I have started my A1 German Course at WIFI Salzburg

Before I left for Austria I signed up for an online course called “Your German Teacher” and it is a series of videos and a course book you can download and print to follow and answer along. There is a test at the end of each Section and I started this course on the 3rd July 2024. We flew out on the 14th July 2025 and I still to this day haven’t finished it and there were many many times when Ben and I were watching the videos that we literally fell asleep. I was so keen to learn but we both weren’t retaining as much as we should have and learnt very little. We actually had a little joke between us if we wanted to go to bed early and fall asleep straight away that we put our German video on and it worked a charm. Not sure if it was our brain shutting down because we didn’t want to learn or we tried to learn too quickly and should have taken more time in each section but it was very challenging.

If I didn’t need to pass my A1 German to get my Visa I wouldn’t even have looked into doing the German course as it really is incredibly different to the English language. There is a gender to every noun, (Der, Die and Das), there are 4 grammatical cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive) and then just when you think you are confused enough there are informal and formal ways to say the same thing, their sentence structure is different where they have strict rules where the word goes in the sentence in particular the verb position and then the words change again if they are singular or plural and many many more differences.

I had a look around at what courses were available and was amazed there was a course at 1pm (my time) on Montag (Monday) and Mittwoch (Wednesday) for 2.5 hours, how could I pass that up being so convenient as I finish work at 1pm and then just ride my bike 2 minutes down the road to my course and so I signed up to WIFI Salzburg - https://www.wifisalzburg.at/ A1 German.

To pass A1 you need to do the A1.1 course and then the A1.2 course over 20 consecutive weeks and then sit an exam which is written and spoken.

I love my wheels and riding my bike everywhere!

Austria and I believe Germany in general really encourages expats and visitors alike to learn the language and they have something called the Salzburger Bildungsscheck (“Salzburg Education Cheque”) whereby you apply to be reimbursed for 50% of the course. I have had mine approved on completion of the course to receive the reimbursement which will go towards my A1/2 course.

The class is small and there are 9 of us in total from all areas of the world including China, Syria, America, Turkey and Spain. Our teacher is Martina and she was very welcoming and makes the classes very interactive. There is no English spoken in the lessons and she speaks in German the whole time.

There is no speaking in German and then explaining in English it is German all the way. Day 1, I was lost but Day 2 was a bit more normal to hear only German and now I am in Week 3 and I understand most of what she is saying if it is spoken slowly and referred back to our course book (which is also in German but has lots of pictures). Everyone in the class is absolutely lovely and we are all at the same level which is great.

So far we all know how to say hello and how are you and where we live and how many brothers or sisters we have, our age, our family, speaking the alphabet, counting the numbers, how to write the numbers and in what order, the genders of nouns, the adjektives, pronouns, days of the week, months and seasons, grammar basics and filling out forms.

The class is actually a lot of fun and it’s very surreal studying again and giving my time to learning a language but I am enjoying it more than I thought and I am starting to remember things and actually speak in sentences to my classmates and ocassionally at the supermarket. There is also a wonderful view of the castle from our classroom and no matter how often I see it, it never loses its magic.

There is as much homework as there is work in the course and I guess this helps retain the information. There is also an app to download and lots of videos that are available and answers to the course material. It really is a fantastically structured course.