Written by Widya Prihesti Iswarani and Thais de Castro Lima Varella
I am back again with more stories about learning Dutch. This time, Thais Varella will share her stories with us. Are you ready to get inspired by Thais? Read her story below!
Thais came to The Netherlands for the first time to do her minor at ESSET in 2013. She fell in love with the country, and her passion for environmental sciences led her to pursue her master’s degree at Wageningen University in 2017. Long story short, Thais reunited with ESSET since August 2019. Currently, she is working as an ESSET lecturer, a researcher at CoE-BBE, and alongside her bustling schedule – she is also learning Dutch. She is following a Dutch B2 course at the moment.
“I have been taking online classes with the Linguaterra Institute for 2 years now. I started with small group classes for A1, A2, and B1. Now that I am following the B2, I decided to take private lessons, as I noticed the personalized approach is helping me greatly to remove my shyness to speak and ask questions.”
Thais felt that following Dutch course works better for her, and she preferred it to other methods like DuoLingo, YouTube, or Netflix/films. As you can imagine, her journey has not been easy. She also encountered ups and downs.
“There are days when I feel very motivated and others not so much. I find that my motivated days happen when I am having more fun, for example, when I get happy because I can understand something new that I couldn't before. My less motivated days happen when I have difficulty following homework or class, mainly because of tiredness and the mind constantly judging my learning process. Also, I feel demotivated when someone makes fun of my broken attempt.”
Thais did not let all the discouragements stop her progress in learning Dutch. She joined local food initiatives in Utrecht (Koningshof, Food for Good, Voko, Boerderij De Zonnewijzer), where she can do her hobbies and also practice her Dutch skills. She said that she felt less judged there and people were very understanding. See the pictures below:
“My tip is to be in movement. If there is one thing I feel proud about, it is to say that I have been studying for 2 years, all the way from A1 to B2 now. Although the crisis never went away, I do notice my progress. That's a bit of my life motto. I usually am not a fast learner, but I don't stop. I try to bring a bit of fun to keep the motivation.”
Again, the answer to the question on the title of this blog post: yes, you can do it! Thais proved that you can learn Dutch and combine it with your work, even with your hobby.
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