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Rem [TAC’15] Rätsel/東亞/French/Czech | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 41 of 73 12 January 2015 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I just noticed what I typed in my message to you. The podcast I was referring to is L'avis de Marie NOT L'avis death Marie. LOL! Damn you autocorrect!! And, in defense of Harry Potter, they do get more grown up as they go along. For one thing the themes get more grown up as the characters grow up, and for another Rowling was improving as an author. I do plan to read HP 1 in French (and Hindi and Ancient Greek) because it will be good practice. But what I've really enjoyed in French is the Petit Nicolas series. You get good stories, a good laugh, amusing artwork by Sempé, etc. What makes it double useful is that you're reading an artefact of French culture. I have no specific suggestions for German, but if you could find something like that, it seems to me it kills two or three birds with one stone: learning the language, having a good time, and learning about the culture. Edited by Jeffers on 12 January 2015 at 4:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4522 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 42 of 73 12 January 2015 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I read all the HP books a couple of years ago for the first time in German. There is a definite jump up in themes/complexity between books 4 and 5, so if you can hold out till then you'll get a definite benefit.
HP is not essential to read for language learning though. I think the main reasons it is so often mentioned here is simply because: (1) it was a famous children's book; (2) it's translated into nearly every language (including Ancient Greek etc). For German there is a huge range to choose from. I quite liked the Hunger Games books (definitely not HP) and for something simpler than HP, the Percy Jackson books are quite good and easy to read (and in some ways better than HP - though they are still children's books). If you are intimidated by HP in paperback form (which is reasonable) I would recommended getting it in ebook format. It's much easier to read, and you'll find the story moves along much faster. The only argument about trying children's-books/young-adult literature is that they use a somewhat simpler grammar/vocabulary than adult books, but there are simple adult books out there. I found, for instance, Jurassic Park, a very easy read; and for something a little more challenging Murakami is very straightforward in structure. Edited by patrickwilken on 12 January 2015 at 6:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4998 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 43 of 73 15 January 2015 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree about HP being a good thing for language learning, especially thanks to the
progress in complexity, however, there are many other options as well. I wish you lots of luck with all your goals, teammate :-) 1: yeah, don't underestimate Uni. 3: the reading about languages and wanderlust can be as well conquered by allowing yourself to overfeed your desire to "know them all". digest so much information in a few weeks about everything, that you will be grateful to narrow it all down to a few languages in the end :-D 4:stop procrastinating or find good ways to procrastinate and still work towards your goals ;-) it works fine sometimes. sometimes not that much, true 6. sometimes a not enjoyable course can be brought to a whole new level by adding some more material to it, therefore making it not your daily/weekly/whatever goal per se but just a stepping stone towards the real goals. one more resource I forgot in that list I posted: languagepod101 offers Czech as well. I don't know about the Czech course quality, some courses of theirs are excellent, some not, but you can try for free. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| agta Diglot Groupie Poland Joined 5513 days ago 43 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: German, Italian | Message 44 of 73 18 January 2015 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I also tried reading HP in German but I couldn't maintain. Instead I've read one book of German translation of The Chronicles of Narnia. It's also a book for children but I somehow enjoyed it much more than HP. And I started reading the second book of the series - time will tell if it works for me as well.
I may also try 'Tschick' by Wolfgang Herrndorf. This book is available at my library. I had a look inside the book at Amazon and it seems readable for me. 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 45 of 73 18 January 2015 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Tschick has been recommended to me by a lot of people. It's meant to be fairly easy to read. It's written for adults, but in a easy style. I should really read it sometime too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7145 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 46 of 73 18 January 2015 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I introduced myself to Czech with “Colloquial Czech” and liked it for most part. Alternating textbooks might work but beware of instances where the approaches (including sequence of vocabulary or grammar introduced) differ so much that you'll feel as if you're starting all over again when you reopen one of the books. Another alternative that might work for you is Tschechisch im Alltag. All instructions and explanations are in German and I find it superior to "Colloquial Czech" or "Teach Yourself Czech" because it contains more exercises and audio. When I was in Czech Republic last year, I came upon a new series Czech for English Speakers - Čeština pro anglicky mluvící which impressed me with its graded approach, audio, exercises and answer keys (there are four volumes and I was very tempted to get the volumes for B1 and B2). This series may also be good although even with an exchange rate in your favour (1 GBP ~ 37 CZK), the shipping and customs charges likely make them a little more expensive than advertised (it'd be best that you get them in Czech Republic if you'll be there). There's also the free Czech FAST Course which glosses over the grammar big time since it's a crash course. However this might not be bad as a low beginner since you'd learn some of the basics and build some confidence in learning to use a bit of Czech in about a dozen situations. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4786 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 47 of 73 19 January 2015 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi Rem! A late visit, but I finally made it.
It can be daunting to juggle uni, languages, and wanderlust. As for procrastination, tell me about it (sigh). The part where you said you'd be the able too find a way to do it felt a lot like you were describing me! I loved the Daruma doll idea (thanks, patrickwilken!) to manage goals and battle procrastination, but you could also time box. The idea is to basically set a certain amount of time where you'd do that one thing, and once the time is up, leave it. So for instance, you could say, "For the next 5 minutes, I'll do nothing but read in German," and you do just that. You try to make it into a habit, and increase the frequency of these time intervals throughout the day. That way you can be sure that you'll actually do something, however little, rather than thinking,"I have 5 hours ahead of me, I still have time" and end up doing nothing at all. You can even start with 2 minutes, or 1, and then gradually increase, or do the opposite, and do shorter rounds as you go. It really depends on what you want or feel like doing. I realize that what's hard is to actually start the doing, rather than keep the doing going, if that makes any sense. Look at me, giving you advice about timeboxing. I should be telling myself this lol. I have a medical step exam in a little over two months, and I've wasted most of the past three months procrastinating. Time to hit the books. Good luck, Rem! Glad to be with you on the team this year. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3746 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French | Message 48 of 73 19 January 2015 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for all the responses everyone. :)
There’s a lot of information for me take in here, so my apologies if I don’t respond to everyone right away. I can certainly see why HP is recommended so often to learners but I just don’t think that I can justify reading it (at least not yet) when I don’t really enjoy it. I think that my first ‘real’ book needs to be something that I genuinely want to read. Perhaps I’ll tackle the HP series afterwards (it certainly couldn’t hurt).
lol. The autocorrect gremlins strike again. That was a good one though. :)
I’m not aware of anything like that in German, however; my knowledge is extremely limited (I have had very little exposure to native materials so far). Maybe I could ask my tutors if they have any recommendations.
Thank you so much for the resources Chung. The Czech FAST course might be good for me. I actually love grammar, however; since I’m looking into getting a separate grammar book for Czech anyway it might not be a bad thing if Czech FAST only skims it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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