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German Improvement Initiative TAC14

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BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 33 of 41
06 February 2014 at 8:32pm | IP Logged 
BAnna und Josquin, vielen, vielen Dank für eure Sympathien. Ich weiß die emotionale Unterstützung wirklich zu schätzen. Es liegt mir viel daran.

Ich weiß, dass dieses Forum nicht die am besten Ort für diese ist, aber ich fühle mich wohl hier. Dies ist eine wunderbare Gemeinschaft und ich bin dankbar, ein Teil davon zu sein.

Edited by BaronBill on 06 February 2014 at 8:33pm

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BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 34 of 41
11 February 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged 
Update time. I've been working on intensive listening quite a bit lately as I feel it is one of my weakest skills. I have been watching How I Met Your Mother and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both are fun, but differ greatly in vocabulary.

How I have been watching:
1. Watch the episode with no subtitles in "focused mode". Try to piece everything together and pick out as many words and phrases as I can. I find I can pickup about 80-90% with this first viewing.
2. Watch again with English subtitles to "fill in the blanks" on stuff I didn't quite register the first time.
3. Watch the episode again in German with no subtitles. I should have no issues or gaps at this point.

Now, in order to avoid extreme boredom, I do steps 1 and 2 back to back but save step 3 for a week or so later.

Now, sometimes (more often with Buffy) I get what I feel to be 95%+ on the first watch-through. If that happens, I skip steps 2 and 3 and move on to the next episode.

I have also ordered a few more novels in German that should be arriving soon.
1 person has voted this message useful



BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 35 of 41
07 March 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged 
Ok, long overdue for an update, I know:

Naja, ich wurde vor fünf Tagen aus dem Krankenhaus entlassen. Ich habe fünf Tage im Krankenhaus verbracht. Ich hatte eine Infektion in meiner Lunge gehabt. Die Doktoren haben mir Steroide und Antibiotika gegeben. Die Infektion war besonders schlimm für mich, weil ich chronisches Asthma habe. Ich konnte nur sehr schwer atmen. Ich musste Sauerstoff bekommen und meine Lunge tat mir weh. Es war eine miserable Woche.

Außerdem war es unmöglich im Krankenhaus zu schlafen. Sie weckten mich vier oder fünf Male pro Nacht auf. Wie kann man so schlafen? Nun, versteht mich nicht falsch, ich bin dem Personal im Krankenhaus sehr sehr dankbar. Sie haben mir die beste Behandlung gegeben, die ich wollte. Sie haben mir die beste Behandlung gegeben, die ich bekommen konnte. Ich habe großen Respekt vor den Krankenschwestern und Doktoren auf der ganzen Welt. Ohne ihre Hilfe würde ich wahrscheinlich jetzt nicht hier sein. Also bin ich jetzt zu Hause und es ist immer noch schwer zu atmen. Aber zumindest bin ich aus dem Krankenhaus. Hoffentlich kann ich bald zurück zur Arbeit gehen und diese Qual wird in der Vergangenheit gelassen.

Was das Sprachenlernen betrifft verbringe ich meine Tage mit (dem) Zuhören und Lesen, während ich im Bett liege. Ich lerne Deutsch, Spanish und ein bisschen Chinesisch.

Long story short, I was in the hospital for most of last week with a lung infection. I was able to get some studying done but none of it was very good because I was in a lot of pain. But, I'm back home this week and have a renewed passion.

I completed my first ever italki.com German conversation session today and it was great. We talked about all kinds of things and it was noted that my speaking was very good but it far exceeded my listening comprehension. So, the suggestion was more TV shows and audiobooks in German. I think I will focus more attention on listening in the next few months.

More updates soon!
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BAnna
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4623 days ago

409 posts - 616 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Turkish

 
 Message 36 of 41
09 March 2014 at 1:09am | IP Logged 
Glad to hear you have recovered and are back home.
And your enthusiasm for German and Spanish is stronger than ever. Bravo!
2 persons have voted this message useful



BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 37 of 41
09 March 2014 at 3:07am | IP Logged 
BAnna, thanks so much!

My enthusiasm is definitely back for all of my TLs. It's a good feeling to be so motivated again.
1 person has voted this message useful



BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 38 of 41
13 March 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged 
Ok, update time. In the last 3 days I have had 2 hour long italki.com conversational sessions with two different German tutors.

The first tutor, was definitely more in the frame of mind of conversation practice. She would point out gross errors, but overall was pretty flexible with letting me speak and talk about pretty much whatever I wanted. I like that a lot.

The second tutor spent a lot more time and energy on correcting every bit of grammar that came out of my mouth. Now my grammar is decent but I'm no native so I make mistakes. It was difficult for me to get into the rhythm of the language when I was getting interrupted every other sentence for a minor mistake. Of course, he did help me notice a few key errors I made several times so I have something to work on, but I did not enjoy it as much.

That's it for now. More updates to come.
1 person has voted this message useful



BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 39 of 41
19 March 2014 at 10:44pm | IP Logged 
Updates:

Not a lot to report. I have been focusing about 8-10 hours a day on Chinese and so my German has been limited to about an hour a day of novel reading. I feel very comfortable in German and speaking and reading German is often a welcome break for my brain from Chinese.

I have 2 German meetup groups next week, so I should be able to get some more speaking practice then.

I go back to work next week, so I will probably set aside about an hour a day for each of my target languages (Chinese, Spanish, and German) and should quickly settle back into a good routine for all.
1 person has voted this message useful



BaronBill
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4690 days ago

335 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, German
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 40 of 41
03 April 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged 
Update time!

Again, not too much to report. I went back to work last week and have been reading and writing German for about 45-60 minutes a day. No real issues, no real progress. I wasn't able to make my meetups last week due to being behind at work, but hopefully I can get some practice in soon. I fear my German may be getting rusty.


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