renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4351 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew
| Message 57 of 198 26 January 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
sans-serif wrote:
stifa wrote:
Do anyone have any good advice on how to improve verb conjugation, etc.? |
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Do you know the relevant grammar rules? My preferred method—and I realize a lot of people would hate this approach—is to learn the rules by heart, and then transform that knowledge into an intuitive "Sprachgefühl" by reading and listening. Seeing the rules in action slowly but surely reinforces the correct patterns, and after a while it should become quite easy to reproduce most of them, though not at lightning speed. The most elusive grammar items might require some extra attention, typically in the form of drills or raw memorization. The final step is turning all these correct hunches into fluent output by speaking and writing a lot.
Try it out if it sounds like something you might enjoy. |
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I do more or less the same, but it's not exactly a method. It's rather how I absorb things: in mixed percentages of theory and practice. One supports the other. Writing is very important, because it makes you go out and seek the correct form, which you can do properly because writing can wait. Speaking sometimes makes people be hasty and overlook their mistakes. Of course it's very important to speak all the time, I'm just talking about learning proper grammar right now.
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4866 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 58 of 198 26 January 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged |
I kind of know the grammar, to be honest. I'm just awful at applying theory into
practice. Perhaps I should just "absorb" more native material.
My most frequent blunders are kasus and gender-based, und "regular" usage of irregular
verbs.
But thanks anyway :)
Edited by stifa on 26 January 2013 at 3:18pm
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Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6078 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin
| Message 59 of 198 26 January 2013 at 3:54pm | IP Logged |
I know I definitely I need more exposure. For grammar, I think workbooks are good for training verb tense and usage. I can't say much for Japanese. I can never get enough exposure in Japanese because of my schedule. If you're looking for practice, if you search "DAF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache)" and another keyword you can find some nice charts and I use this konjugations trainer for French, but German is there too.
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BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4615 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish
| Message 60 of 198 27 January 2013 at 5:00am | IP Logged |
@Sunja: Thanks for those links.
@renaissancemedi: Your idea about writing as a good way to solidify grammar I think is a good one. When you speak, it's easy to gloss over things and you are so busy thinking about the content of what you are trying to say, you may not notice the errors.
@stifa: If you find the answer to avoiding the kasus, gender, etc. errors, you will be a hero to all German learners! I'm looking forward to reading whatever suggestions you may get or discover.
Awareness is the first step, but it is really key. I just started participating in a small group instruction class: 2 students and 1 native speaker teacher. We speak off the cuff for a few minutes while she takes notes, and then she comments on what we have just said and asks us how to say it correctly. In this way, we then really take note of all the errors we made and reinforce the correction. Both of us students repeatedly, like ~10 times :( , made the same word order error while speaking and were completely unaware of it, although if you sat us down in front of a grammar test, we would never make that mistake and we individually heard it when the other person was making the mistake. If you don't have access to a native speaker, maybe recording yourself speaking might be something interesting to try?
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4866 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 61 of 198 27 January 2013 at 9:59pm | IP Logged |
I decided to take the B1 placement test from Deutsche Welle, and got
Quote:
Dear (...),
On January 27, 2013, 8:56 pm you took the Deutsch Welle placement test at the of the
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). You attempted 30 of the 30 questions
which took a total of 85:19 minutes.
Your overall result is 60%. |
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It took a while, over half of the time was waiting for the page to load, and I had to
pick up laundry, hence it took more than an hour. :p
I think that count as B1. :D
(And I did copy a few of the sentences into my "add to SRS" notepad document.)
Edited by stifa on 27 January 2013 at 11:00pm
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renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4351 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew
| Message 62 of 198 28 January 2013 at 9:14am | IP Logged |
Great!
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mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5219 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese
| Message 63 of 198 28 January 2013 at 12:34pm | IP Logged |
BAnna wrote:
Both of us students repeatedly, like ~10 times :( , made the same word order error while speaking and were completely unaware of it, although if you sat us down in front of a grammar test, we would never make that mistake and we individually heard it when the other person was making the mistake. If you don't have access to a native speaker, maybe recording yourself speaking might be something interesting to try? |
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I do that all the time with my own writing and it works great. Other than having issues with recording yourself I don't see why it should be any different with speech.
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4866 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 64 of 198 31 January 2013 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
So, summary time!
Goals for January
Add a minimum of 310 Japanese flashcards and 165 German flashacards.
Actual numbers:
Japanese: 371 (+61)
German: 157 (–8)
Write 4-5 lang-8 entries in both languages.
Wrote one.
That is all.
Read and listen to both - at least 15-30 min every day.
Done.
Usually above an hour for each.
Passing my exams. (The most difficult one here, I think.)
I've sat four of them. One was postponed because of a couple of centimetres of snow
(or in British: adverse weather conditions)
Results of the four first ones aren't out before March anyway.
Observations
I tried to use subs2srs with Ninkyo Helper (SP episode) and it didn't work too
well,
because the subs I found were a bit out of sync. I have to figure out how to get videos
work in Anki though. Death Note was more usable for this purpose, because it seems much
more "scripted" than Ninkyo Helper.
I need to read more in German, and listen more to Japanese. My German is horribly
unbalanced.
さぁ, new goals for February:
German
- Read two articles (e.g. news articles) every day
- Add 140 anki cards (5 cards · 28 days)
- 60 minutes listening every day
- Write one 50 word post auf Deutsch - either here or at lang-8 - per week
Japanese
- Read 15 pages of キノの旅 every day (1 chapter is roughly 30 pages)
(edit: changed to 10)
- Add 280 anki cards (10 cards · 28 days)
- 60 minutes listening every day
- Read one article from NHK Easy every day
- Write one 100 character post 日本語で - either here or at lang-8 - per week
Edited by stifa on 03 February 2013 at 7:16pm
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