One student is nervous. You can see he is newer than the others and he is not yet so confident about it. He starts reading a few sentences in German from his student book after hearing them from the teacher.
Learning a new language is hard, especially when you are not a child anymore. Learning German is really hard, especially for an Arabic speaker – I should know. I’ve tried and am still trying, though not through regular lessons. I listen to the words said by my German friends many times before having enough courage inside to say them out loud. The pronunciation is hard, especially when you try to utter it in front of a native speaker.
The Syrian student gathers his courage and says the sentence out loud. He gets a thumbs-up from the teacher and a sense of relief dawns on his face. He is one of around six students in this class. They are all refugees, mainly from Syria and Iraq. They come to Interkultur centre in Bonn to learn German. Interkultur is a state-approved training institution, founded in 2007, and focuses on providing training sessions to migrants.