All this meant I had to give up my first textbook. Which was rather sad. Despite initial complaints, I had grown rather fond of it. And because I hadn't expected to lose it, I didn't think to write down all the amusing (and often sexist) German sayings and poems.
The first chapter was about love, since it presumably recognised love to be a more universal langange than German and therefore much more worth the effort to learn. Exercises included writing a love poem and also writing a love letter for someone else in the class. The letter with the most raw feeling would get a prize. The effort to pair off the class as far as possible continued throughout the chapter, despite the inclusion of the occasional bitter poem by some misogynistic German in history. In one section, I understood the instruction to be to find a partner for someone else in the class, and then gushingly describe his/her physical appearance, before getting a response (accepting or rejecting of the suggestion). It was rather like if Cilla Black would run language school.
Perhaps my favourite for its direct simplicity was a conversational exercise to do in pairs, containing at the end the instructions:
- 8. Your partner looks sad. Ask him what's up. Offer him some comfort.
- 9. Ask him to marry you.
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