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German C1 in 14 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 4995 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes  Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 9 of 39 19 September 2010 at 11:17pm | IP Logged |
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Elapsed time: 2 weeks Vocabulary: +656 words I learned a few hundred words. Well, not really, since I already knew most of them, or at least had known them in the past, but were forgotten. I wanted to have a complete list of the words I know. So, I sat down and dumped all the words that I could remember into the SRS system. There are still more to add, but I feel like I'm fast approaching the limits of my vocabulary ... which is quite pathetic. I hope this will change soon. I listened for some time to Deutsche Welle. I understand the stories, but because of my vocabulary issues the details are often lost to me. I also listened to units 17, 18 & 19 of Pimsleur German 3. I feel that it's rather below my level, but I can still squeeze some information out of it and the opportunity of assembling whole sentences and being corrected afterwards is very valuable. I wanted to say more but I'm almost falling asleep. Edited by valkyr on 25 September 2010 at 9:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 4995 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 10 of 39 20 September 2010 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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Elapsed time: 2 weeks Vocabulary: +700 words I'm beginning to think that having a complete list of German words I know is a fool's errand. First of all, there are numerous words that I readily recognize from other languages. Just off the top of my head words like das Restaurant, die Branche, wunderbar, das Cafe, international, das Problem are very close, and some of them identical to Romanian or English words. Writing them down seems like a waste of time, maybe with the exception of some nouns because I have to learn the gender. But since most of them are loanwords which are always neutral, this category is rather small. Secondly, German language favors agglutination, which means words are often composed of several shorter words joined together. Now, you can't always tell the meaning of the resulting word from its components, but in many cases you can, and a ridiculous number of such combinations are possible. Say grundlos, sinnlos, arbeitslos, or better yet das Telefonbuch, das Schulbuch, das Adressbuch, das Aktienbuch, and so on. It's pointless to write all of them down. Oh, and in my "Buch" examples you don't need to worry about gender since they all borrow it from the last word (das Buch). So, from now on I'll be content with writing down words that aren't plain obvious, or at least have a gender that cannot be inferred. Edited by valkyr on 25 September 2010 at 9:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 4995 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 11 of 39 22 September 2010 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
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Elapsed time: 3 weeks Vocabulary: +767 words Reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (faz.net) can be a humbling experience. I encounter dozens of unknown words in every article and sometimes, even after looking all of them up, I'm still not sure of the meaning. Maybe I'm aiming too high. After all, I've only started learning 3 weeks ago, and my vocabulary is nowhere near the 4 or 5 thousand words that are necessary to comfortably read a newspaper. I'm leaving on Sunday to Germany. It will be a short stay (only three full days), and I'll be using English most of the time. But if I get the chance, I may speak some German and I'm looking forward to getting lots of input. Until then, I'll focus on finishing the Pimsleur series (levels 3 and 4) because they focus primarily on improving your day-to-day speaking skills, which may come in handy. Edited by valkyr on 25 September 2010 at 9:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| El Forastero Pentaglot Senior Member Colombia alijunakai.blogspot.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6080 days ago 186 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, FrenchB1, EnglishC1, Italian Studies: German | Message 12 of 39 23 September 2010 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
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Hello Valkyr, How do you do?
At the moment i'm studying for TOEFL in next november, After that, my following goal is learning German, at least getting a C1 level, and my current situation is almost the same as yours, so i'm going to read faithfuly your post and I encourage you to do your best. In three months I can follw your way and i will reach you Greetings 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6281 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 13 of 39 23 September 2010 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
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Pimsleur is the slowest way to acquire vocabulary and grammar. Get an Assimil course as
soon as possible, or at least study a good online course like Deutsche Welle's "Deutsch - warum nicht" or the "Essential German" one. These are also much more focussed on helping you communicate in real situations. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 4995 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 14 of 39 23 September 2010 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
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@El Forastero
Thanks for your encouragements and good luck with TOEFL! @Sprachprofi Yeah, Pimsleur is very slow, and it may be somewhat too easy for me at this point. I used it because it was the only material I had, that provided conversational practice. I'll look up the Assimil and DW courses and see what I can find. Thanks for the tip! PS: I see you're learning Mandarin, cool! That's next on my list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 4995 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 15 of 39 24 September 2010 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
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Elapsed time: 3 weeks Vocabulary: +800 words Later edit: I decided to replace the "Time left" with "Elapsed time" since, first of all, I don't know the exact date of my exam (14 months was a ballpark figure), and secondly, I think people who read this would be more interested in how long it takes to reach a certain level of proficiency. I've given up on reading the FAZ but I found another avenue for practicing reading, and that is online forums. Although they may contain errors, they are, for the most part, easy to read and understand. I'm continuing to expand my vocabulary and I'm closing in on the 1000 mark. However, I'm having trouble with gender and plural forms. I learned some rules but there are many of them, lots of exceptions, and I doubt that you can apply them during conversation. So it appears that learning by heart and developing an intuition for them is the only way. From now on I'll mark any words for whom I can't remember the gender or plural form as 'unknown' in the SRS so that I review them over and over until I get it right. I may also write down a few sentences using nouns that I'm having trouble with. Edited by valkyr on 25 September 2010 at 9:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 4995 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 16 of 39 30 September 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
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Elapsed time: 1 month Vocabulary: +949 words I just came back from Germany. Short trip, but I got a lot of things done. Most importantly, I practiced my German with natives a lot more than I expected! At first, it was hard to get going. I didn't have any confidence that they would understand me. However, in the few days I was there, I got to the point where I would conduct most conversations in German, and only switch to English for the finer points. I also had more complex discussions about China's economic prospects and Germany's progressive income tax. Reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine made me familiar with financial jargon. I sacrificed grammar completely and instead focused on just being understood. Although they weren't particularly bothered by it, and even assured me that my grammar wasn't THAT bad, I still think I must have made Ali G sound like a professor. I also asked a lot of questions about the meaning of words and other things that were not clear to me, and people were generally very helpful. I picked up some dialect as well since nobody really seamed to speak pure Hochdeutsch. One thing I found daunting was understanding what they were saying. They speak exceedingly fast and the local accents / dialects don't help either. I don't think they're used to speaking to foreigners in German. After a few minutes talking to them they would adjust their speech so that I could understand, at least to the extent allowed by my vocabulary. Strangely enough, I always understood them better after I had a beer or two. Maybe being more relaxed helps with comprehension :-) Overall, a very productive trip. I think I'm firmly in A2 right now, with some aspects (like speaking) probably closer to B1. Edited by valkyr on 30 September 2010 at 11:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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