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Best way to spend $100 right now (German) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4329 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 1 of 15 29 December 2014 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks to the holiday season, I have a $100 budget to add my collection
of German resources. Come 2015 my German odyssey will begin, and I want to earmark this final purchase before the 31st, possibly taking advantage of several seasonal sales. The background: I'm a beginner in German with a somewhat mixed history in self-study. German is the first language I'm self-studying where I'm not immersed in the native environment or using a personal language helper/tutor that also has a plethora of materials available online and offline. This is compared to Arabic, Spanish, Quechua, and Albanian, which I studied in a native environment with whatever resources were available (plenty for Spanish/Arabic, less for Albanian, almost none for Quechua) The German Task: I've gathered a wealth of resources for German, too many perhaps. I've access to Michel Thomas and Pimsleur via my library. My starting books will be Assimil's German With Ease, and Deutsche Welle or Deutsch im Blick. On my smartphone I'm using Duolingo, Memrise (pre-made courses), and Anki (self-made decks). I'm a huge fan of the multi-track approach, hence the large buffet of materials. Last, and certainly not least, I've ready access to native speaker who has a vested interest in me learning her native tongue. She's available for corrections, questions, etc., but since her day job is a teacher, she's not about to teach me full time. Edit: I forgot to mention what my goals are regarding German. In short, I would like to reach B1-B2 levels by the end of 2015 with 10-15 hours study a week, focusing on listening, speaking, reading, and writing, in that order. The Question What resource should I invest this remaining $100 in? With the $70 spent on Assimil, I have a budget of $100 remaining for a final resource. I want to make this purchase count. I have quite a bit of language-learning material aimed at beginners (Assimil, MT, Pimsleur, textbooks, etc), so I thought I should try to flesh out my collection with some native level materials that would still be comprehensible and decipherable for a beginner. My current short list is:
To be honest, at the moment I am leaning towards Glossika as I get a reusable resource with no time restrictions. LingQ and Bliu Bliu fill similar reading niches, but I think I can emulate them with either lingua.ly or a free LingQ account and a LWT installation. That said, LingQ and Bliu Bliu don't seem to have language restrictions, so I could use them to supplement my ongoing study of Spanish and Arabic. Babbel is the odd one out on that list, as it isn't native material, but I found it an interesting service with some good reviews and I like that it is available on Android. If I didn't have such ready access to a native speaker, I would probably earmark the $100 for 1-1 iTalki lessons. I'd love to hear HTLAL's suggestions. Should I go for Glossika? Did I miss something else entirely? Edited by Ramblurr on 29 December 2014 at 4:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4522 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 15 29 December 2014 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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It sounds like you have enough course materials.
I'd go for native materials. What about a 2nd hand Kindle from Ebay - the 6inch with the cursor (which is much easier to use for dictionary lookups), plus a pop-up dictionary? In Europe the cost of Kindle is about 45 Euros, PONS dictionary about 10 Euros. That leaves you with 45 for a few books to start you off. By the time you finish Assimil in about six months you'll be read to start reading, if not before. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4329 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 3 of 15 29 December 2014 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the suggestion, I agree wrt having enough course materials.
I already happen to have a Kindle, so I suppose I could spend the money on books. I've always wanted to do bilingual Reading-Listening. Also I suppose saving for audiobooks, TV shows or Movies to learn from is not a bad idea either. Does anyone know of any German bilingual aligned text+audio for LR? I must admit I'm very curious about Glossika though...and since it is only $75 right now I am leaning toward it. Edited by Ramblurr on 29 December 2014 at 6:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 15 29 December 2014 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Agreed, I'd go for native materials. Especially in German, which doesn't have much interesting stuff for free (whether legally or not).
If you plan to read a lot, definitely get an e-reader. It's a portable library and much easier on the eyes than any other portable options. Consider also DVD's/audiobooks. The worst option is LingQ imo. You can get the same functionality with free tools like Learning with Texts, Readlang, bliu bliu etc. (btw what bliu bliu feature(s) are you willing to pay for?) Last time I tried, I didn't really see any native materials either, just semi-native at most. Maybe it's better now but LingQ-style short content can be found easily online and tailored to your tastes. One more possibility would be to sign up for AJATT's IMX - or maybe more like, spare the $$ to sign up for it later. You can read about emk's experience here. And btw see his post here too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4696 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 15 29 December 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Native materials and italki conversational lessons.
You don't need much more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 15 29 December 2014 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Films, TV Series and Books. Get yourself a book and start reading from day one. Read one paragraph at a time, try to puzzle out the meaning of each word. Then look up every word to see how much you got right. Add the sentences you like into an ANKI deck or other flashcard program. The reason I say from day one, is you'll find when you are doing your course work you'll hit on a word or sentence structure you've seen in the book your reading. You'll soon know 10% then 20%, then 30%, etc of the subsequent pages or chapters of the book. By the end of the book you'll be amazed by your progress. If you don't like books then use a comic book. Reading a book will show you how the language is used "in the wild".
Try to get untranslated books if you can. In other words; German books, written by German authors in German. Not translated English books like Harry Potter in German. Because you want to see how Germans construct sentences, not how they translate English sentence structures. Find a TV series you enjoy watching in German, and watch it religiously trying to puzzle out the words of each episode. Non-subtitled stuff if you can get it. Get a film and do subs2srs like EMK's experiment which will help with listening comprehension. Do a little something every day. But don't get to hooked-up on course books. They can actually keep you trapped at a lower level. If you want to progress into intermediate or advanced speaking you need to be using native materials. My 2¢'s :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 15 30 December 2014 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
Ahem, a good translator constructs every sentence from scratch, rather than based on the original structure. And a writer who speaks another language may find themselves thinking in L2 and looking for an equivalent in L1. Or they might simply come up with awkward things and struggle to find a better wording, and that's before we get to the issue of diglossia, ie speaking a dialect at home and the standard language in a more formal situation or with outsiders. Basically, I have my reservations against the idea of using original novels/books from the beginning. And Harry Potter is quite expensive, so if you're going to get it anyway, get it now :) Well, the digital editions on Pottermore aren't *THAT* expensive, but the paper versions kind of are. Edited by Serpent on 30 December 2014 at 2:42am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4522 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 15 30 December 2014 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I found Harry Potter books really valuable when I was starting out with German (as well as the Hunger Games trilogy and the Percy Jackson books).
You said you had a Kindle already, but do you have a good pop-up dictionary? The PONS is excellent. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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