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Fluent German by the end of the year | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes  Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 17 of 70 06 March 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
If I use a foreign word while speaking Romanian, I just use whatever gender sounds good to me. And usually people are in agreement as to which gender sounds better. I see that most Germans do the same, and I can assure you they have no idea about 'rules'. If you ask them why they use a certain gender for a foreign word they just shrug or say something along the lines of "it sounds masculine to me" :) I'm not saying that the gender of all German nouns is predictable. But if you have ... say 80% accuracy based on just the sound of the word alone, that's pretty good. Much better than learning the rules explicitly. Your reaction time in conversation would also be much faster than if you had to consciously apply rules. Edited by valkyr on 06 March 2012 at 10:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 18 of 70 06 March 2012 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just decided to sit the Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam on April 20.
The situation is as follows: Reading: I think I can handle this one. I understand newspaper articles fairly well. I might get confused once in a while, but then again, I read the FAZ not das Bild. Speaking: This is usually my strong point. I know quite a few people who passed the B2 and they don't seem to be more fluent than I am. I also get a lot of practice here ... well, maybe not a lot but certainly more than somebody attending regular courses. Listening: While I may not be speaking much, I do listen to a lot to conversations between natives. The way they speak - very fast, weird accents, dialect and so forth - is very hard to understand too. At first, I was like ... "is this German?". But after almost two months of this, I'm starting to understand better. I would be surprised if, after all this practice, I would encounter issues here. Grammar: (Sprachbausteine) This one is bad. I haven't worked on grammar at all, apart from some basic things, and it shows. If the exam took place tomorrow, there's a good chance I would not get a passing grade. Writing: This one is awful too. Although maybe not as bad as grammar, since I can avoid complex structures and lose points only for lack of style. I need a lot of practice here ... think I'll start using Lang 8 to get feedback on this. Sooo this is it ... I have about a month and a half left. Hope this works out. Since I only have a short time to prepare I won't be aiming for a good grade, but I do want to pass comfortably (at least "befriedigend"). Edited by valkyr on 06 March 2012 at 6:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 19 of 70 06 March 2012 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dealing with speed of conversations is very good, but are you sure that recognizing weird accents and dialects will help? Even for the C2: GDS I think they stick pretty closely to very standard, clearly spoken Hochdeutsch. I'd think maybe watching Tagesschau would be better prep for an exam (or some of the Deutsche Welle podcasts, if that's still too hard).
Number one piece of advice: learn the structure of the exam and what specific unusual types of tasks you need to do, so that you can practice accordingly. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 20 of 70 07 March 2012 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah you're probably right about the accents. Goethe only uses clearly spoken standard
language. I also happen to think their standards may be too low, especially with regard to speaking. I've seen quite a few people who seem far from fluency although they've passed the B2 with flying colors and are taking C1 level classes ... Speaking about tests, I recently took the evaluation test on Goethe's website http://www.goethe.de/cgi-bin/einstufungstest/einstufungstest .pl I got 20 out of 30 right. For some reason it doesn't list your level anymore, but I've done a search on Google, and it looks like at 18 / 30 they are recommending a B2 course, while at 22 you're supposed to be around C1. So overall, it looks like I'm in the right spot. The last two days I've put in some effort to clear the backlog of cards in Anki. Now I'm up to date. I also (finally) tackled adjective declension. It doesn't seem to be as hard as I initially thought. You don't really have to memorize 48 endings. There are logical correlations between them which make it far easier then at first glance. However, the rules are still too complex to be usable in a live conversation, unless you have a micro-controller in your head :) I'll most likely use them in writing, and they'll also come in handy when trying to double-check things. Btw, if any of you want to practice, the site below has quite a few exercises regarding adjective declension. Scroll down to "Übungen zur Deklination der Adjektive". http://deutsch-lerner.blog.de/2008/12/08/grammatik-deklinati on-adjektive-5181163/ Edited by valkyr on 07 March 2012 at 10:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dleewo Groupie United States Joined 5816 days ago 95 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 21 of 70 07 March 2012 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you by chance have a link I see that talks about the scores and equivalent level? Or perhaps you may know what 16/30 corresponds to? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 22 of 70 08 March 2012 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
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This is the link that discusses it http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t13837.html
After reading through it I think I see the pattern: A1 1 - 5 A2 6 - 10 B1 11 - 15 B2 16 - 20 C1 21 - 25 C2 25 - 30 Now, I'm not sure how hard B2 is supposed to be, but when I took the C1 for English a few years ago, my English was an order of magnitude better. Am I supposed to make such a leap between B2 and C1? Or are the German exams easier? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 23 of 70 09 March 2012 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm fast approaching 3000 words in Anki. I entered most words I encountered, except for
basic derivations and compositions. For example, if I have 'lernen', 'das Telefon' und 'das Buch' I won't bother adding 'der Lerner' and 'das Telefonbuch'. Anyway, here are some (hopefully) interesting statistics: Number of facts: 2895 For those of you not familiar with Anki jargon, this is the total number of items (words / expressions) in the deck. Total reviewing time: 4.24 days Average time per answer: 7.8 sec The average time per answer is upwardly skewed, as I sometimes get interrupted during reviews and forget to close the application. Also, if I take more than 2-3 seconds to remember a word, I mark it as 'hard', since for conversation or listening purposes, word recognition and production need to be almost instantaneous. Card age: Mature: 85.3% Young: 13.2% Unseen: 1.5% Correct answers: Mature: 87.8% Young: 79.3% Seen first time: 71.4% 88% success rate on mature cards is reasonable, I don't want to let it drop below 80% though. I also started using the "Very Easy" seldom, since I found that it delays cards too much and I end up forgetting them. I reserve it for words which have almost no chance of being forgotten, only to get them out of the way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 24 of 70 13 March 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found another quiz which allows you to test your level of German
www.transparent.com/learn-german/proficiency-test.html I got 89%. I'm confused about the evaluation though. In my case I got an "Advanced Beginner" (which according to the CEFR would be A2 I guess) even though I was close to maxing out their test, and in 2 of the 4 parts I got a perfect score. If you do >90% they classify you as an "intermediate". There is no "advanced" ... maybe they are just trying to push their beginner courses, or the test itself is broken. Either way I found it quite thorough. You should check it out. Edited by valkyr on 13 March 2012 at 7:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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