Tandem

Good morning :)

Have I ever told you that I joined a Tandem project? What’s your first thought now? Did she start tandem flying or did she buy a tandem bicycle? Betwixt and between. I talk about the concept of tandem language learning.

The basic idea is very simple. The main aim is to bring people with different mother tongues together in order to help each of them to improve their skills in the foreign language. That sounds difficult but is very easy. Let me give you an example. I joined this project (organised by Treffpunkt Sprachen by the way) because I wanted to find someone with whom I can speak English or French. This person, a native speaker ideally, wants to improve their German. That’s the whole concept. Two people with different mother tongues help each other by speaking both of the languages. In my case: I would improve my English or French and the French or English person would improve their German. That’s the ideal case but we know nothing is ever working perfectly ;).

My tandem partner became a 23-year-old Slovene guy. Now you may ask yourself what I am going to do with a Slovenian-speaking guy. Well, I asked myself the same question. At first, I was a bit disappointed because I really hoped to get to know a native English or French speaker. For our first meeting Primoz, that’s his name, brought a friend, Tomaz, and, well, we hit it off immediately. The boys are really sociable guys and we get on very well. Even though they are no native English speakers, we talk to each other in German and English. We normally change the conversation language every week. We often go for a coffee or a hot wine punch and talk about this, that and the other ;).

Once they invited me for dinner and prepared a traditional Slovene dish. Unfortunately, I can neither pronounce nor write the name of that dish but it tasted delicious! It was kind of minced meat with rice in it, served with tomato sauce and mash. The week before Christmas, I returned their invitation and cooked one of my favourite dishes for them: pork medallions with tomato and cream cheese together with a garlic-chili-sauce and a potato strudel. I think they enjoyed it ;).

Example picture from my old school, with speatzle instead of potato strudel
Enjoy the meal :-)

Even though I did not get to know a real native speaker I made friends with two funny, gregarious guys. I am happy I got to know them J. Try it out, a tandem project is a great chance to improve your language skills… or a least to make some good friends ;).