Five months to get to B1 German (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Five months to get to B1 German
Tags: CEFR Language Levels \| Time to learn \| German
Share with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon
Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

22 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3 Next >>

Kyle Corrie
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4829 days ago
175 posts - 464 votes

Message 9 of 22

25 September 2011 at 1:51am | IP Logged

Put the Harry Potter book away. Although you may associate it with children, it is not
a particularly easy book to read (especially for a lower level German learner).

If you'd like my advice, graded readers are the absolute best. If you're able to
understand most of what you're reading then you can pull a lot of words from context
and they even have a lot of explanations for words in the bottom margins.

There is a torrent entitled, "German Graded Readers Collection - 88 Books" that has
varying levels of difficulties A1, A2, B2, etc. Almost all of the books include the
audio version of the text being read by a native speaker to aid in pronunciation and
repeated listening after you've read it.

In my opinion, this is an absolutely essential piece to any German learners collection.
10 persons have voted this message useful

montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4828 days ago
2371 posts - 3676 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

Message 10 of 22

25 September 2011 at 3:32am | IP Logged

I was very fond of the "Easy Reader" series. Perhaps a little old-fashioned, but in a way
that I found quite charming. They got me reading anyway, before I was ready for "native"
books. No audio though, as far as I know.

https://www.eurobooks.co.uk/languagebooks/series/GER/m4/c21/ 6/ERGE

1 person has voted this message useful

Randwulf
Newbie
United States
Joined 4892 days ago
32 posts - 93 votes

Speaks: English*

Message 11 of 22

25 September 2011 at 4:17am | IP Logged

Kyle Corrie wrote:

This sounds awesome. Thanks for telling me about it. I will look for it right away.

This is the first language I've tried to learn, so I'm learning the process as I go O_o Didn't realize things like that existed.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Randwulf
Newbie
United States
Joined 4892 days ago
32 posts - 93 votes

Speaks: English*

Message 12 of 22

25 September 2011 at 8:10pm | IP Logged

I can actually read the B1 graded books very well already :D Almost as quickly and easily as books in English. Maybe I am closer than I thought.
1 person has voted this message useful

Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6085 days ago
2020 posts - 2295 votes

1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

Message 13 of 22

25 September 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged

Randwulf wrote:

I can actually read the B1 graded books very well already :D Almost as quickly and easily as books in English. Maybe I am closer than I thought.

have you tested yourself? Here's some links to the Goethe Inst. Modellsätze (practice test questions) for B1

Leseverständnis (Reading Comprehension)

Hörverständnis (Listening comprehension)
3 persons have voted this message useful

H.Computatralis
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 6304 days ago
130 posts - 210 votes

Speaks: Polish*, French, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Latin

Message 14 of 22

25 September 2011 at 9:42pm | IP Logged

Hey, thanks for the reading suggestion. I'm learning German too and those graded readers will be quite useful.
1 person has voted this message useful

EricsonWillians
Triglot
Newbie
Brazil
myspace.com/pois
Joined 5005 days ago
8 posts - 12 votes
Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German
Studies: Norwegian, Polish, Italian

Message 15 of 22

26 September 2011 at 4:06am | IP Logged

Randwulf wrote:

That's how long I have and I was hoping I could get some thoughts on
how to proceed.

Right now I think I'm about at an A2 level in reading and perhaps A1 in speaking and
listening. I could be totally wrong there. So more specifically:

I can read young adult (i.e. Harry Potter) in German, but I need to look up about 10-15
words per page. But I mostly understand the grammar. It usually takes me about 10
minutes to read a page, and that's while I aggressively look up words I don't know,
write them down, and say them a few times.

I've tried watching German TV a few times but I'm basically clueless about what they're
saying. Listening to the slowly spoken news on Deutsche Welle I can usually vaguely
understand what is being said minus a bunch of nouns.

I have all three Pimsleur audio lesson sets (German I, II, and III). I just finished
the first. I'm moving through them somewhat rapidly. I do two per weekday and four per
day on the weekend (50 minutes per weekday, 1:40 on weekend days). I should be done
with the other two within a month. But it's possible that I'll need to listen to some
lessons multiple times in the future. At this point, since I practiced reading a lot
more than listening, I already knew virtually all of the words used in the lessons.
That may well change.

Right now, besides the audio tapes, I read maybe an average of 10 minutes per day of
German. I'm really putting my time into the audio lessons right now to catch up with
that.

At this pace, is reaching B1 and getting my Goethe certification realistic? I can put
some more time in, but not too much. And any recommendations for how to proceed?

Thanks :)

I've got better than that in basically 1 year, but before that I've already knew the
language pronunciation almost entirely. So, I've learned German through a VERY
obsessive routine, reading books in my home, in the way to the work, in the work, in
the way to the home, and even in the house of the girlfriend that I had in that time
(And in the way to her house, and in the way to my house), almost EVERY TIME! I don't
have money to pay any courses of German in my country (Brazil), it's very expensive
(1500 R$ the semester). So, I've watched movies like Der Untergang (Downfall), Lola
rennt, Das Experiment, Die Welle, etc, with German subtitles, and I've heard and hear
COUNTLESS songs in German. I listen to German radios, and I watch Deutsche Welle, I've
finished all the simple course of the Live Mocha (The free part), and I've read
countless pages of random things in German, and I've also read countless times books of
Lovecraft translated into German and I also have read FAUST by Goethe (A bilingual
version, Portuguese - German, German - Portuguese, with a FANTASTIC translation of all
the Poetry by some insane woman genius).

1 year ago I did exactly the same test (By the Goethe Institut, if you did the online
one), and I've got B2. Well, today I don't study German with the same obsession,
because I simply understand it, and I think it's because those never-ceasing studies.
I'm a Brazilian, and I don't have ANY German family or friends, absolutely noone to
talk, I think it's just a bit more hard to learn here than in United States. So, if you
follow this sick routine that I've followed, you'll CERTAINLY speak German very well.

That's my advice and my opinion, good luck! You can learn Norwegian after learning
german, you'll find it very easy :).
5 persons have voted this message useful

maydayayday
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5219 days ago
564 posts - 839 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish^B2, French^B2
Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese
Studies: Urdu

Message 16 of 22

26 September 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged

EricsonWillians wrote:

I've got better than that in basically 1 year, but before that I've already knew the
language pronunciation almost entirely. So, I've learned German through a VERY
obsessive routine, reading books in my home, in the way to the work, in the work, in
the way to the home, and even in the house of the girlfriend that I had in that time
(And in the way to her house, and in the way to my house), almost EVERY TIME! I don't
have money to pay any courses of German in my country (Brazil), it's very expensive
(1500 R$ the semester). So, I've watched movies like Der Untergang (Downfall), Lola
rennt, Das Experiment, Die Welle, etc, with German subtitles, and I've heard and hear
COUNTLESS songs in German. I listen to German radios, and I watch Deutsche Welle, I've finished all the simple course of the Live Mocha (The free part), and I've read
countless pages of random things in German, and I've also read countless times books of Lovecraft translated into German and I also have read FAUST by Goethe (A bilingual
version, Portuguese - German, German - Portuguese, with a FANTASTIC translation of all
the Poetry by some insane woman genius).

1 year ago I did exactly the same test (By the Goethe Institut, if you did the online
one), and I've got B2. Well, today I don't study German with the same obsession,
because I simply understand it, and I think it's because those never-ceasing studies.
I'm a Brazilian, and I don't have ANY German family or friends, absolutely noone to
talk, I think it's just a bit more hard to learn here than in United States. So, if you
follow this sick routine that I've followed, you'll CERTAINLY speak German very well.

That's my advice and my opinion, good luck! You can learn Norwegian after learning
german, you'll find it very easy :).

So now you have a different girlfriend ?
For your undoubted sacrifice I offer you the title of Langage Geek !

3 persons have voted this message useful

This discussion contains 22 messages over 3 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 Next >>

Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum

This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.