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Strategy for learning German | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 9 of 41 23 September 2014 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not impossible to get a good enough level in German in nine months, but if it's your
first foreign language, it's going to be hard. Studying six hours a day takes a lot more than just having time to spare. But good luck! You're at least sure to get to a level where you can make great progress quickly once in-country, assumin you can convince the German students to not speak English to you (that's probably going to be difficult). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 10 of 41 23 September 2014 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
I was just talking with my wife, who's a junior professor here in Germany, and she said that about 15%-20% of the students at her university were non-German. Depending on the subject she thinks B2 would be fine. She's a philosopher, and obviously for a subject like that you'd need to be relatively fluent, but if you wanted to study mathematics/engineering, where there is a lot of teaching in English less German would be required. She has an Asian student who is studying engineering, and she said her German is OK. Good enough to communicate, but no where near fluent. Her sense is the same as mine. Work towards the B2 certificate, not towards fluency. Once you are here in Germany there are lots of ways to improve your German.
I am not sure it's impossible, but very difficult. I would say six-hours/day is the minimum. I wouldn't say don't try for it, but you need to be very strategic with your time, and think about exactly what you need for the exam. If you start up a language blog here I'd be interested in reading your progress. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| akeed Newbie Sri Lanka Joined 3715 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 41 23 September 2014 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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[QUOTE=Ari] [QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Cavesa] [QUOTE] [QUOTE=Expugnator][QUOTE] [QUOTE=patrickwilken][QUOTE] ^^^ Thank you for the answers everyone, this forum is surely a very helpful one. Your posts really encouraged me to decide to follow through with my goal. I have just one more big question and then lets close this post! Here goes.... After reading your replies and doing some research I came up with a study plan. Here it is
Later on I will start watching German TV shows/movies, listening to German radio/podcasts and reading German books/newspapers. I also don't want to keep changing my routine and would rather stick with it upto a considerable period in time so if you think I should change my above plan please tell me now! I know that there are obviously so many resources for learning German and so many ways that I can go about it but I don't want to spend my entire nine months cycling through all the different routes and ways and that is why I am thinking of sticking to the above plan. So if you think I can improve it in any way please tell me! ###I plan to do my A1 exam at the Goethe center in 14 days.### **I know that most people on this forum would probably prefer Assimil over Michel Thomas but I have already started using MT and I really like it. I would consider using Assimil instead, if any of you have any solid reason for me to. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 41 23 September 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Your plan sounds good in many aspects (for exemple sticking to MT as you have already begun) but I am unsure about one point. The courses at Deutsche Welle website are an awesome complementary to any course, especially useful for the listening skills, but I am unsure they can be a standalone main method. If I were you, I'd choose something more solid as spine of your studies. Assimil does have much more content than audio courses like Pimsleur or MT usually. Or there are other courses that can give your studies structure and lead to higher levels. And to get to know what is expected from you in an exam, the best is to buy a preparatory coursebook with cds.
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| akeed Newbie Sri Lanka Joined 3715 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 41 24 September 2014 at 3:44am | IP Logged | |||||
What do you suggest I use then? Assimil? the Teach Yourself series? Hammar's German gramamr and usage? the Themen Aktuell series? can you provide me some options with a few of their pros and cons and a comparison? Thanks a lot! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4253 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 14 of 41 24 September 2014 at 5:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would highly recommend watching Professor Arguelles's video reviews on Assimil and Teach Yourself. His preference leans towards Assimil and to older out of print textbooks that are more difficult to find, and that might not necessarily suit your needs, but most importantly you can see how the courses are laid out and decide what will work best for your learning style.
Assimil is a bit of a favorite method around here, because it has more content than other courses and is basically just 100 parallel texts of increasing difficulty with lots of jokes and stories that will help you remember what you learn better. However most people here also study romance languages, and it definitely works best for them, for German it should still work pretty well, but you might have to put a bit of extra effort into studying the dialogs. Some complaints that sometimes arise from Assimil is that it's not always clear how best to use it, the grammar is explained somewhat haphazardly, and it tends to do much more for your passive understanding skills than giving you useful things you'll want to say in conversation. But the passive understanding you get can make for a really great spine for further study. Teach Yourself has a decent amount of content, but much more of the book will be giving you English explanations of how the language works rather than actually using it. They generally have 20+ lessons with (I think) 2 dialogs each, and then some exercises. It's got a clearer structure for explaining grammar, and is a bit more obvious on how to use it. Personally I think since you've already got Michel Thomas which will give you a pretty solid control over basic grammar, Assimil would make a better compliment after that, since it will give you more German content to learn, and the haphazard grammar notes will function better as reminders for stuff you've learned in Michel Thomas, and you won't need structured lessons as much. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 15 of 41 24 September 2014 at 7:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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Michel Thomas has a good reputation and is not at all a bad choice for a course. It's
got solid grammar explanations (as opposed to Assimil which is more "intuitive") and audio-only in the beginning could be good for your pronunciation, since you won't be fooled by the spelling. It is, however, limited in vocabulary, as has been said. Regarding Assimil, I previously linked to my ChinesePod method, so if you do decide to try Assimil after MT, I recommend you to take a look at that to see some ways you can engage with the text. The suggested way in the book is basically just to listen to and read the dialogs, and I find it best to engage much deeper than that. Regarding Anki to memorize vocabulary, remember to be selective about which words you enter. Any word you learn in your courses is probably a good idea to enter, but when you start looking for other words, don't make the mistake of adding all words you encounter. That will bog you down if you do it in the beginning (save it for when you're at a higher level). In the beginning, it's best to either focus on words you think are common and useful, or to download a shared deck with basic vocabulary. Personally, I usually do single-word flashcards in the passive direction only, with a few in the active direction if I think they're useful. A lot of people prefer sentence flashcards, but I find that the context of the sentence and the memory of where it comes from give me too much information to figure out the word without actually knowing it. But again, a lot of people swear by sentence flashcards, so see what you like best. Doing cards in the active direction (English to German) works in the beginning, but pretty soon you'll start learning synonyms and then it gets mpore complicated. I personally like stressing comprehension and letting active ability develop naturally. This might not be optimal if you're studying for an exam, however. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 41 24 September 2014 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with what has been said about Assimil. It is a good option, even though I like to supplement it with a grammar book.
TY isn't bad but I prefer Themen Aktuell much more. It is a monolignual course with bilingual exercise book with explanations and vocab lists. Audio is fully in German. Vast majority of exercises are of the useful kinds. There are tons of useful vocabulary, grammar is really well explained., with lots of exemples. The books are as well not that expensive, the value/price ratio is very learner friendly I actually am quite the opposite of Ari. I find flashcards in the passive direction totally useless and the single word (or single phrase,expression,...) cards in active direction are totally awesome and efficient, in my opinion. You can't know a word actively without understanding it passively while the opposite is quite common. It depends purely on personal preferences, learning styles and talents of each learner. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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