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Learning German Without Pressure | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Stefan Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4326 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German | Message 1 of 12 19 January 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Bio: My name is Stefan, I'm 23 years old and currently live in Sweden.
Last semester I joined a German course at my university and was somewhat surprised when the first meeting consisted of 2 hours with nothing but German. Apparently basic course doesn't mean beginners course… I decided to give it a go and tried to learn the language as quickly as possible but it quickly became overwhelming and I realized that it wasn't realistic. I consulted my teacher about it and decided to drop out after only two weeks. Due to this I lost all interest and decided to put my language learning on hold. Now it's time to give it a new go. I learned a lot from my previous attempt and I'll be a lot more realistic. There won't be x hours of dreadful studies every day and this time I'll focus on actually learning – not collecting information and skipping from one method to another. Despite two weeks of studies last time I didn't learn much more than a few substantives and verbs in the present tense. I'll be posting once a week and focus on what I've actually accomplished - not wishful thinking. Edited by Stefan on 21 January 2013 at 1:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stefan Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4326 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German | Message 2 of 12 19 January 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Week #1
Last time I spent most of my time skipping form one method to another – including Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. To avoid this I decided to take one week to collect all the material I could find and then stop. No new language learning methods or software until I've gone through it all. This is the result:
Why two grammar books? They complement each other. One includes all the rules you'll never learn and the other one tries to explain everything as a teacher would. By reading both I'll get two approaches.
I'll also be using comics, books, TV shows and one or two movies. Besides collecting all the methods I've also skimmed through one of the grammar books (not focusing on remembering) and started to add some of the most basic words into Anki. All in all, I'd say it's a good start. The most important step is to pick one or two methods and not jump between them! Edit: I'm not allowed to link to the resources but you can probably find most of them through Google. Edited by Stefan on 19 January 2013 at 8:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 3 of 12 19 January 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello Stefan,
welcome to the forum! Looks like you have put a lot of work into your study plan, but let me nevertheless add a little recommendation: Beside Michael Thomas and Pimsleur, which are both audio-only courses, I don't see anything that could give your studies some useful structure, leading you from easy to less easy. Grammar books are not very good for this purpose, so why not add one more resource like - and I don't have any personal preference, so the following are examples only - TeachYourself, Colloquial, Assimil, maybe a course in your native language, anything that can be some guideline for your studies. The risk with your approach is that you may be tempted to study too many random bits instead of paying attention to the basics first. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stefan Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4326 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German | Message 4 of 12 20 January 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for the welcome and recommendation.
What do you reckon to be the main advantage of the language courses you mentioned compared to my current plan? Is it workbooks to make sure I really remember or is it just the structure so I don't miss anything? I'll get reading, listening and speaking from native sources so I'm not to keen about another textbook consisting of only dialogs. I'm no stranger to adding another course as long as it benefit my learning and I'm hoping a more specific answer (to what I'm missing) would make it easier to pick a course. Unfortunately it seems to be a jungle and so far I've found recommendations for Assimil, Colloquial, Deutsche Welle (several courses), FSI, Linguaphone, Living Language and Teach Yourself. Even worse - for every recommendation there's someone saying product X is better. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 12 20 January 2013 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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TY and Colloquial have quite similar format. Both have the theme based approach known from textbooks in school ("At the airport", "In the park", "Meeting friends", "In the restaurant" etc.), around 20 lessons, a couple of short dialogues or one longer per lesson, grammar explanations, exercises, glossary. A little bit of everything in one book (but no dumbed-down dialogues). Moreover, they're easy to find in Sweden (any online bookstore has them, you can even find them in major physical bookstores, and perhaps in the library).
Assimil are also easy to get in Sweden (just check Adlibris for "German with ease"), but if you already know some German, you might find the lessons to short and too simple in the beginning (there are ~100 of them - the "method" is to do the lessons one per day up to a certain point when you go on but also review the first lesson, the second etc.) I haven't had a look at Deutsche Welle, but assume that they have a lot of content for all levels. If so, good. Maybe you want to check out Germanpod101, perhaps it's similar to Chinesepod (in which case there's a wide range of topics, pick anything you like). If the German Michel Thomas is anything like the Spanish, you'll get a good hang of conjugation and sentence structure in no-time. Pimsleur has limited content and is entirely audio-based (for good or bad). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 6 of 12 20 January 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, what I see more than anything else is an abundance of sources, but not really a plan. It is easy to spend years with podcasts, radio, tv and learn little to nothing. What is needed is a solid base, then native content is much more approachable. Grammar books tend to have too much content, if you are a linguist or a freak or a polyglot with a lot of experience you may want to use them from the very beginning, but not as a normal language learner aiming for his first self learned language. Using a solid course, - and again, I don't know which one, one that pleases you and does not overwhelm you - can save you a lot of time and many difficult decisions, which are simply too difficult for people with little experience. Then you can start your native material voyages with much more confidence and much better chances for a quick and successful acquisition. Well, take it as a warning and chose your strategy as you want, of course. It's just one point of view, of course the opposite one will have equally many supporters or more, that's life. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stefan Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4326 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German | Message 7 of 12 21 January 2013 at 12:42am | IP Logged | |||||
Tack Jeff. I guess one of the problems are that I've already studied the grammar book for a total of 2-3 weeks. So I tell myself that I know how most of the language works - even though I don't remember the specific rules at the moment. That's why I'm somewhat hesitant to spending several weeks on a beginners course. I have, for example, just gone through Pimsleur I and it wasn't until the last 2-3 lessons they moved past the present tense. Sure, there are more advantages with going through a course and I mainly use Pimsleur for the pronunciation. Would love to know which level you reach after a course and I'm somewhat surprised that no one (what I can find) has funded a study comparing some of the most popular methods. Anyway, I'll try and skim through some of the workbooks in a few days to pick a winner.
Indeed. That's why I mentioned 1-2 movies and not expecting to learn anything from radio - only replacing my current music with it. However, I do appreciate your recommendations. :) As I mentioned to Jeff I'd love to pick one of the longer courses that moves into intermedium (whatever that means) so I don't get back to square one and go back to the basic when I'm done and have to pick another course. I'm guessing that FSI has to be somewhat advanced if you're expected to move to the country. Living Language has a course named "Intermedium German" but at the same time Michel Thomas used the name "advanced" when it wasn't. It's a jungle but I'll skim through the workbooks and then hopefully pick the right one. Edited by Stefan on 21 January 2013 at 1:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stefan Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4326 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German | Message 8 of 12 21 January 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Week #2
It's been a crazy week but I learned a lot. It was a short sprint and I'll slow down this week as my lectures begin after the winter break. The most surprising thing was that everything made sense. Last time I had big problems with cases, genders, uppercase, etc. Now, in just a few days, I went from nothing to unconsciously translating simple words (such as töten and dreizehn) while watching Swedish news. Short list on what I've actually accomplished this week:
The thing about frequency lists is that a lot of the words are the same - just different tenses or cases, We have possessive pronoun, personal pronouns, prepositioned, etc. That's why it's a good idea to know some basics before trying to get words from a frequency list. I've also invested in the book Basic German Vocabulary from Langenscheidt as a complement to my frequency list. It includes 4000 common words and combined with the words I stumble upon during my reading I'm sure it will give me a good foundation. Lastly I found this forum and subscribed to some learning logs for inspiration. Edited by Stefan on 21 January 2013 at 4:27am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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