Freie Universität Berlin (FU BERLIN)

I learned a lot of German, more than what I expected, and I have to say with a pretty good accent. And 90% of the sucess was due to talking with people: germans and other internationals. The clue is to avoid going around with people who speak your own language, or to simply make use of English. I tried to speak in German in all situations. A language exchange is also very useful: meeting some German person who lears your language (Spanish in my case), and speaking one day in German and the next day in Spanish. You learn a lot of your mistakes, because it should be a person who points your mistakes out.

The homestay portion of the experience was designed to bring students directly into the host culture. Yet, as I stated before, my host family was not very social and did not make time to speak with me at length, which enabled me to go out more and speak with locals, which had its own problems. The majority of Germans speak some if not perfect English, thus attempting to practice with them was often futile. Ultimately, I feel that after four months in Germany, my language capabilities did improve.

I believe that studying in Berlin for a semester was a unique opportunity for me to speak German fluently. As I mentioned in the previous section, all the modules were taught in German, so this motivated me to revise everyday and become very fluent in a very short period of time. In the end I spoke German like I never even imagined I would!

Unfortunately many subjects of the English and Spanish Philology where held in German, something I could not understand, as we were dealing with English Literature, linguistics and history (the same problem with SPanish subjects).

I spoke German pretty perfect before I went to Berlin, and I would have had great difficulties if I had not done it. There was never a lecture in any other language than German, and even in the dormatory there was nearly all the time German and not English.

I had an easy time, but I had lived in Germany for a year already. German is a difficult langauge, so be sure to interact with Germans as much as possible. Don't get lazy and speak your mother tongue. If you want to do that, you can stay at home.