I decided to learn Danish as soon as I moved to Denmark. I didn’t need it for my job necessarily, but I felt bad that everyone spoke English just for me.
I don’t want to be that foreigner who doesn’t speak Danish so everyone has to speak English. That feels really uncomfortable.
I didn’t have a lot of confidence in learning languages. I thought that I was bad at languages because a teacher in Germany told me that once.
But I have learnt a lot of Danish at Studieskolen. In less than two years, I went from nothing to speaking Danish fluently.
I was really surprised by the method. I am used to repeating words and grammar and translating texts, but we don’t do that. At Studieskolen, we learn in a very interactive way. We talk and do exercises and are encouraged just to talk.
It really confused me at first. How can we learn new words if we don’t practise vocabulary? But I have learnt so much! I pick up more and more words from the context, and so my vocabulary constantly expands.
I had a nice experience when I spent some time in a summer cottage with a Danish friend about a year and a half after I had started learning Danish. We spoke Danish the whole time there. After that I just felt like, 'I speak Danish now'."