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HSD’s Attempt at learning German | ||
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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 9 of 23 11 November 2014 at 8:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Good luck! I'm a fellow German learner and look forward to following your progress.
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| Jimjam Newbie Australia Joined 3978 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Japanese, German | Message 10 of 23 11 November 2014 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey HSD, it looks like we are in the same boat. I'm up to lesson 22 of assimil and know how you feel about
the lack of production. Though with each new lesson, I feel that I understand so much more so it shouldn't be too long before it starts falling into place. I'm eager to keep up with your studies. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HSD Newbie United States Joined 3667 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 11 of 23 13 November 2014 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My gosh, it's amazing what a little change can make. My previous post about output was correct, but when I took a moment and analyzed what I was doing I found a great error. I had been reviewing all of my Anki decks in German and recalling their meaning in English. I've since reversed this and am able to produce quite a bit more German. My success rate on the decks has fallen through the floor, but in a way that has created progress! A silly mistake, but not too much time lost (and the initial German-to-English review certainly didn't hurt anything).
Pimsleur has now gone through lesson 10, and I really appreciate the speaking practice. The material is moving slowly, but along with the other materials I really appreciate setting time aside to practice listening/speaking. Last night I completed Assimil lesson 18. Every time I feel great about Assimil I'll get a lesson or two that just knocks me out, but I know that's a good thing. I've found the last two lessons very difficult. The good news is, I was recently sick and was able to say "I am ill and I have a headache" in German (Ich bin krank und ich habe ein Kopfschmerzen!). My wife didn't understand me, but I was proud. I've ordered my first novel, but it's just something to set aside as a future goal. I've always read The Walking Dead comic books, so I ordered the first novel in German. I've never read the novel, but expect the vocabulary to be pretty basic and it's a story I'm invested in. Hopefully it isn't too bad of an English-to-German translation. I wish I knew where to get the monthly comic book in German, as this is something I'd push myself through with pleasure (even if I had to look up most words). Also, I'll be purchasing a German/English dictionary soon, so if anybody has a recommendation please let me know. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4074 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 12 of 23 13 November 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Keep it up!
Ich habe Kopfschmerzen (no ein - I am guessing Schmerzen is plural).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hueber-Wörterbuch-Learners-Dictiona ry-Deutsch-Englisch/dp/3191017364 This a learners dictionary, I have found it very useful in terms of the amount of info presented, and the example sentences given. Edited by Gemuse on 21 November 2014 at 10:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4525 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 13 of 23 13 November 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
It depends what you want. If you want to increase your passive reading ability German>English cards are great; if you want to increase your active speaking ability English>German cards are better. At the moment I am only using German->English as I want to add a lot of passive vocabulary quickly so I can more comfortably read the newspaper. Doing also English->German cards would add a lot of extra time to my reviews, without serving any useful purpose, since I am unlikely want to use a lot of this language in daily life anyway.
Getting into native materials as soon as possible is really the right way to go. You'll find your level goes up really fast if you do. It's always a bit difficult when you start, but it gets better very quickly. If you want German comics you might want to check out Modern Graphics in Berlin. I do most of my reading on ebooks and use the PONS German-English dictionary. I also have the Langenscheidt Deutsch als Fremdsprache monolingual dictionary, but that's probably not very useful until you are about B2. If you want check out words online have a look at LEO. Edited by patrickwilken on 13 November 2014 at 11:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| HSD Newbie United States Joined 3667 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 14 of 23 13 November 2014 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Gemuse - thanks for the correction on my Kopfschmerzen and for the recommendation on the dictionary. It runs about $35 USD, so I'm trying to find it cheaper, but will probably pick up a copy tonight.
@patrick - The Modern Graphics page looks great! When you're in over your head on something like that, do you typically push through and Anki all the new vocab? I'm imagining if I order something like that I'd go through about 2 dialogues, Anki it for the night, then resume the next day. Does that sound in line with what you've done in the past? 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 15 of 23 14 November 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||
My frustration level is too high to read too much text without knowing what's going on, so I've generally gone for ebooks, but there are others on HTLAL who have really enjoyed using graphic novels to learn and just read extensively (no dictionary). With ebooks I just look up words and don't worry about Anki. If the word is important it reappears. That's good for the first few thousand words at least. The problem I had, which turned me off Anki, was that I was encountering too many new words to comfortably put into my Anki deck (I can learn say 30 cards a day - and I was seeing many more new words). At the time I was doing both German-English and English-German cards, which made things much harder, and in retrospect I think was silly, as I didn't need to know the English-German to read. My experience of Anki is that it's very useful at getting you some vocab, but the language doesn't really come alive until you actually read/listen etc. I've recently started reading online newspapers, and hope to soon just read paper newspapers without a dictionary. However, there are a lot of new words that I haven't got from novels (e.g., to do with economics, politics) and I've recently gone back to Anki to just pile these words in. If you use Firefox, checkout the Firelang extension. It offers a pop-up dictionary, and you can import words you look up online with context sentence into Anki. I don't know if that really answers your question though I am afraid. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HSD Newbie United States Joined 3667 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 16 of 23 21 November 2014 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This past week has been pretty rough, or perhaps my enthusiasm is leveling off. I felt like I couldn't retain anything I was being exposed to (especially in Assimil, which has gotten quite hard for me). I've now completed Pimsleur lesson 19, Assimil lesson 26, and unit 5 of Teach yourself. I've appreciated Pimsleur the most, because it is a consistent 'win' for me, meaning I always feel like I have a grip on the material. As I mentioned, I've had a very rough go at Assimil in the past week. Some of the new concepts are very difficult for me. I've switched back to German-to-English for my Anki deck to lighten my load, since I've felt so much struggle in my studies lately.
I've played around on Memrise and Duolingo, both of which have given me some good vocabulary. I watched a miniseries in German recently (Generation War), but mainly read the English subtitles without being able to observe much of the audio. Still, it was a really good series and there were some small language uses I was able to observe (the way one uses entschuldigung for example). I am expecting a copy of Der Kleine Prinz, a children's book, in today and am going to start toying with that on the side for fun. It's rated for children ages 10 and up, so I don't expect to be able to move through the material with ease just yet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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