Learning Swedish language - SFI

Before moving to Sweden, I was told that I will have to learn Swedish language in any case before I can even think about practicing medicine here. That's obvious, since I've seen foreign medical students who come to Pakistan and must know some Urdu to be able to communicate with the patients and to survive in that environment. In Sweden, the basic thing is the same but the whole process is different. I mean, there were no institutes in Pakistan that taught Urdu (the national language) or English to the foreigners, or Sindhi (the provincial language) to us. Whatever English we know is from teachers who themselves do not have the American or British accent, who sometimes are not even marginally competent to teach English language. Here, it's easy to just get yourself registered and there you find teachers who have a good knowledge of Swedish grammar, whose accents are original Swedish ones. Most of them have years of experience in the field of teaching languages. They start speaking Swedish from the very first day and discourage the use of any other language in the class.

In the beginning, it was like a huge trouble. I was sure I won't be able to get the grip of this language. When the teacher spoke to the class, i would nod and then ask her to please tell me in English. In that way knowing English was an advantage. I could at least tell that we have a holiday next monday, or she wants us to write our personal details on a paper. Some people from Thailand, Rumania, Poland etc. were in huge trouble. Anyway, it was still very depressing, because I knew my whole career depends on this one thing at this point of time. I felt very serious about doing this right. I couldn't explain it to anyone, but I just couldn't take it easily. I noted down all the words the teacher spoke, asked her everything I didn't understand. Infact, people were at times irritated by the number of questions I could ask in a day or the number of times I could try to keep speaking in the class when no one else wanted to. Well, maybe they could take it eay, I couldn't.

So anyway, when you start with komvux, and you have no previous knowledge of Swedish, you're put into a Startgrupp (C-s). I was really fortunate to get a very kind and helpsome teacher, Ania. I can't help saying that I absolutely adored her. She is the reason for my good foundation of Swedish language. She was exactly what I needed. After 5 weeks in Startgroup, Ania told us one day that 6 of us are going to move on to the next level, to an actual C group. And the first name she wrote on the board was mine. First booster to my confidence level. I moved to a C group lead by Åsa, another great teacher. She made us write essays, passages and letters every week and judged our language level by our writings. When I had a one to one meeting with her, she told me herself to take the test at that end of the same month, exactly 2 months of starting SFI. I was incredibly happy, and started preparing for the test. I did a lot of grammar, analysed my mistakes and asked my teacher on how to improve myself, tried to learn the wordlist that I had made through the period of my course. I was very nervous, just like it is before the medical exams. Just a week afer came the results, and I had cleared with a VG in all four parts of the test (speaking, listening, reading, writing). Infact, my teacher said that my writing was a VG+++. This was not an ordinary remark from my calm and composed teacher who usually preferred to keep students within their limits. Well, VG was what I wanted and gladly, what I achieved.

I realized that I was not exceptionally improving at listening and speaking, so I asked Jan av Kleen at Komvux to arrange a language practice for me. He said the best place for that would be a daycare center (dagis/daghem), so dagis it was. I started with dragonens förskola on November 1, 2011. So it was 4 hours at Komvux in the morning and then 4 hours of playing and chatting with kids at dagis. 8 hours a day, 5 times a week. It was quite busy and tiring, because the kids don't always want to speak. So said, it became a month of under-6 kids before I finished. I noticed improvement in myself, I was also starting to get in touch with the Swedish way of life.

In mid november was it time to have a personal meeting with the teacher. I knew I had to do SAS(Swedish as a second language) after SFI, and that was going to start in Januari. The last SFI test of the year was in the end of November, I wanted to take that to be in time for SAS. But my teacher calmed me down by saying that she could keep an extra test in December. Though the extra test date came out to be not a month, but a week after the november test. Anyway, I approached the same way as C test and it bore fruit, I got a VG again, in all four parts of the test. Hence finishing my SFI journey in 3 months and 10 days.

I know and realize that there is a lot one can not probably learn within 3 months, of course my teacher could not fill me with the whole grammar in 3 months, but still, I think SFI is just the basic step. No matter how much time you spend on it, you can't be perfect at Swedish by the end of it. From where I see, SFI is just a first push, a way to sensitize you to a new language. No matter how hard you learn in SFI, you will definitely have to repeat everything at later stages, so better be quick and smart, rather that being long-standing like a dull ache.