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Trying to reach C1 German in 8 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| stmc2 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6241 days ago 45 posts - 58 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German | Message 9 of 17 22 May 2012 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the info there. I also have that Langenscheidt Vocab book and I am in the process of putting all the items into anki. A time consuming process but worthwhile in the end. i think that this is a wonderful book with a very attractive layout. A very clear, simple and straight to the point book. The vast majority of the words in my mind are very passive, so i will have to go through a process of activating them later on. I am confident that knowledge of those 4000 words would give me a fantastic base.
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6075 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 10 of 17 22 May 2012 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
To be honest I have no idea how many words one would actually need to recognize in order to understand one of those articles. I'm trying to get further along in the B1/B2 range for French and would love to be shown the right way ;) but for now all I can do is read, read, read, dictionary in hand. If a person reads one newspaper article a day (an easy one, nothing to technical) and manages to find between 12-15 new words, that's 400-500 new words per month. That's a start. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hoppy Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4605 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 11 of 17 22 May 2012 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to me that what you should focus on most is your speaking ability. Look online and try to find any German-language groups in your area (meetup.com is a good source). Since you're still in college, try to find student groups, or maybe email the German department and see if any students are interested in weekly discussions/conversations. If Skype's your thing, you could try that, although I'm not personally very into talking on the computer (but as I understand it, a lot of people here do find it very useful). Although talking with native speakers is good, speaking German with anyone is fine. What you'll need is the ability to respond quickly in German without spending 10 seconds forming a grammatically perfect sentence.
I hope this helps! Good luck! P.S. Don't get too stressed, you'll have plenty of opportunities to get up to speed once you're in Germany, don't get down on yourself over an arbitrary B2/C1/C2 distinction. That said, knowing you're C1 will be a great confidence booster. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4678 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 12 of 17 22 May 2012 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
These numbers sound a bit more like it, taken with the customary piles of salt. But good luck conversing with 80% of what you need--I doubt you'll get too far. Not to discourage learners, naturally (everyone is born with zero words and learns from there), just noting that you need to keep learning beyond those 2000 to reach a solid conversational level. I also focus on medieval fantasy, so I know where you're coming from. I've found that from reading fantasy with a DE-DE dictionary I've been learning words in German that I don't even know in English, like Wams, Wappenschild and Wappenrock. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4678 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 13 of 17 22 May 2012 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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http://www.scribd.com/doc/58382879/38/Vocabulary-Size-and-th e-CEFR#page=194
This paper addresses vocabulary acquisition in great depth and includes a discussion at about page 186 of the document on the relationship between vocabulary size and CEFR levels. The paper is discussed briefly here, as well: http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2012/01/num ber-of-known-words.html So I guess for those word-counters out there the answer is to shoot for mastery of at least 4000-5000 common words if you're trying to become an advanced learner (which may be anything from B2-C2), but then expect to spend a very long time improving your vocabulary beyond that on the way to true native-like vocabulary mastery. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 14 of 17 15 October 2014 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Trying to achieve C1 certificate by March 2015
I would ideally like to sit the C1-certificate in German by late-March next year. I am probably border B2/C1 for reading/listening, but my speaking is weaker (probably low B2 for speaking), and my writing up to now has been fairly non-existent. I am not sure how realistic a five month time frame is given my level, but I do have the advantage of living in a fairly immersive environment in Germany, and am married to a German. Can anyone who has sat the exam give any practical tips? I don't have infinite funds, but could hire a tutor if that was seen as a good investment. I could also simply write essays every day and my wife, who is an academic, could correct them. Or I could perhaps write essays etc at home for a couple of months, and then hire a tutor a few months before the exam. I would be very interested to hear what people think is the most efficient way to prepare for the exam. Edited by patrickwilken on 15 October 2014 at 1:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4378 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 15 of 17 03 November 2014 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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| Randwulf Newbie United States Joined 4882 days ago 32 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 17 05 November 2014 at 12:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Since this thread's been resurrected here's what happened to me.
I passed the TestDaF on schedule with: Leseverstehen: 5 Hoerverstehen: 5 muendlicher Ausdruck: 5 (surprising, but I'll take it) schriftlicher Ausdruck: 4 (expected this to be better than speaking but I'll take it) After my OP: For reading: I kept reading the news and novels. (Mostly fantasy novels, so I have an impressive vocabulary of obscure middle-age words ;) For listening: I started spending most of my listening time watching TV shows on myspass.de. I started with cartoons, which are relatively easy to understand (got 4 seasons of Spongebob Squarepants under my belt, among other things) and later moved on to live action shows which are a bit more difficult (Axel will's wissen is a good one). Sometimes I rewinded to hear something again but for the most part I just listened, tried to get as much as possible, and moved on. I rarely looked up words. I relied on reading to expand my vocabulary instead. I did try LR for a bit but thought it was tedious and, for me, not as effective as just watching TV. For speaking: In the mornings I walked half an hour to campus and in the evenings I walked half an hour back. During that time I rambled to myself and imaginary people about whatever inane thing came to mind. That's pretty much it, I'm rather surprised my speaking score was so high, I was terribly afraid of failing that. For writing: I got pretty much the best penpal the world has ever seen. We wrote gigantic 3000 word emails back and forth weekly and she never wanted to try it in English. At first I really agonized over every sentence trying to make it perfect. It took me ages to write an email. But after a couple of months I could do it twice as quickly with half as many mistakes, and a couple of months after that... It was basically exponential improvement. Ah and I did end up studying abroad in Germany, taking master's level Computer Science classes in German and living with German room mates. It wasn't always easy but hell was it rewarding. 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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