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Swedee’s German, Bulgarian mission | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| swedeenz Newbie New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Bulgarian | Message 1 of 13 21 July 2012 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm starting this log to record my progress in German and Bulgarian, provide myself
with ongoing motivation and hopefully some advice from other users. Target languages - German and Bulgarian German Background: I have just returned from living in Germany for 9 months. I attended a language school in the city of Heidelberg. I started at complete beginner and by the time I left I was around B1 level. I really struggled to learn German in the classroom setting and realised that it wasn't for me. My weak point in my German is speaking, my listening and writing skills are far better. So overall I believe I am around the B1 level, however I wouldn't say say solid. Goal: By the end of this year I want to reach a solid B2. Resources: I have plenty of resources for German, but I feel that I need a fresh start, so I'm going to go through my copy of Assimil: German with ease, I also have Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, a large amount of German grammar workbooks, audiobooks, novels, tv shows and films. Bulgarian Background: I didn't have an interest in Bulgaria or really the country Bulgaria itself until I met my girlfriend who is bulgarian. I was very curious, because myself being from New Zealand I didn't know a whole a lot about Bulgaria or the language. But after visiting 5 times and spending a total of around 2 months in Bulgaria, I really liked the sound of the language. I have had a lot of exposure when I was living with my girlfriend's family in Bulgaria. I have learned the cyrillic alphabet and completed some lessons in teach yourself Buglarian, but I would say I'm still complete beginner. Goal: My goal by the end of the year is solid A2 level. I will be visiting Bulgaria for roughly 2 months later this year, so another goal of mine is to have a basic conversation with my girlfriend's grandparents. Resources: For my dictionary I will be using a PONS Bulgarian-english, English- bulgarian that I picked up in Bulgaria. Assimil: Bulgarisch ohne Mühe I can follow this even with my level of German. Intensive Bulgarian: A textbook and reference grammar. Teach yourself complete Bulgarian, FSI courses and lastly I will be using the Bulgarian for beginners course over on http://www.unilang.org Time : Currently I have no job, so I can invest my whole time in the day to learning both the languages. Problems: For the past year I have suffered from medical problems, unfortunately the doctors still haven't managed to find out what is wrong with me, basically I suffer from a constant concentration headache that never goes away, and sore stomach. Because of this I do find it quite hard to study, as it is very hard to concentrate. And sometimes studying at all is impossible. However I'm going to grit my teeth and give it my best. So the journey begins! Thanks for reading. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nuriayasmin70 Diglot Senior Member Germany languagesandbeyoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4513 days ago 132 posts - 162 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: SpanishB1, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian | Message 2 of 13 21 July 2012 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Viel Spaß beim Lernen. Ich wohne in Heidelberg, komme aber eigentlich aus Norddeutschland und will hier wieder weg. Hast du mal Pfefferminzöl gegen die Kopfschmerzen versucht? Ich vertrage das Klima hier nicht so gut und bekomme bei Hitze und hoher Luftfeuchtigkeit schnell Kopfschmerzen. Seit ich mir an solchen Tagen die Stirn schon prophylaktisch mit Pfefferminzöl einreibe, geht es meistens. Ein Freund von mir war übrigens im Januar in Neuseeland und hatte sehr viel Regen - war aber trotzdem begeistert, zumindest von den Natur, es scheint bei euch alles ziemlich teuer zu sein.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4851 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 3 of 13 22 July 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Здравей :) Желая ти успех с български. По моето мнение това не е много трудния език, така че... Продължавай ;)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| swedeenz Newbie New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Bulgarian | Message 4 of 13 23 July 2012 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Danke Nuriayasmin70 :) Nein, ich habe nicht Pfefferminzöl versucht, vielleicht sollte ich.
Благодаря prz! Good to know it's not too hard, but I'm sure it will manage to confuse me somehow. German - 23-07-2012 Today, I have finished reading a couple of Hueber books, Vera in Heidelberg and Lara, Frankfurt. These books are not very long, but I have the audio, So I just read along while listening. I followed it up by doing the first 6 lessons of my Klipp und Klar Übungsgrammatik. This was going over personal pronouns, verbs in Präsens, Unregelmäßige Verben and the Imperativ. I didn't find any of them to be challenging. I thought it was worth going over them anyway. I then read the news over on the Zeit online website and lastly watched Der Herr der Ringe(The lord of the rings) I watched the film in German and with German subtitles. I understood around 70% of the movie, as I don't have a huge vocab. Bulgarian I started Bulgarian off by going through my Intensive Bulgarian: A textbook and reference grammar. I went over the Alphabet and the pronunciation for about 2 hours. After that I went on to my Assimil, where I did the first 3 lessons. No troubles there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| swedeenz Newbie New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Bulgarian | Message 5 of 13 24 July 2012 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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German 24-07-2012
Today I didn't get as much done as I would of liked, due to my head. Nevertheless I managed to read an article and after that I focused mainly on listening. I then listened to the first 4 lessons of Pimsleur which took up about 2 hours, These were fairly boring since I knew most of it all, but good revision. I will finish tonight by watching the movie Der Untergang, which is about the last days of Adolf Hitler in his bunker. It is one of my favourite films and the bonus that it's German makes it even better! Bulgarian Today I went over the Alphabet for about 20 minutes, I had forgotten the order at the very end. After that I revised what I had done in Assimil the previous day and did lesson 4. There was a couple of new words I didn't know, those being. Отивате(gehen/fahren), работа(Arbeit), офисът(Büro). Tomorrow I hope to get more Bulgarian done. Edited by swedeenz on 24 July 2012 at 4:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5248 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 6 of 13 24 July 2012 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Be sure to use lang-8 to have your texts corrected. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| swedeenz Newbie New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Bulgarian | Message 7 of 13 25 July 2012 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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German 25-07-12
Today I did lesson 5 and 6 of Pimsleur which took up roughly 1 hour, I had a small break then I read and listened to Heiße spur in München, This book isn't huge, but it is B1 level, and at the end it had questions about the story. I found this good because I came up against quite alot of words I didn't know, so I noted them down and looked them up in the dictionary and read the story again.I also watched a couple of podcasts of the tagesschau which I can understand okay, depending on the subject. Bulgarian I started todays bulgarian off with Teach yourself complete bulgarian. I went through the first 2 lessons again. Mainly working through the dialogs and questions. I unfortunately only own the book and need the audio for the 2011 edition. I have found a place where it isn't too expensive but they don't have any in stock at the moment, so hopefully I can get the audio sometime shortly. I also went through my Intensive Bulgarian workbook, I focused on the first dialog and listened to the recording many times over. I also spent a bit of time sorting out the playlists on my iPhone. I have separate playlists for all the courses I own, and now I can listen to them all on the go! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5058 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 8 of 13 27 July 2012 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would just like to give a word of advice about the "Intensive Bulgarian: A Textbook and
Reference Grammar". It's good on the whole so don't let the dry presentation of material slow you down! I bought the first volume in my attempts to teach my brother Bulgarian. There were a couple of minor mistakes (the most glaring is that the lowercase cursive "з" isn't written like that; rather, it has a tail). The audio shows (if I remember correctly) and idealized Standard pronunciation that you will rarely hear although you should learn as a beginner. As you get more advanced, just be more open to a more varied pronunciation. I only mention this because I know some people get worried when using some resources because you can't be sure if that's how the language is used. Rest assured that it is an exceptionally good resource for learning both proper and colloquial grammar and vocabulary. Good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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