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Soclydeza85 - Mein Deutsch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 41 of 123 22 May 2014 at 2:54am | IP Logged |
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Got a fair amount done today
DEUTSCH Pimsleur - Finished lesson 10, which concludes all of Pimsleur. I'll give my review of Pimsleur later in this post. I'm now looking for other material to fill my work commute. I have Michel Thomas Advanced and Language Builder, so those should keep me afloat for a while. Hugo - No hugo Assimil - Finished lesson 52, translated lesson 3. Went well. Cafe in Berlin - I read 2 stories (or, I guess, "entries" in the context of the book). I really like this book, though I will probably be finished with it by the end of next week. I tried to purchase some native material off of amazon.de but I couldn't find anything that would ship to the US. I was able to get Der Verwandlung for free for Kindle. I will start it once I finish Cafe in Berlin. ============================================================ ============== PIMSLEUR REVIEW I finished all of Pimsleur and I would overall say that, for German, it was excellent and a serious staple to my learning. Speaking and pronunciation is where Pimsleur really shines. The break down new sentences word for word, and for words syllable by syllable so you can really pronounce each part correctly. The content was very good. It starts off with many basic conversational phrases and progresses to common things to say in different situations (Asking someone to eat/drink with you, inviting people over, talking about vacations, things you would say on business, etc). In my personal conversational experience, most of what I've used stems from what I've learned with Pimsleur. And it's broken down in such a way that when you learn vocab from other sources you can simply modify the sentences/structures that you learned. For reading, there was little to nothing (for German). It did come with a list of vocab words for the 3rd level, but that's it. This didn't bother me, since I was learning the reading from other sources and I would've rather had Pimsleur focus strictly on speaking. A fair amount of vocab was learned from this, though I wish they made more levels with more vocab. Again, I really liked the way that it taught sentence structure in a nature kind of way where you can take vocab learned from other sources and apply them. It didn't have many grammar explanations (had some) but I liked the way it didn't exactly explain it verbatim, but more or less gave you a feel of how to use it. For example, it would stress that you would say "Ich wohne in DER Schweiz" but "Ich fahre in DIE Schweiz" so that you would feel comfortable with it and though it did not explain WHY you use the accusative in one case and dative in the other, it made you comfortable with knowing what to use and when naturally. Overall, this course is extremely valuable and highly recommended and, to be honest, I will definitely miss using it. I plan on doing the "cut silence" audio trick that I've seen people speak of on here and go back over the lessons eventually, both as a reminder and as a test, but I will miss learning new material with it. ============================================================ ============== 2014 SUPER CHALLENGE I watched Küstenwache auf ZDF earlier. I was actually surprised at how much I understood from this. I'm going try to find more episodes and watch it more frequently (assuming it's a show and not a one time thing). I also read 2 stories in my reader. FILMS: Today - 45 min Total - 90 min BOOKS: Today - 2 pages Total - 4 pages I'm going to try and pick up the pace on this challenge, but I'm happy I got done what I did today. 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 42 of 123 22 May 2014 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
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If you haven't already checked it out Deutsche Welle has lots of materials for German learning, including a slow news service, and TV series aimed at learners.
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| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 43 of 123 23 May 2014 at 3:47am | IP Logged |
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pat, I've been meaning to check out more from Deutsche Welle. Lately I've been watching a lot of stuff from ZDF but I will venture over there the next time I have an open night.
DEUTSCH Another good day of getting a lot done. MT - I listened to probably about 25mins of MT Advanced on my commute today. Nothing new from it but a good refresher on some stuff. Hugo - And still no hugo.... I've been doing a lot more "natural" studying lately and feel like it's been helping me a lot, but I will start up Hugo again soon to cover some new grammatical ground. Assimil - Finished lesson 53 and translated lesson 4. Went very, very well. My new method definitely takes longer, but it internalizes the lessons so much better. Cafe in Berlin - I read 3 entries. I'm already about halfway done with the book. I also learned that there is a 4th level of Pimsleur, which I am really excited for. Once I get the money I will purchase it. Also, we have this system at work where you receive points and can spend them at an online store and they have Pimsleur Swiss German. I only have a few more points before I can get it, I'm excited to dabble with it. ========================================================== 2014 SUPER CHALLENGE Read some entries in Cafe in Berlin and watched some stuff on ZDF (I forget the name of the show) FILMS: Today - 25 min Total - 115 min BOOKS: Today - 3 pages Total - 7 pages 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 44 of 123 24 May 2014 at 4:05am | IP Logged |
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Didn't do much today, was wiped out from work
DEUTSCH MT - About 15 mins this morning Hugo - Nichts Assimil - Nichts I purchased Pimsleur Swiss German at work. I won't get serious about Schweizerdeutsch until mein Deutsch is strong/stable enough, but it will be fun to dabble. ============================================================ ============= 2014 SUPER CHALLENGE Read 2 stories from Cafe in Berlin, watched some stuff auf ZDF. My mind wasn't really working heute auf Deutsch, aber ich wollte ein bißchen zu tun. Oh, and I will start counting the Cafe in Berlin stories as 2 pages instead of one. Each story/entry is about 3-4 pages and though the font is a bit big, I feel like I'm short changing myself by keeping it at 1 page. FILMS: Today - 25 mins Total - 140 mins BOOKS: Today - 4 pages Total - 11 pages 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 45 of 123 25 May 2014 at 6:30am | IP Logged |
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Today was weird, I felt like I had a disconnect from the language, like all previous internalization was lost and I was going off of raw memory. Oh well, there will always be those off days.
DEUTSCH MT - About 20-25 mins worth during my commute. Hugo - Nichts Assimil - I was working on lesson 54 for a while but it just wasn't clicking for me for some reason. I understood the lesson, but I felt like I would just walk away from it without having learned anything, like my mind really wasn't up for learning; so I've decided to redo it at a later time, hopefully tomorrow morning if I have time. I watched "Funny Games" and I actually understood a fair amount of it, as compared to usual. I've noticed a lot of German movies (actually, foreign movies in general) don't resolve well. Not that it's a bad thing, just different. I'm probably just used to American movies where the good guys always win in the end. ============================================================ ============ 2014 SUPER CHALLENGE FILMS: Today - 100 mins Total - 240 mins (4260 mins to go for Half) BOOKS: Today - 0 Total - 11 pages (2498 pages to go for Half) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 46 of 123 28 May 2014 at 2:47am | IP Logged |
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I've been busy the past couple of days but I'm back.
DEUTSCH MT - Listened to maybe 20-30 mins of MT during my commute. I thought I understood the "haben" "hatten" and "hätten" but when he went over it it kind of confused me so I will revisit this (as well as a couple of other things he went over on auxiliary verbs). Hugo - Still no Hugo, I hope to get back on it by the end of the week. Assimil - I finished lesson 54 and translated lesson 5. Live Lesson - Today was awesome in some ways, and a bit discouraging in others. We conversed more of the time and it was more of a back and forth kind of conversations as opposed to me responding to questions. If she was talking about something I was able to step in (a few times) and give my two cents. It was discouraging but this always unveils how much I don't know and though I'm able to make myself understood (to some degree) I can notice all of the mistakes I am making. I'm just beating myself up about it though, in actuality I've come a long way in the past few months and should be happy about that, but I will (one day) take this language to near perfection. I've decided that I will buy Pimsleur 4 when I get my next paycheck. I'm excited since this program works so well for me. ============================================================ ========== 2014 SUPER CHALLENGE I finished Cafe in Berlin, and much sooner than expected, I didn't realize that I only had one story to go. My plan is to go back over this book and study all of the unknown vocab (which isn't too much). No shows/movies today. FILMS: Today - 0 Total - 240 mins (4260 mins to go for Half) BOOKS: Today - 2 pages Total - 13 pages (2496 pages to go for Half) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4074 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 47 of 123 28 May 2014 at 6:14am | IP Logged |
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Good going Pat!
Yeah, when you have to generate output, you find you dont have the vocabulary at hand. It should get easier. AFAIK: haben = present tense of have hatten = past tense of haben hätten = Konjunctiv II of haben It's worth reading up on Konjunctive II. It's simple, but for some modal verbs there are no parallels in English. Edited by Gemuse on 28 May 2014 at 6:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3899 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 48 of 123 29 May 2014 at 6:15am | IP Logged |
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Thanks Troy! Yeah, it's definitely harder in real-time, but it's all part of the learning process.
I've always understood it pretty much as you explained, with hätten meaning something like "would have", where the second verb didn't actually happen but it more of a thought of what could have happened. MT's explanation just confused me. Nevertheless, I realize I should get some practice with using it. ============================================================ ================ I got a lot done today and felt very good about everything. DEUTSCH MT - No MT today, I didn't feel like listening to anything on my commute. Hugo - I started using Hugo again and had a very productive session with it. I went over the vocab for the first 1/3 of week 10 and got some good stuff out of the chapter. The main takeaway was the use of um, statt and ohne in the second part of a sentence and their effect on word order. Assimil - I finished lesson 55 and translated lesson 6. I understood the story (lesson 55) pretty immediately and felt very comfortable with it. I tried reading Die Verwandlung and after a few sentences I found myself translating a word every couple of seconds. I understood the grammar fine, just not a lot of the words used. I decided to put this one aside for now and purchased Die Dritte Hand (same writer of Cafe in Berlin) for Kindle. This seems like a good book to go to at my level, plus it has all of the vocab for each chapter/story at the end so I can study them beforehand. The author has a whole bunch of books like these (and for cheap) so they should keep me busy for a while and help build up my reading vocab. ===== ============================================================ ================ 2014 SUPER CHALLENGE I watched an episode of "Küstenwache" auf ZDF. I've found I can understand a fair amount from this show and highly recommend it to other learners since the dialect used is fairly clean (relative to Hochdeutsch), as opposed to other shows I've seen. I tried to read Die Verwandlung but found the vocab used too overbearing, so no reading (other than 2 sentences) today. FILMS: Today - 43 mins Total - 283 mins (4217 mins to go for Half) BOOKS: Today - 0 Total - 13 pages (2496 pages to go for Half) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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