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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 70 18 January 2007 at 6:17am | IP Logged | |||||
As for having to be graded on a language, I'll always love English despite having taken it at school for nine years. And I'm sure I wouldn't stop loving Finnish if I had to study it at school... Actually I still like German, and the fact that I know it worse than Finnish after taking German at school for almost 4 years and studying Finnish on my own for less than two years makes me sad:/ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 10 of 70 27 January 2007 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
You can also see this as cause for joy - it looks like it really is true that one does a better job learning a language on one's own. Few subjects are like that, if you think about it. Edited by frenkeld on 27 January 2007 at 6:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 11 of 70 27 January 2007 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Since I find the initial period of studying a language somewhat aggravating, mostly due to impatience, I will allow myself indecently frequent updates for a little while, just to maintain pressure on myself to keep moving at a good pace.
The latest two activities with German: 1. 16 Jan 2007 - 25 Jan 2007: Went with some care, but without deliberate vocabulary memorization, through Chapters 3 & 4 of "German for Beginners" by Duff. 2. 25 Jan 2007 - 26 Jan 2007: Read through just the grammar sections in the rest of the book, Chapters 5-10. Duff's book has 10 chapters, each of which consists of 5 lessons. Most of the lessons consist of 4 parts each: a grammar section, where new grammar is introduced; a practice section, which consists of made-up sentences illustrating the new grammar, usually without translation; a situational section, usually devoted to one topic and consisting of a mixture of vocabulary, phrases, and sentences; and finally, a reading selection, which can be unabridged, with translation provided. So, chapters 3 & 4 together were really 10 lessons. Some of the readings were very short selections from Till Eulenschpiegel - I couldn't tell if these were abridged or not, but they were plenty challenging. I was able to figure out the structure of the majority of sentences by comparing them with the translation, but I did decide to leave some of the tougher nuts for another day. All in all, this seems to have further softened the language for me, especially with regards to sentence structure - I looked at some of the later lessons in Cortina German, "German Made Simple", Rosenberg's "German: How to Speak and Write It" from Dover, and Graded German Reader (which I bought for $2.79 on Amazon last year!), and found that the sentence structure in them no longer looked hopelessly mysterious, although a lot of the vocabulary certainly did. So, my next step will be to concentrate on acquiring basic vocabulary. I will try to do that with two of the books already mentioned, "Graded German Reader" and Rosenberg, in that order. I also considered the rest of the books mentioned above, plus Assimil, and chose Rosenberg for now - if truth be told, due to its graphical qualities: lots of very pleasant old-fashioned pictures and photographs, which give the book a very lively look. It is also highly rated by Amazon readers. Edited by frenkeld on 29 January 2007 at 8:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 12 of 70 10 February 2007 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Latest activities:
1. 27 Jan 2007 - 2 Feb 2007: Read 2 and 1/2 (out of 5) sections of "Graded German Reader" and read through 15 (out of 30) chapters of Rosenberg's "German: How to Speak and Write It". Both activities felt quite beneficial. 2. Feb 3 2007 - Feb 11 2007: Having liked both of the above books, but having still gotten saturated on them, I felt like I needed a break, so while leaving on a business trip (that will end tomorrow), I took along Michel Thomas' Advanced German and German Language Booster courses for the travel part, and the Assimil textbook for the evenings at the hotel at the main destination. Using Assimil as just a reader, with the target rate of 6 lessons per day, has dissipated some of my previous concerns about getting bored with it. Too bad I was tied up some of the evenings, so I've only reached lesson 35 by now. I got to listen to both of Michel Thomas courses once on the outbound trip and will repeat them on the way back. When I get back, I will need to decide how to proceed. On one hand, I am itching to start on my first novel. On the other, I most certainly don't have enough vocabulary yet to try to get even the most bare-bones gist of a novel without a dictionary. Most likely, I will go ahead and try reading a novel with a dictionary. It shouldn't take long to find out if vocbulary is the main obstacle or whether language structure is also still an issue, in which case I will go back to learning materials for a while longer. Edited by frenkeld on 10 February 2007 at 10:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 13 of 70 10 February 2007 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the update frenkeld. That's a neat idea to use Assimil as a reader.
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 14 of 70 11 February 2007 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
For German, I know of six textbooks, some quite old, that are similar to Assimil in that they aim to build up your language skills by providing a series of translated sentences of increasing complexity, grammar notes, and some exercises. For German they are: (1) Assimil, (2) Rosenberg's "German: How to Speak and Write It" from Dover, (3) "German Made Simple", (4) Cortina German, (5) "Berlitz Self-Teacher: German", (6) Charles Berlitz, "German Step-by-Step". Once I realized that, recordings aside, Assimil is not unique, it became obvious that one could use Assimil books alone, at least passively, for target languages with phonetic enough writing systems, and for German I can't even say that in this textbook mode Assimil is head and shoulders above the rest of the pack - a couple of others on the list are quite good too, with their own strengths and weaknesses. Edited by frenkeld on 11 February 2007 at 7:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7014 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 15 of 70 11 February 2007 at 8:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Since I'm an anglophone learning French, in addition to my "New French with Ease", I also found in a used book store for super-cheap a copy of "Anglais sans peine." It's a whole new source of dialogues and vocabulary-in-context, as well as all the explanations about English for French people which are fun to read. The only thing that makes the English->French translations difficult are Assimil's notes where the translation isn't word for word (the stuff in () and []), since it obscures the 'pure' French text. However, those become rarer as the lessons progress so it wasn't really a problem. All in all, it was well worth the $2 I paid for it :)
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| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7095 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 70 28 February 2007 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well it just shows how behind the times I am … I just now noticed your update.
I’m surprised more people have not done that. Even if you don’t like the whole passive-active wave thing the courses are still great ways to pound vocabulary.
I completely agree. In the list you have above, minus the audio, I would rate “German Made Simple” as the best book, and Rosenberg’s as the second. Between the two they have all you really need for conversational German, minus the audio of course, but even pronunciation could be practiced with a Living Language or a Michel Thomas course. I would throw in April Wilson’s book “German Quickly” for good measure. In fact, with resources above, you could safely completely skip Assimil and FSI for learning German. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with Assimil German, it is that “German Made Simple” and Rosenberg’s texts bet Assimil at its own game. They both have bilingual text and tell the story of visitors to Germany. They also have enough additional illustrations, explanations and exercises to clarify German sentence structure. I thought, one for one, they both made German less difficult than Assimil. Just because they are good texts is no reason to not to use Assimil, or FSI for that matter, because Assimil covers the necessary vocabulary needed to break out of intermediate German. To really make it "German with out pain" I would use both Assimil and “German Made Simple". Edit: but of course you already did! Edited by Farley on 28 February 2007 at 9:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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