Language Lessons -- How do you say...?

I started taking Swedish language lessons at Medborgarskolan which is remarkably accessibly by T-bana and makes it easy for me to attend 2 days a week.  I have taken foreign language classes in the past and really enjoyed them so I was looking forward to my Swedish classes.  Really the only thing standing in the way of me socializing with the Swedes is the language, right?  So, after a few 2.5 hour classes I should be near fluent.  I've also been practicing on babbel.com which is a great free/cheap resource for learning languages.  I almost felt like I should have an unfair advantage to my other classmates.  I'm a whiz at languages AND I've been practicing on a free website.  This should be easy!

So, let's start with the Swedish alphabet/alfabetet.  It looks similar to the English alphabet but is pronounced in completely different ways.  This just throws me for a loop.  Also, there are 3 extra vowels -- Å, Ä, and Ö.  So, there are 29 letters in this alphabet.  YouTube has tons of videos on pronunciations if you're really interested.

OK, so once I mastered the alphabet and pronunciation, the rest should be learning vocabulary and figure out the sentence structures.  The Medborgarskolan's approach to teaching language is immersion.  The entire class is in SWEDISH.  That's all fine and good but I have no idea if the teacher is talking about predicates, nouns, vowels, verbs, etc.  That's the stuff I really need to know!  Without those important building blocks, how can I possibly know the rules of the language and grammar?  Alas, the entire course is like this and I've heard that other language courses in Stockholm are similar.  It actually makes sense because the students in each class are so international that sometimes the only language we have in common is Swedish -- which none of us really know.  The teacher stands at the front of the room gesticulating wildly to get us to understand "and" and "but" which is very difficult to do without words.

There are two brothers/cousins (I don't know) in my class from Iraq who are constantly talking with each other.  I don't know how one of them lives on his own because his brother/cousin is constantly feeding him the answer in Swedish.  We had a "closed test" and it was constant murmurs in the back with the two of them talking to one another.  STOP CHEATING!  My A-type personality doesn't handle these types of blatant infractions very well.

As it turns out, I am probably at the most disadvantaged in the class despite my babble.com experience.  Since Swedish is a Germanic language, anyone who speaks a Germanic language has the upper hand at the pronunciation and vowel stresses.  The German girl in my class who speaks zero Swedish sounds near fluent already -- purely because of her pronunciation skills.  I feel like the slow kid always raising her hand asking, "so...what is trött?" 


However, a lot of good things have come from this language course.  1) I am already able to read storefront signs and listen to the Swedish news without feeling quite so overwhelmed, 2) I get to experience adult interaction after spending 18 hours with a 9 month old and 3) I'm feeling like I'm accomplishing something important every class.  With each practice, homework and closed test I know I'm one smidgen closer to learning the language.  It is definitely a struggle and I imagine I will need to keep practicing but every little bit helps.

Maybe this book would help me make more friends...