ifa vs. integration

This week I began a german course at a new school, ifa, the Instute for Foreign Relations in Stuttgart. I decided to not take further language courses at the integration program for new immigrants in Gmünd. There were several reasons for this but primary among them was that the students, although good people, were not motivated to learn. Most were taking the integration course because they had to. If you are a new immigrant and you receive state assistance of almost any sort, you are asked to enroll in German classes. The aim is to integrate people better in the society and to move them off the state rolls into employment.

The students are completely different. They are all paying and are all seemingly ambitious. You can take the ifa language courses to qualify for enrollment in german universities. I don't know if that is the aim of all the students but it is the expressed motivation for some.

The integration course was cheap; the ifa course is much more expensive. The ifa class is also much better organized and much more demanding. The instruction goes fast and things are explained in a much clearer fashion. Today, for instance, we went over the adjective endings of german cases in a way that made them all surprisingly clear. I wonder why the same instruction cannot take place in the integration courses?