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How can I piece together spoken German? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4568 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 9 of 13 24 January 2014 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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My mother-in-law in Germany has the TV on all the time. I mean literally all the time.
I'm sure that helped my listening comprehension a great deal. For obvious reasons, I wanted to improve my German from day one and I willingly engaged with the sort of daytime shows I would avoid like the plague in my own country. Constant input is good. It doesn't have to be high-brow, in fact the everyday words and expressions are far more important in the early days. Plenty of time later to talk about technical stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4479 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 10 of 13 24 January 2014 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I find the slow news too slow too, though it certainly helps comprehension. If you haven't already checked it out look at die Zeit's news videos. They are are much more interesting for me than DW, and I find them relatively easy to follow: Die Zeit videos Edited by patrickwilken on 24 January 2014 at 5:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| crazyleseratte Pentaglot Newbie Germany crazyleseratte.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3908 days ago 26 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English, German*, Spanish, French, Italian Studies: Dutch, Danish, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian | Message 11 of 13 24 January 2014 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I want to practice my comprehension, I take a slightly different approach. Many of you suggest to listen to the same audio many times. I generally prefer watching a DVD of a show with various seasons - it has to be something I know already. The advantages are: you like it and would have watched it anyway; you have many episodes with the same characters, to get used to the voices; you don't get bored that easily; and you get the gist almost right away. The important thing is to start with material you know pretty well, then you can choose episodes that you don't remember very well, and when you feel up to it, take something you don't. It's good to have chunks (short episodes, like "Two and a half men" or "Nurse Jackie"), instead of a movie that's three hours.
I do this from day one, and I seldom have problems with my comprehension. However, I tend to have the problem with my reading, and I noticed that it just gets better in time and without me doing anything about it. Maybe this can be seen as some kind of plateau. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lingumaus Diglot Newbie Germany bit.ly/1fWQZiV Joined 3907 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC1 Studies: Modern Hebrew, Cornish | Message 12 of 13 03 February 2014 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||
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It could help if you read and listen at the same time, and then listen without reading.
There are some websites with newspaper articles that can be read out to you. I think deutsche welle has this too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aspiringplyglot Triglot Groupie United Kingdom aspiringpolyglot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4523 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Esperanto, Polish, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 13 of 13 03 February 2014 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
I cannot agree more! I was in the same position: could understand individual words but once spoken in a sentence, I couldn't understand the sentence. After reading a few Harry Potter books, initially with great difficulty I must add, then moving onto a couple of crime novels, I started to watch some TV series and have since watched most of them two or three times! I watched Sex and the City: great as the speech is relatively quick which means you really need to activate those listening skills to understand. Also has a lot of slang terms which are also great if you want to bring your German to a 'street-level'. Will & Grace: Relatively short episodes and short scenes meaning that if you don't understand something you can just move on without hassle. Pretty funny too! Modern Family: This was probably one of the hardest for me. I had never seen one episode in English or anything other language so had to understand practically everything so as to follow the story. A lot of 'in' jokes which are sometimes translated for the German audience of course. Was difficult if I didn't know who they were talking about or to which situation they were referring. I would definitely say though, find something that interests you for sure! No point if you're not interested! *and I also watched all of these with TL subtitles first time through! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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