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Norwegian at B1: What’s next? German? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 1 of 2 07 November 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
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I've been studying Norwegian actively since August 2012, and now I'm at a B1 level. I
can read texts and miss some words but not the essential meaning, and the same goes for subtitles. I've been writing some paragraphs where I only had to look up some words, but I haven't actually spoken Norwegian yet. My listening skills are very poor, and I don't have much training even for understanding what I already know in the written form. I have been through almost all the existing textbooks: Assimil, Colloquial, TY, Hugo, Linguaphone the series of monolingual textbooks På Vei, Stein på Stein, Her på Berget and a few others. My last resource was the Advanced Audioblog Podcast which I'm about to finish next week. Then I plan to just read through a grammar book, which won't take much long. Other than that, I have been learning mostly from native resources for a few months already. I currently read two pages from a book on stories for children and I watch 30 to 40 minutes of a native Norwegian series with subtitles translated at Google Translator. I want to learn German, which I tried several years ago. I finished Deutsch: Warum Nicht but found Markplatz or Wieso Nicht too hard. I also did the first half of two Assimil editions. I can read without a dictionary and I do Anki everyday. I'm at an A2, and Norwegian brought much synergy this year. So, I was thinking that maybe I could drop Norwegian from my fixed schedule with textbooks/podcasts and keep working on the stories and the TV series for it. I won't have anything textbook-like to follow, anyway, only native resources. Then I was considering starting German in the 10-min slot I have for when I finish the Norwegian podcast and grammar. I'd go really fast with reviewing Assimils then start an Assimil perfectionnement which is what I believe will indeed take my German up to a B1 level. The problem will arise when I come to using native resources for German: I will still be using them for Norwegian and probably won't have reached a level at which I'll let go of subtitles and looking up words all the time. That is to say, I may reach B1 in German while still B1 in Norwegian and won't have time in my schedule for giving each language the attention it deserves. I like Norwegian better and I just wish I could reach the same level I have in French and Papiamento and leave it at low pressure activities: I read 20 pages in French and watch 10 minutes from a film. I read 2 pages in Papiamento and watch videos of about 10 min. Instead, my Norwegian might conflict with my German. It is not even a matter of linguistical interference, but rather of practical time on schedule and of avoiding burnout. I've come to a stage at which I need to replace things instead of adding up new ones. So, my German textbook can replace my former Norwegian textbook slot, but what to do about the native materials activity of watching videos and listening/reading novels? It is still early to reduce my exposure to Norwegian. Well, maybe I should just start German in those 10-15 minutes and only worry about native materials in about six months. But then the World Cup is coming and I want a functional German by that time. I don't want to drop Norwegian altogether either, because it still has to grow and I need to employ this time wisely, as I'm really enjoying what I'm doing with Norwegian and I'm close to an epiphany. Starting a new language is out of question before either Norwegian or German gets to B2, as I'm still struggling with Chinese, Georgian and Russian at long-standing B1/A2 levels. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5187 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 2 of 2 08 November 2013 at 4:18am | IP Logged |
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Is 10 minutes a day going to have any effect? I would consider doing more minutes of German while letting the other languages lapse for a few weeks. At least you would find out if you really liked German or not.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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