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German Improvement Initiative TAC14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 1 of 41 25 December 2013 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello fellow German learners (and/or curious observers). Welcome to my German maintenance translation experiment learning log for TAC 14!
This year, I have chosen one of my favorite fiction novels, The Damnation Game by Clive Barker. I intend to translate one page per day of this novel from English into German. It works out rather nicely as the edition I have contains exactly 365 pages (one for each day of 2014). I am hoping that it: 1. Keeps me entertained. 2. Keeps my vocabulary not only maintained, but improved. 3. Sharpens my grammar. 4. Keeps my involved in German daily. 5. Maintains and improves my active (production) skills. The book appears to be around C1/C2ish so it should present a nice challenge to my B2 German level. I will sporadically post sentences or paragraphs on Lang-8, but only for structures that I am not sure on. My grammar is very god and so I do not think I will have too many instances where I would not be pretty sure whether something is correct or not. Ok, with that said, I will post my next update on 1/1/13! Edited by BaronBill on 29 December 2013 at 4:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 2 of 41 29 December 2013 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, so, forget the last post. After weighing the opinions of quite a few people for whom I have the utmost respect, I have decided to approach my German maintenance from a different angle.
Starting 1/1/14, I will be going through the active wave again of Assimil German With Ease. I am going to dedicate about 30-45 minutes a day to it and try to extract everything I can from this second pass. I don't expect I'll really learn anything new or ground-breaking, but I think it will serve as an excellent review and springboard to improvement. I am projecting this will take about 2 months. What will I do after Assimil? Good question. I have a decent assortment of books, movies and tv series that I may resort to. Additionally, I intend to practice conversation on Skype at least once a week. Stay tuned. I think this is going to be a great year for German! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 41 01 January 2014 at 1:48am | IP Logged | ||
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As a kick-off to the new year, I did some fun stuff in German today!
I did a couple advanced GLOSS modules (inspired by Serpent and her undying affection for them). They were a good challenge and pretty fun. I also read a chapter of "Das Schweigen der Lämmer" by Thomas Harris. I read it last year and really enjoyed it, so now I think I may read it again. I also did a few pages of dialogue writing for another challenge that I'm involved with. I am going to go through the active wave for Assimil starting tomorrow and see how many I can get through in an hour. I truly am in love with this language. I am comfortable in it and I feel alive when I am using it. No other language has managed to get this hold on me. I'm much better in French (as it's like a second native language that I grew up speaking at home in Louisiana), but honestly, I don't really like French. Chinese and Spanish are fun but they don't come close to holding my heart like German does. Keep reading because 2014 is going to be amazing! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4005 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 4 of 41 01 January 2014 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Aww! I would've loved to see how you fared with the novel translation!
It's similar to what I was going to do with Till Lindemann's first poetry book Messer. I really want to try my hand at translation. I read about Assimil pretty often on here. I may have to check it out someday. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4080 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 5 of 41 01 January 2014 at 7:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Isnt Assimil with Ease at B1 level? Will it be of use in going B2->C1?
What is GLOSS? And Serpent is a lady?!??? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 6 of 41 02 January 2014 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm using Assimil right now in order to kind of "re-establish" my base. There isn't anyhting in Assimil that I don't know, but it makes a nice refresher and helps me shake off a little output rust. Gloss is Global Language Online Support System G.L.O.S.S.. It's cool. Check it out. Oh yes! Serpent is in fact a lady! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 7 of 41 02 January 2014 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
I am in the process of re-making my maintenenace routine and I am going to include some novel translation in it. I will post later today or tomorrow when I have it all worked out! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 8 of 41 02 January 2014 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Quick update:
Completed active wave for lessons 1-8 with no issues of any kind. The only variations were slight and involved word choice (eg: They use "Verzeihung" and I went with "Entschuldigung", etc). It took me about 45 minutes and was a piece of cake. I intend to go through about 5-10 lessons a day until complete. For full disclosure, the "active wave" for me involves looking only at the English and writing out the German translation. After that, I compare the two for mistakes. that is basically it. I MIGHT scan over the grammar points in some of the later lessons, but I'm not sure about that. It feels so good to be back into German again. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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