I'm sorry to hear about your health stuff with your D15. That sounds horribly stressful. Is she ready to do the surgery? What are the drawbacks? (other than the obvious)
As far as German goes, yikes. I took 3 languages (Spanish, Italian and German). Most people thought I was stark raving mad. My grandfather spoke 13 languages fluently, and my sister and I inherited his ability to catch on quickly. They were easy A's for me. I took Spanish for 7 years, and my final class was Spanish Lit--where not one word all year was spoken in English--in my junior year. Almost all of my language classes were structured like your D15s. What it teaches one to do is think in the language - not think in English and translate in your head. Does that make sense?
Your D15 might not have this ability. Unfortunately, it really is the only way to force someone to learn how to think in the language. Otherwise, you backpedal doing constant mental translations. Maybe you could get her a tutor to work with her on this? (Not her brothers, though having them for vocabulary quizzes is an awesome boon.)
For the record, I had classmates who couldn't do this either. They wound up hating the class, which is a shame. What might help is if your sons greet her and ask about her day in German and kind of coach her to think in German?
Viel Gluck!
Bets
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
