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I feel so demotivated | ||
Tags: Loss of confidence | Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 34 17 February 2013 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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That was me after six years of English class. =)
It helps to find activities that are so much fun that you can do them several times, or ignore the frustration of not understanding perfectly, or knowing that even though you guessed correctly you can't use the word/sentence pattern yourself. It also can help to regularly look back at what you've achieved already, instead of looking at what you still haven't learnt. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 10 of 34 17 February 2013 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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You sound like you're in the right place for your skill level. I will also agree that listening to the radio is much harder than a lot of language teachers will have you believe. There is a lot of vocabulary that you just don't hear in typical conversations, and it's usually vocabulary a class doesn't teach you! If you actually do want to listen to radio broadcasts, you could try the Deutsche Welle ones, because it has a section where the segments are spoken slowly and even include a transcript. Also, if there is a television show which you know really well, you could try and find it dubbed in German. That is something that's greatly improved my listening. The challenge is to find something that will be helpful (so not too hard) but will also be enjoyable. For example, I like to read a lot about classical music, so instead of googling information in English, I did it in German.
We've all been in your position. For me, it seems that every couple of months I hit a period where I'm not regressing, but I'm not improving either. After some time, it just seems to fix itself. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6126 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 11 of 34 17 February 2013 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe I'm tainted by the experience of meeting too many people who have gone through the university system with poor results. I do think that if you're "the German speaking Accountant" or the "German speaking art historian" that's better than being the "German major." I have a degree in Electrical Engineering myself, and though I'm not the greatest at Japanese, I think I know enough Japanese to translate electronic component manuals to English.
Can't you EU people all work in each other's countries? What about taking a year off from school and waiting tables or some other job like this for a year or so in Germany. I meet so many people, go over to the country for a year or so and then the lights go on. Then, when you get back to school maybe you'll be one of those 'crazy good' people no one else can keep up with. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 34 17 February 2013 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Your experiences are totally normal for A2/B1. Books are heavy going, and listening is just a blur. This will absolutely get better with more practice. But for now, it's pretty frustrating. You basically just need to log the hours. Not just the occasional book chapter, but multiple books. Not just a bit of internet radio, but multiple seasons of a television show. Pre-school aged children in middle class families hear over 10 million words per year. A 10-year-old who loves books reads between 1 million and 4 million words per year. Here at HTLAL, the Super Challenge involves about 150 hours of films and 2.5 million words of reading over 20 months, starting from about where you are now. You just need to get this process started somehow. Sure, everything is frustrating right now, but it gets better very quickly. So at the beginning, I suggest that you cheat: 1. Read easy stuff, like illustrated chapter books for native 8-year-olds. 2. Read stuff that's so interesting you're OK missing half the details. 3. Read stuff you already know by heart in another language. 4. Read stuff with lots of pictures, like comic books. 5. Read the English and German versions of things in parallel. 6. Read lots of books on your favorite subjects, so you get a temporary vocabulary boost. 7. Watch nature documentaries with really slow narrators and pretty pictures. 8. Watch children's cartoons. 9. Re-read and re-watch stuff you love repeatedly. Also, check out the following video by Krashen, where he demonstrates (1) fast, difficult speech in German, and (2) easily comprehensible speech in German. You goal should be to find things more like (2), where the context gives you a huge boost. This kind of cheating will help you over that first hump. Here's how things worked for me: 500 pages read: I could more-or-less read French. 5000 pages read: I could comfortably read a wide range of native adult materials, quickly and without a dictionary. 1 season of a television show (plus transcripts): I could understand enough to watch TV for fun. 6 seasons of a television show: On a good day, I understand 90–98% of the dialog. I've been comparing notes with other Super Challenge participants, and even though the exact numbers vary a bit, everybody's telling the same story: if you rack up the numbers, the improvement feels almost inevitable. 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 13 of 34 18 February 2013 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||
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True :) You could sign up for a half challenge, for example. That's 50 movies and 50x100 pages. you can optionally add 50 conversations and/or 50 pieces of writing.
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 14 of 34 18 February 2013 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||
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From what you wrote it seems that you didn't really lose your motivation but you're just frustrated because of the native input that it's clearly too difficult. I completely agree with Bakunin, Cavesa, Josquin, emk and the others: finding a lot of appropriate native material is the way to go, and some really great tips have already been posted in this thread.
Don't let yourself discourage by listening to Deutschlandfunk, which I really wouldn't recommend to intermediate learners. Deutsche Welle is much better instead (learning materials but also native materials, e.g. documentaries). Documentaries as a genre are generally quite easy and offer a variety of topics, some of which might be interesting for you. If you want to read press, try e.g. "Stern" - much easier than e.g. "Spiegel". If you're looking for an easy audiobook, I can recommend "Die Analphabetin" by Agota Kristof (if it's of any interest for you - the main point is to use materials that you find truly interesting). Children/teen books and audiobooks might be good; I read "Hunger Games" in French some time ago and the language was pretty straightforward; I would assume the German version (and books of this kind in general) should be of similar difficulty Try also watching your favorite TV series with German dubbing (in the beginning choose those that aren't very dialog-heavy and don't include hundreds of puns). Look also for German-language movies with German subtitles (those that match the audio are the best). And try watching extr@, if you haven't watched it already. Edited by Julie on 18 February 2013 at 1:46am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 15 of 34 18 February 2013 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Despite the thread title, you actually sound like a motivated pupil. You have been seeking out language
materials beyond the confines of the classroom, something that many school learners simply don't do. You have discovered that the gulf between a few years of school lessons and the knowledge required for handling resources designed for natives is VAST. Rather than feel downhearted, embrace the fact that you have made inroads, however small, into a higher level of language exposure. The Scottish S5 course is titled "higher" but only in relation to the standard-grade exam which precedes it. Somebody taking Higher chemistry will not be ready to walk into the chemical engineering industry upon leaving school. It is unrealistic to expect your German course to prepare you sufficiently for real-life interaction with native spekers. You have a long way to go, but there are so many things you can do: Get a hold of Michel Thomas advanced German CD course. Michel hammers you for a few hours, forcing you to form sentences in a variety of tenses. Great for sorting out your word order and training you mind to formulate coherent thoughts. Try reading childrens books. Start with something very simple. Don't go near teenage fiction at this stage. You are not ready, although books with parallel translation may be worth a look. One major stumbling block is the extensive use of the simple past tense in written German. At school, you will learn your past participles like ich habe gegessen, but books rely heavily on the simple past, most of the common verbs being irregular in this form, and it's not easy to work back to the original verb. Be prepared for a slog to get over this hurdle. Watch short video clips on topics that interest you. Interviews are ideal. Look up unfamiliar words online and play the video many times. Learn filler phrases for conversations, to help keep things flowing. Echt? - really? Das stimmt - that's right Keine Ahnung - I've no idea Das wäre nett - that would be nice Keep listening to music. Look for Youtube videos which print the lyrics on the screen as the song plays. Join a German meet-up group. There is a good one in Edinburgh. They usually meet in a pub but you are pretty much old enough for this, or soon will be. The meetings are very friendly and helpful. Join a language exchange online and arrange to talk with people on Skype. Working on your speaking can be a tortuous process but the only way to improve is to keep at it. Mistakes? Oh you'll make loads of them, but so does every musician who learns to play. Be humorous about errors and learn from them. Being scared to open your mouth in case you get it wrong is a death sentence for oral skills. Imagine a guitar student who was terrified to hit the strings because a duff note might come out. He would go precisely nowhere. To a large extent, you just have to give it a bash. When you find it tough going, as you will. Avoid at all costs developing a negative mindset. Many people opt out at this stage, falling back on a convenient excuse as to why they "can't do languages". Here are a few examples. I don't have the head for languges. Nonsense. Go to Norway and you will see that nearly all young people are competent (or better) in English. Anyone can learn a language, provided they put in the work. German is a really hard language. Nah, not really. It is actually very similar to English and many words are close to, or identical to their English counterparts. I'm too old. Since you are at school, you can't use this get-out clause. But many people do. Everyone in Germany speaks great English. Some do, some don't. Besides, how does that affect one's ability to learn German? The point I'm trying to make is. If you convince yourself that you will never learn German, then you most probably won't. Good luck, keep trying. You will get there. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4848 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 16 of 34 18 February 2013 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been demotivated because of my Japanese studies so many times that I would need my hands, your hands, and the hands of all the people that have posted in this thread to count how many times (and that's still probably not enough).
If you can take the pressure off, then do it. I'm surrounded by Japanese here in Japan, so I feel a pressure to know Japanese, and to know it right away. Of course, I need Japanese if I am going to live here. But I can do my job in English, so no pressure there. I think it is important to realize that (1)learning a language takes time, and (2)we need to learn how to savor the journey. I found that what helps my motivation is keeping track of the "little victories". For example: * Wow, I heard on TV that new word I just learned yesterday, and I understood it! * Cool! I read that online news article, and I could understand 50% of it when I used to be able to understand 40%. * Yay! I just finished another chapter of my textbook/another page of this novel! * Interesting. This flashcard I used to have trouble with is now a piece of cake. Other than that, nothing new to add, except all the advice above is sound. I agree: do some fun stuff with your language. I like sports, so I'm trying to look at sports news in Japanese instead of English. It's not easy, but my interest in sports should help me along. Same with Portuguese. I'm an extreme beginner in Portuguese, so any sports news will be difficult for me. But I sometimes just go to a website and just enjoy being around Portuguese, even if I don't understand a thing. I guess what keeps me motivated is the fact that, hey, in a year or two I will understand a bit of the news about my favorite Brazilian soccer team. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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