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CarlyD’s German/Spanish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4525 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 25 of 63 05 January 2015 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I like flashcards, but what I find really effective is learning words in context, so the question side is a sentence, with the relevant word bolded, and the answer is the translation of the word.
It's quite painless to generate cards using Readlang. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3981 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 26 of 63 05 January 2015 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Right now my flashcards have the word with the article and the plural, then maybe compound words, phrases or even sentences, depending on the word.
Ok, this is my official TAC plan. Not for the year, but for Unit 1, which should take me until some time in early to mid-February. Then review and set up Unit 2. German Made Simple, chapters 5 thru 8. The Everything Learning German Book, chapters 4 through 7 Complete German Grammar, chapters 1 through 10 German Verb Drills, chapters 1 through 6 (present tense only) English Grammar for Students of German (yes I need this) chapters 1 through 15. Variety of Graded German Reader books, easy books--pages assigned every week. In addition, I do Duolingo daily, and have Assimil and Rosetta Stone, neither of which are thrilling me right now. I think I'd rather do the "book work" and return to the conversational part next month when I'm a bit more comfortable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4525 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 27 of 63 06 January 2015 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
I did this for about a year and generated about 8000 cards, but in the end found this not so helpful. I am much happier learning words from words in context. Check out my post here: The next 7000 words if you want to see what I am doing now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3981 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 28 of 63 07 January 2015 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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@ patrickwilken--I wish that I knew 8000 words. I have about 30 flashcards right now and I doubt if I know even 200 words altogether. I like your log and your method, though.
I hit 30 days with Duolingo today, so apparently I started learning German around 12/6 or maybe a couple days before, but I'm going with that. The sentences on Duolingo are a bit strange, but I'm plugging away. I haven't used any Spanish really since I left my job now two years ago--I used it pretty much every day there. I still do basics--ATM, etc. in Spanish, and still use it at home, but I'm trying to switch to everything German and I'm afraid I'm going to lose my Spanish. A week or so ago I did some online "rate your level" for Spanish--don't recall where. I was saddened to see that my level had dropped to A2 and I struggled with sentences that I'm sure I used to know. I just did a placement test on Duolingo and tested out of most of the first page--they said I passed in 18 sections. I did fine with the written but I got a lot of the "type what you hear" wrong--her accent was odd. And they didn't like my "mijo" for mi hijo which I should have realized is either slang or just not proper Spanish. Their site doesn't say if they are teaching Castilian Spanish or Latin American. Here in California they teach what is known as Mid-Mexico Spanish even though more immigrants are from Central America than Mexico anyway. According to advice here, I need to achieve a decent level in German before returning to Spanish, so I'm going to follow that. If I can make enough progress in German during this year, I'll consider revisiting Spanish for next year. All my Scooby Doo books in Spanish are calling me, lol. I was looking around locally for language classes, since I couldn't get into the community college one. There's an Italian Cultural Center almost down the street that has classes, a French Institute with both classes and all-day immersion, numerous Spanish centers, Russian, Persian, Chinese. And one German. The German center is downtown, the adult classes are only late in the evening, in a sketchy area with poor parking and the reviews by people who've gone there are horrible. I tried calling just to find out if the classes were held downstairs or upstairs (very old rickety looking building and I have a horrible knee) and they refused to tell me. Hmmmm.... There's one German Meet Up group that used to advertise that language learners were welcome but they're very clear now that you must not only be fluent, but they prefer that you be native German to attend. This is not putting me off learning German, I'm just seeing my local social interactions dwindling. I will have to look harder for German people here to talk to. So, 30 days progress. According to Benny Lewis, in another 60 days, I'll be fluent. According to my own (reality based) plan, in another 11 months I'll hopefully be A2. We'll see. In my crafting group, in the German group threads, I'm recognizing more and more words ("Hilfe & FAQ--bitte erste lesen") which is nice. I looked at the first several posts in the thread, and I can figure out what they are talking about, but couldn't say word for word. Tonight I will add something I've written in German to my log, and will do this every 30 days to see how I progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3981 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 29 of 63 09 January 2015 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today is Day 33 of my German journey.
I took a progress test on Duolingo. I thought it was a test of the progress I've made, but it was a test of the whole program, which obviously I haven't finished. I scored .89, which is 17%. I will take the test every 30 days to see how I progress. Yesterday I discovered Quizlet, which for some reason I didn't save to favorites. But I found that people using the same books as me have already loaded in all the vocabulary for each chapter. Cool!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3981 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 30 of 63 11 January 2015 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I am incredibly irritated that I lost my 33 day streak on Duolingo. I did the 50XP for today, but obviously did them too late. They credited 40 to Saturday, took my streak from 33 to 0 and credited 10 to Sunday. Stupid site.
On the plus side, I've spent a solid 2+ hours a day the last three days with my textbooks and am feeling good. Today I started der words and tomorrow I'll start ein words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4226 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 31 of 63 11 January 2015 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Eh I know the feeling. Well, you can always buy a freezer just in case)
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3981 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 32 of 63 13 January 2015 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm having this bizarre crisis that I've been struggling with for a while now.
Wo = where Wer = who I have them backwards in my mind. Everything else so far is fine, I'm on chapter 6 of my textbook, but I keep coming back over and over to this as I get them wrong every time. I have them on flashcards--wrong most of the time. My mind tends to relate things with other things. I can't relate Spanish (quien/donde)--too far off. (Still fighting this new computer over accent marks.) I think I do have an issue that Ko = who (Croatian) and is too close to Wo. I'm still at the point where I see an English word and my mind clicks through any other language I might know the word in before it searches for German. I know this is just because it's been too short of a time with German. But I truly believe that once you learn something wrong, it's wrong for life (ask me how to pronounce pie (Spanish) and I'll say the wrong way then the right way--and I learned it wrong when I was 12 and have been doing that for years.) I guess tomorrow I will sit and write a hundred or so sentences and see if that helps. Today after finishing the last two pages of my current chapter was a let's-have-fun day. I sat with a book with huge pictures that named all the items in German and I was looking for the item in the picture. Then a super-old copy of German in 10 Minutes a Day--also lots of pictures. I wouldn't call it a serious book but it has some great charts on noun cases that I will come back to later. Edited by carlyd on 13 January 2015 at 4:34am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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