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| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3473 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 17 of 25 10 May 2015 at 5:57pm | IP Logged |
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French:
I've been very busy for the past few days, but I made sure to make some progress. I've been reading the book about Eleanor Roosevelt and it's very engaging so I'm going to keep going with that. Since the last time I updated this log (4 days ago), I've read 99 pages, bringing my total since the beginning of this log up to 1070! I should probably set a goal for my reading. I'll set my goal as 400 pages over the next 20 days. I won't have as much time as I normally do as I have to study (read: cram) for my end of year exams. German: I've restarted the active wave, which I'm gonna do at a slooooooow pace. I'm at 15/100 now, so at this rate I should be done in 85 days. I've been watching some movies and trying to read and I've realised I'm kind of at a loss for what to do. I can't really remember being at this stage in French. I've downloaded a copy of the Hunger Games in German (obviously not for extensive reading haha). I'll make use of my Kindle's dictionary and hopefully I'll pick up a bit of sentence structure there. I'm going to try and get a hold of a grammar book or something soon as my grammar is pretty weak. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4953 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 18 of 25 10 May 2015 at 7:01pm | IP Logged |
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I totally understand your feelings about your German skills, I am in quite a similar
place. I am now focusing on a grammar book and a vocabulary book and I hope to get a solid base enough to get into easier native material soon. My first attempt on a tvseries was nothing awesome. We just need to keep going! A few ideas 1.you might like to try some adventure games in German. I am now playing Broken Sword and it is much more accessible than movies or books, I have both the audio and text available at once. The pace is slower than in a movie, I need to interact with the game, which makes me prove my comprehension and think more about the information said. 2.Please, share your views on the Hunger Games in German once you get to reading it. My planned first book is Eragon and I'd like to get ideas for more. 3.If you're looking for a grammar book, I am pretty excited about Klipp und Klar, published by Klett, you might like to consider it. It's very informative with lots of examples, I find it fun, and the price/value ratio is really good, in my opinion. I am approximately in one third and already noticing some progress. Another good looking one is Übungsgramatik für Anfänger, published by Hueber. It is still waiting for my attention, obviously I let myself drag by the the pictures in Klipp und Klar. But I am definitely planning on using it as it is obviously well structured with plenty examples and exercises as well. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3473 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 19 of 25 13 May 2015 at 11:14pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the suggestions Cavesa! I think I might order Klipp und Klar and in the meantime
just look up grammar points as I see them. I have the feeling that the "look them up as you find them" approach might not work so well for German haha. I've only read 5 pages of the Hunger Games so far, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I understood! I still had to look up an insane amount of words, but I got the general gist of it. I've already read it many times in English and I would definitely recommend it. It's a real page turner. So in the past few days I've basically just been coasting along. I haven't done any more active lessons, but I have been reading a bit in German and watching some videos and movies. My listening comprehension isn't great, but I can often follow along with the gist of what's being said, which is encouraging! I've made a French friend on the Internet today. We talked for like 2 hours and it was really great. My written French is both better and worse than I thought. I can pretty much "converse" effortlessly through text, but I had to look up a couple of spellings, which was annoying. But I have a new French friend now! I've read around 70 pages in the last 3 days, bringing my total up to 1140. I should be finished with this book in the next couple of days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4953 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 20 of 25 14 May 2015 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the tip, I think Hunger games might get on my reading list really soon.
Nowadays, I am postponing all the new very popular fantasy books aimed at teenagers until I can read them in other languages as they are sure to be translated and likely to not be too hard for an intermediate. Thanks! The "look it up when you encounter it" approach is not bad. The only problem is, that I tend to encounter everything at once in German. But I don't mind, there are already some structures in the fog and chaos, I hope to get the rest, given enough time and energy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4853 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 21 of 25 14 May 2015 at 12:31pm | IP Logged |
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For quick grammar lookups, have you tried German.about.com? I haven't been on there in a loooong while, but the French version (French.about.com) is great for checking things out on the fly. Whenever I Google a grammatical question about French, it's usually one of the first, and best, results.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it on your log, but are you aware of the wealth of free learning materials available on the Deutsche Welle website? One of their introductory courses might be a good complement to Assimil. I think the most used one is called Deutsche Warum Nicht? I didn't use it, but I used their audio course called Radio D. It is very basic, but the storyline was interesting, there is a good deal about German culture, and it teaches learning skills, especially listening for clues to meaning even when you don't know all the words. Edited by Jeffers on 14 May 2015 at 12:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3473 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 22 of 25 23 May 2015 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
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Been very busy this last week! I basically spent all of today and yesterday constantly refreshing the news to
find out more about the referendum result. I must say, I'm very proud to be Irish right now, which I don't often have the opportunity to say. I'll start working again tomorrow. Edited by Lundrum on 23 May 2015 at 6:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3473 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 23 of 25 28 May 2015 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
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For the past 3 days I've settled into a kind of rhythm. Nice to have a pretty regular thing
going again. My exams are in less than a week and I'm spending around 4 hours on languages a day and about.... 2 hours on studying. Maybe I should actually change that haha. So for the past few days I've been listening constantly to this great podcast I found called "Tea Time Club" on France Inter. There's a really broad range of topics which focus around "l'intime" in life. There are at least two episodes about languages too :p it's here if you wanna check it out. Episodes are around 1 hour long. There are also a bunch of other podcasts somewhere on that site. I've also been watching around an hour and a half of Spongebob Schwammkopf in German a day. I think one of the really nice things about learning a new language is that you kind of get to experience your childhood again. It's a really nice feeling to be able to watch these shows again and not feel like I'm wasting my time or something. I understand quite a lot, sentences at a time sometimes. Certainly enough to follow along. I then spend around 20-30 minutes on the German subreddit on reddit. Every day I add 30 words to Anki. I might up this a little, my reviews are around 120 a day and I blow through them in 10-15 minutes after getting up in the morning. Nothing compared to the hell I went through with Core 6k when I was "learning" Japanese. I thought as a bit of fun I might outline my general goals for the rest of the year. Next year I'll be going into Transition Year at school, which is pretty much the only good thing in the Irish education system. We'll have a lot more freedom and support in teaching ourselves skills, so I'll be taking full advantage of that! I'm hoping that by the end of the summer I'll be able to read books like the Hunger Games in German and follow along without a dictionary. Don't know how feasible that is. I'd like to have perhaps a B1-mid B2 reading comprehension level by the end of the year and maybe B1 listening skills. At that point I'll probably start talking. Writing isn't a priority for me in any of my languages, and I'd like to get my writing up to scratch in French before concentrating on German. Assuming I learn 20 words a day until the 31st December (hoping to do a lot more, but you never know), I should have around 4700 words in my deck. I know words aren't everything, but it's a nice metric and easy to calculate. I'll almost certainly change these vague goals later on, but I seem to be progressing smoothly even without a clear target. I think my German goals might be a little pessimistic, I'm not sure. I love French. It's my favourite language, and the only one I've been able to raise to any sort of fluency. I actually feel like French is a part of my life that I couldn't live without, so I don't think I'll have any problems with it. I'll keep reading and listening without needing to force myself. So no real goals here. I want to learn Polish and Irish to a B1 level at some point. Polish because there's a huge Polish immigrant community in Ireland and I have a lot of Polish friends whose conversations I'd quite like to understand and take part in. Plus I like the way it sounds :3 Irish because it's the national language of my country which I kind of feel obligated to learn. I don't particularly like it right now, but hopefully I can change that. I've had a good 10 years of schooling in it, but I am really not very good at it, mostly because it's taught very badly here. Learning it would make my last few school years much much easier as it's an obligatory subject. I also would like to reactivate my dead Japanese passive skills (a very approximate B1, A0 active), as I love Japanese culture and it was the second language I tried to tackle after French. I'm probably going to wait a few years for this, though. No rush. I've done 3 years of Spanish at school and I get good grades in it. I'd put myself at maybe a low A2. I've never studied it myself, but it's kind of a "low-hanging fruit" for me, because of my French and the classes I've taken. If I can learn all of these languages to some sort of fluency by the time I'm 20 (around 4.5 years) I'd be really happy with myself. Edited by Lundrum on 28 May 2015 at 11:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Files Newbie Italy Joined 3412 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English | Message 24 of 25 30 May 2015 at 6:34pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Lundrum!
I'm a new member and I found your log some minutes ago! I think your story is very interesting! I follow you in this challenge! Tomorrow I begin Assimil German (and others Assimil course languages) and I hope to do your own progress! Keep hard and never give up! : ] 1 person has voted this message useful |
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