with the children.
When I arrived at the kindergarten / preschool, everyone immediately spoke to me in Finnish—both the children and my colleagues. With the adults, I always responded: “Sorry, do you speak English?” But with the children, at first, I was really overwhelmed. I could only communicate with facial expressions and gestures. It wasn’t easy at the beginning, and it was really exhausting. I’d come home completely drained. It’s incredibly tiring to be surrounded by a language you don’t understand all day long. I had to concentrate the entire time, and my mind had no break. I couldn’t unwind.
But after a while, the children and I found ways to communicate very well with each other. We learned how to understand each other even without words. I would say that the children are the best teachers to learn a new language. Some of them are even curious about learning German words and are fascinated when I speak English. When I conduct activities with the children, I sometimes draw the individual steps, so they can not only hear but also see what I’m talking about at that moment.
It’s truly an interesting experience because now I know how it feels to arrive in a foreign country with a foreign language and not understand a single word.
