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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 41 of 436 24 January 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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German is such a beautiful language, I think I could easily fall in love with it! The most amazing thing is I spent my whole adolescence thinking that I hated German, thanks to poor German teaching at high school. I had absolutely no idea what I was missing out on.
I used up one of my lesson tickets on Japonin tonight. I really wasn't in the mood for the class to start with, but I ended up quite enjoying it anyway. Sometimes all you need to do is relax. I've also been tinkering with the audio files for Warum Nicht. The first 3 episodes are a bit weird, because the focus is more on teaching you how to listen, rather than the German language. Actually, the whole course is a bit weird, but weird in a good way. Anyway, after the first 3 episodes, it seems to have settled into a pattern where each episode ends with a recap of all the German dialogue covered, unfortunately interspersed by a few signposting words in English (they help in the main lesson, but it's not necessary in a recap, surely). Anyway, loading it into Audacity it's actually quite easy to edit it down to pure German goodness (at least after I discovered how to make Audacity realise the file was recorded at 22HZ rather than 44HZ). It shouldn't be too hard at all to start building up a library of review tracks this way! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 42 of 436 26 January 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been thinking a bit about how I want to use Assimil for German. (In fact, in general I would say there's been too much thinking and not enough studying, but I managed to redress that somewhat by going through lesson 25 earlier today!) Anyway a search on this forum revealed this post which had some useful ideas about how to use Assimil. More importantly to me, it revealed that the edition of Audacity I installed on my laptop goodness knows how long ago is actually way out of date, so I've now got the latest version and am making very good use of the truncate silence feature to assist with building up my audio review playlist. I applied it to the 8 tracks I've added so far from my main textbook, with the original settings (because I'm a bit less hardcore than the poster of the above) and it reduced the total length from 09:41 to 05:59 while still leaving me with everything necessary for review. I've decided I'm not going to add the first three weeks of Assimil to my review playlist because I decided not to revise them when I restarted this January, so I started with lesson 22, took out the exercises (mainly to save space and because the actual dialogue text is usually both quirkier and tougher), and used truncate silence again. It'a all coming together...
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| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4865 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 43 of 436 26 January 2013 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree so much with your first paragraph. I pretty much only associated German with
kasus and the angry rants from the film Der Untergang during my school years, but no I really like the sound of it. :D And a little German won't hurt your Japanese :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 44 of 436 26 January 2013 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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You've sent me on a detailed reminiscence of my high school language learning experience now.
I thought I could blame the quality of teaching (which certainly didn't help), but there is a little more to the story, I think. My school offered French and German. In the first year, you did both, first one and then the other. Then you were given a choice. Well, basically the smartest kids were all forced to take both. Everyone else got a choice for the next two years. After that it was a choice of either one or both for GCSE (exams we sit at 16). But I met French before I even started high school. From the age of about 5, we went on family holidays to France nearly every summer. It mostly involved staying on an English speaking campsite and playing at the beach, but nevertheless it was my first exposure to a foreign language in a foreign country. I learned how to say hello and buy a baguette, and by the time I started high school I was really desperate to know more. I actually had bought some books for learning French aimed at kids with my own pocket money by this point, but I didn't really get how to use them, and I didn't really get how to handle things like grammar. But clearly, I was an eager student. In contrast, I had never encountered German until I met it for the first time in a high school language class. Anyway, I had the same teacher for French and German in the first year. She once shouted at me for asking how to say something that was "off script" because she thought it was wrong that I wanted to progress faster than the rest of the class. In short, although she did not manage to kill off my desire to learn French, her classes never fostered in me the same desire to learn German. Furthermore, French came a lot easier to me than German (not surprising given that I'd already had some exposure prior to class), and at that age I hadn't learned the merits of working hard to get better at something! Nevertheless, I was considered to be a smart kid, so I was forced into French and German for the next two years. The French teacher I had for both years was thought to be quite creepy by some of the kids, but he was actually a pretty good teacher. We'd spend a lot of time in class actually speaking to him in French. He also managed to cover some basic grammar, such as gender, present tense and perfect tense, which is quite an achievement given how grammar-phobic British education was in the 90s. When I was 12 years old I took part in a French exchange, with his encouragement, and spent a week and a half staying with a host family in rural France. I was quite shy and a lot younger than most of the other kids taking part, but it was a really formative experience for me. The family I stayed with were really lovely people. Even though my French wasn't very good, they were really patient. I remember them playing card games like pairs with me to help build my vocabulary. I bonded with the father over the piano, on which we both liked to play some of the easier Beethoven pieces. And the food was amazing! I wasn't really there long enough for it to do much for my French, but it did an awful lot for my motivation. In contrast, the German teacher I had in my second year was awful. The kids had no respect for him, which meant that he couldn't get the class to shut up for long enough to teach us anything. And we were supposedly the brightest kids in our year group. He was so bad he was asked to leave the school, and the teacher I had for German in the third year was a lot better, but the damage was already done. I had so many massive holes in my knowledge of German compared to French, I just gave it up as soon as I could as a lost cause. To give an example of how bad my German education was, I only discovered at the very end of the third year that there was a formal way of addressing someone. Up to that point, I'd only ever used or heard "du". And even then, although I found out that "Sie" existed, I didn't learn how to actually use it. I was actually terrified of meeting a German and offending them because I only knew how to say things with "du". I didn't know what a German infinitive looked like. I couldn't conjugate the present tense at all, never mind the past. I was aware that German had three classes of nouns, compared to two in French (which made it seem so much more complicated) but I had never encountered the case system. Basically, from what I can remember, I think that my German teachers just got us to memorise set phrases. In contrast, our French teachers dished out the grammar too. The pace was slow, but it still provided an essential framework to build on as our education progressed. As bad as my German education was, I don't bear any grudges. German as I am studying it now is like a completely new language. It is not the "German" I learned at school. It feels like I have discovered some carefully guarded secret, and I love it. As for what became of my French, well, that's another story... Edited by g-bod on 26 January 2013 at 7:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4865 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 45 of 436 26 January 2013 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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We were only allowed to study one foreign language at once, as there was only one
language-slot during the week. My first German teacher hadn't even finished his training, and the second was the principal at the time (who have lived in Germany and spoke fluent German), the third wasn't strict enough and the fourth was too obsessed with grammar but refused to even talk about the subjunctive because we weren't good enough. That I came out of it with a 4 (~C) is miraculous. :p I think the fault is simply that there are way too many students who attend language classes simply because they have to. This means that even those who are interested in the language won't learn anything from the teacher because s/he has to repeat the same stuff over and over because most of the class simply don't care. Still not as bad as your case, but still not perfect. I've always been kind of interested in languages, but I grew to hate German. I would never even imagine back then that I would pick it up again two years later. I think it's because of Japanese that I actually became motivated to pick it up again; a choice I hardly regret. :) Edited by stifa on 26 January 2013 at 8:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 46 of 436 26 January 2013 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
To be fair, the only reason I turned up to school and did my homework was because I had to, regardless of the subject! One of the reasons that Japanese is so special to me is that studying it really opened my eyes to what it is possible for an adult to achieve in terms of lifelong learning. I used to think that my story was already written according to the outcome of my schooling. Well, when it comes to accessing formal career paths, to a certain extent I am limited by previous choices. But when it comes to accessing knowledge, I've realised that anything is possible, and that is truly liberating. Edited by g-bod on 26 January 2013 at 8:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4865 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 47 of 436 27 January 2013 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, I've got loads more "grudges" against the education system, but I thought I'd keep
them to myself. ;) And I agree with the second point as well. I just though "Hey, if I can learn Japanese - the epitome of difficult - there may still be hope for my German." :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 48 of 436 27 January 2013 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, when I turned 30 and realised that I had been an adult for more years than I had been in school, I realised I had to stop blaming them for everything that's gone wrong for me. But it's taken a long time to let go!
And yes, my new motto is: If I can learn Japanese, I can learn anything! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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