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German - advice for A1-A2 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 17 of 42 16 July 2013 at 9:45am | IP Logged | |||||
I use Anki and have found that very helpful, but 50 words a day too much. I have learnt about 9000 cards over the last year, which has been very helpful. What was very helpful was not only learning individual words, but also sentences, so you get a sense of grammar and so on. I don't do sentence translations, but I part of the Super Challenge, and hope to have completed 10000 pages of reading by the end of the year. Reading really seems to be the golden way to language learning for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4359 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 18 of 42 05 August 2013 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I know I've said this before, but Deutsche Welle was an extremely important part in making that jump. I didn't even do the courses; just the Top-Thema, Video of the Week, and Langsame Gesprochene Nachtrichten (but at the regular pace, because the other felt too unnaturally slow). I would say that around an hour a day for 3 months helped me to take my German to another level. This was probably slower than it needed to be, because I also didn't use Anki or SRS devices (I just don't retain much that way) and as I said, I didn't do any of the courses.
For listening, I watched a lot of dubbed shows that I had already seen. I know that's seen as the big forbidden thing to do in language learning, but German dubbing can be really good, and I benefitted from watching shows I had already seen several times (so I already knew a good amount of the dialogue--somewhat embarrassing to admit I actually watch that much tv!). The thing I would caution against with dubbing though is that if it's a show that's very heavily language oriented (think "Big Bang Theory"), a lot ends up being lost in translation. I've also found that to be true with characters who are supposed to have really strong regional/social status accents. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 19 of 42 05 August 2013 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks. I'll really have to check out Deutsche Welle.
I think dubbed shows are really useful, and German dubbing is very generally very good. I actually like the Walter White in German more than English! Watching shows you have already seen makes it much easier to follow the dialogue, and of course it's much easier to watch shows were not too much of the action occurs in the words (e.g., Mad Men). It is surprising how much we use accents in English to denote class etc. Most of this is lost in German dubbing. Probably the worse example would be the Wire where the black and white characters speak the same High German. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4612 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 20 of 42 08 August 2013 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When you are in the company of German people, listen attentively to everything that is said. Contribute when
you can, of course, but focus on following the general theme of the conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 21 of 42 08 August 2013 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Talking of dubbing, I used to hate anything dubbed, both on principle, and in practice.
Whether techniques have improved, or I've become more accommodating or what, but more recently, dubbed things feel to me better than they used to be. Since I study both German and Danish, I was very pleased to come across episodes of the cult Danish series "Borgen" dubbed into German, and it worked very well. The character Kasper worked particularly well as a German I thought. :-) Perhaps it's the closeness of the languages in that case, or perhaps German dubbers are quite accomplished, since there is so much dubbing done for stuff shown in Germany I believe. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 22 of 42 08 August 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Is it? That had not been my impression from HTLAL to be honest. Isn't it compatible with the idea of comprehensible input? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 23 of 42 09 August 2013 at 8:50am | IP Logged | |||||
I think dubbing has become better. If you look at German dubbing of older movies it's usually pretty bad. I do think it's easier to dub German into other Germanic languages. Lip sync looks really odd in dubbed films in Italian or Spanish, let alone Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nonneb Pentaglot Groupie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4741 days ago 80 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian, French | Message 24 of 42 09 August 2013 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What qualities of the dubbing make it better? I'm just asking because I was visiting Germany recently and went to go see a movie with a native speaker, and they kept swearing at the movie (more the previews than the feature, actually) for using Anglicisms and kept repeating, "You can't say that in German." (The movie was the most recent Star Trek, if anyone's interested) Is this an uncommon perception of the dubs?
That being said, I generally don't like dubbed movies but do at times use them for language learning, as I find them generally easier to understand. And OP, German is the one foreign language where I used no textbooks or "materials" of any kind besides dictionaries and looking up declension tables online. While I was living in Germany, I made it my goal to do one new thing in German every day. This ranged from the quite simple at the beginning (tell them not to give me mayonnaise at McD's) to a bit more demanding towards the end of my time there (try to convince furniture company to replace my bed slats for free). This generally involved things like looking up the necessary vocab first and at times asking a native speaker for help, but I never really tried to make it harder on purpose. I just picked something I couldn't do, no matter how mundane, and did it, and a few months later, I had gone from A1+ to B1+. Living with a native speaker, hearing a lot German at work, and having a strong background of applying the knowledge in grammar books made this easier for me, but I think it's something that anyone can use in addition to however else they're studying to increase the number of things they can do in the language, which for many is more important and concrete than how many words they know or what kind of sentences they can use. Edited by nonneb on 09 August 2013 at 3:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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