With the semester wrapping up, so is my German language education. Tonight we had the last meeting, and I'm quite sad. And distressed - I only have two more weeks to become fluent!
But I really liked the class. My teacher was great: very flexible, creative, fun... She had lots of interesting games and learning tools for us to use, taught us lots of grammar, and was really responsive to our learning needs and desires.
She tried to keep up speaking all in German, but lots of times that didn't quite hold up so she chose her "battles" and didn't necessarily insist. Still, she was still able to teach us a lot of grammar and vocabulary in a relatively short period. She always had lesson plans, but at the same time she was really flexible and willing to indulge our linguistic curiosities as they came up. It was all part of the learning process, and it made it fun.
Personally I was also helped by my self-paced curriculum. Over the first couple of months here I'd managed to work my way through most of the chapters of my old German textbook. Which really helped me in class, so that when she actually taught these concepts, for me it was more like review and so it was much easier to finally grasp them. It's always easier the second time around.