squonk Groupie United States Joined 4744 days ago 44 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish
| Message 49 of 70 10 April 2012 at 5:13pm | IP Logged |
valkyr wrote:
I use a pop-up dictionary, which
speeds things up dramatically, and makes reading a much more enjoyable experience since
I don't need to switch pages to find out what a word means. |
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Would you mind explaining to the less computer-savvy among us (i.e., me) how to get a
pop-up dictionary? I just noticed a post by Kyle Corrie in the "gender memorization"
thread that he uses a "Collins dictionary pinned to his taskbar." Is this the same thing?
Mulțumesc!
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valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2
| Message 50 of 70 11 April 2012 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
squonk wrote:
Would you mind explaining to the less computer-savvy among us (i.e., me)
how to get a pop-up dictionary? I just noticed a post by Kyle Corrie in the "gender
memorization" thread that he uses a "Collins dictionary pinned to his taskbar." Is this
the same thing? |
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I'm using a plugin for my browser. It's called "Leo Dictionary Widget". What it does is
that every time I double click a word on a webpage, a pop-up window appears with the
translation of that word. Depending on which browser you're using (I use Google Chrome),
you might find something similar for your language.
You could try searching for "your_browser dictionary plugin" (where "your_browser" is
the name of the browser you're using) or something along these lines.
Edited by valkyr on 11 April 2012 at 4:07pm
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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 51 of 70 11 April 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
Kindle devices and applications also have integrated dictionaries you can use, that probably are somewhat similary (though they are German-German, English-English, etc.). I hear certain other eBook readers include German-English among other dictionaries, but I can't give you an example.
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frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6941 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German
| Message 52 of 70 11 April 2012 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
geoffw wrote:
I hear certain other eBook readers include German-English among other dictionaries, but I can't give you an example. |
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The Sony eReader has built-in German-English and English-German dictionaries, as well as those for French, Spanish, and Italian. (It also has Dutch, but for Dutch it may be smaller-size dictionaries.)
Edited by frenkeld on 11 April 2012 at 4:25pm
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valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2
| Message 53 of 70 11 April 2012 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
geoffw wrote:
Kindle devices and applications also have integrated dictionaries you
can use, that probably are somewhat similary (though they are German-German, English-
English, etc.). I hear certain other eBook readers include German-English among other
dictionaries, but I can't give you an example. |
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I also use Kindle. You can install custom dictionaries on it. The trick is finding them.
I came across a bunch of free ones here: blog.mikeasoft.com/2011/01/05/free-as-in-gpl2-
translation-dictionaries-for-the-kindle/
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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 54 of 70 11 April 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged |
Awesome, especially for German. Now to see if I can get it to work with the iPhone app...
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valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5182 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2
| Message 55 of 70 20 April 2012 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
I just sat the B2 certification exam!
I must congratulate myself for having made the decision to sit the exam as soon as
possible because, since I returned from Germany, I kind of lost momentum and haven't
been in the mood to study.
I'll post reviews for each part of the exam and attempt to estimate my performance:
Reading ~20 / 25
Here everything went smoothly, as expected. The 'fill in the gaps' exercise, which is
worth 10 points was tricky, but I think I did OK.
Listening ~20 / 25
This was unexpected. I did two mock exams and got 24/25 and 25/25 respectively. However
in the actual exam I must have done pretty poorly as I didn't concentrate very well,
and also found the recording to be more difficult. It's really a pity as I was hoping
for a perfect score here ...
Writing ~17 / 25
I wrote a >200 word essay, which I'm quite found of, especially considering my lack of
preparation for this part. I took some risks with complex constructions which may be a
bit above my level hoping to compensate for the points lost in the listening test. This
may backfire since there's a higher chance of errors.
There's also a grammar exercise here. You're given a letter which contains 10 errors.
You need to find and correct them. I think I did reasonably well. I would say, 12/15
for the essay and 6/10 for the grammar exercise.
Speaking ~23 / 25
Here everything went according to plan. However I stuttered a little bit in the second
exercise, where they ask you to choose between some pictures and defend your choice, so
I would deduct 2 or 3 points here as well.
So, it all adds up to more or less 80 out of 100 points which means either "gut"
or "befriedigend". I'll have to wait for the results, which will be available in 4
weeks, to see how close my estimations were to the actual result.
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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 56 of 70 20 April 2012 at 6:41pm | IP Logged |
Congratulations, and best of luck.
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