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Fluent German by the end of the year | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5183 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes  Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 57 of 70 21 April 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged |
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Now that I've (hopefully) passed the B2 cert. The next goal would be C1!
Goethe doesn't offer any C1 level courses for the time being due to lack of demand. Since B2 is sufficient for most purposes, like study and (most) work, there don't seem to be as many people interested in advanced level courses. I might look at other language schools but for the time being, I'll have to study on my own. Since I'm no longer in Germany, things will progress more slowly, and I will also have less time available, maybe 1h / day. Regarding Anki, since I started reading authentic materials, I encounter new words at a rate that makes it impractical to add all of them to my deck. I'll only be adding new words sporadically, if I consider them important. For listening, I'll use the Tagesschau podcast and SWR Wissen. In addition I can also watch Deutsche Welle live on the internet and I have 2 or 3 German channels on television. Writing will be relegated to lang-8, but I probably won't be doing much of that. Reading I think I need to start reading some longer texts, like books. I've been looking at a novel called "Der Beobachter" (the observer). I found a blog on the internet, written by a guy who was preparing to pass the B2 exam. He was reading this book too, so I assume it is appropriate for my level. It also seems to have great reviews. Speaking opportunities will be rare to non-existent, but that's not really a problem. I also use English very rarely in conversation and, given enough input, fluency doesn't seem to deteriorate much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| crno_srce Diglot Newbie Australia yetanotherlanguage.b Joined 4700 days ago 7 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 | Message 58 of 70 26 April 2012 at 5:46am | IP Logged |
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Hey Valkyr!
I'm the guy who wrote the blog you're referring to here. Congratulations on sitting the B2 exam. It sounds to me like you did really well, and I really hope the final results match your expectations. My own expectations are somewhat lower :-) Having said that, I'm sure you'll have absolutely no trouble at all with Der Beobachter. Grammatically speaking, I would say there wasn't a single construct anywhere that caused me comprehension issues. It all came down to vocabulary for me. I got a bit bored with always adding new words to my Anki list because it slowed down my enjoyment of the story at times, but looking back I wish I had done it a little more, but in a more targeted fashion. I did it right at the start and that was really helpful because the words I didn't know from the backcover and the first few pages, reappeared many times over through the rest of the book. There were also sections of the book where a new word would appear frequently over about 5-15 pages and then disappear again. I wonder if these sections were all written at once! As for speaking opportunities, you live quite close to Germany - if I managed to find a few speakers here to practice with, you can too :-) I find your point about maintaining a high level of input being enough to maintain your fluency (but presumably, not to improve it!). If true, that would be very helpful to those of us not living in the country where the language is spoken. Thanks for posting your experiences and preparations - I found them very helpful! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5183 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 59 of 70 28 May 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged |
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@crno_srce
It was your blog, really? Small world :) Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to dig deeper into 'Der Beobachter'. I'm still at the beginning of the book. I anticipated this drop in interest after my return from Germany, so I'm glad I sat the B2 right away. After a long wait, I finally have the results. I got a better than expected grade. I was only 0.5 points away from a 'sehr gut'. Let's see how the results compare to my initial estimates: Reading: 24/25 (expected 20) Listening: 20/25 (expected 20) Writing: 22/25 (expected 17) Speaking: 23.5/25 (expected 23) Total: 89.5/100 Basically, I estimated correctly the listening & speaking parts, but underestimated the writing and reading sections. This is because both writing and reading contain a grammar exercise, where I usually did pretty bad in the mock exams. Apparently I did much better in the actual exam. Now I have the C1 in my sights. This is gonna be much harder since I can't find any language school which offers group courses past B2 level and I'm not in Germany anymore, so the motivation is also on the low side. Maybe Goethe Institute will hold a C1.1 course in autumn. I'll have to wait and see. Thank you for all your support! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Luna Moonsilver Diglot Groupie Germany lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5077 days ago 77 posts - 99 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean | Message 60 of 70 28 May 2012 at 2:35pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations, valkyre, that score's great! I hope the Goethe Institute do end up
holding that C1 course for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| crno_srce Diglot Newbie Australia yetanotherlanguage.b Joined 4700 days ago 7 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 | Message 61 of 70 28 May 2012 at 3:22pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulation, Valkyr!
I passed too - got 89/100. I thought being 1 mark away from the top grade was a little annoying but to be just half a mark away - torture! Just kidding. It's an excellent result. I won't pollute your thread with my full update - anyone interested for my thoughts post the exam can find them on my blog with the results in particular here: http://yetanotherlanguage.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/goethe- zertifikat-b2-bestanden.html Good luck with your preparations for the C1 exam. I'm sure it'll go well for you even out of the country and with no specific classes. I'm not sure what I'll do next exactly - if I'll aim for another German exam, or something different, but I'll keep an eye on your posts here to see how you go. Is your goal to do C1 by the end of the year? Or C2? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5183 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 62 of 70 02 June 2012 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
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@Luna Moonsilver
Thanks, I hope so too! @crno_srce I don't think C2 is viable by the end of the year. That's really advanced and you have to get a passing grade on all parts of the exam. Reading, writing and listening, are no longer bundled together as they are in lesser exams (C1 and below). If you mess up one of them (<15 / 25 score) you can't compensate by doing better in other parts. In my case what helped a lot was actually being in Germany and studying at least 3 hours per day for a few months. It's been a month and a half since I left Germany and already feeling a bit rusty ... especially when it comes to speaking. I now attend a C1 course at work, but it's only 1.5 hours / week, so ... not even enough to maintain my level, let alone make progress. Right now I'm trying to practice at least an hour / day so I don't forget, but until I start attending a serious course I don't expect to go very far ... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| valkyr Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5183 days ago 79 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC1, GermanB2 | Message 63 of 70 06 July 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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Lately I've started working harder on my German. I finally managed to clear my flash card backlog. I'm now adding new words again. (Currently around 3300).
I also started listening to more podcasts. I think my comprehension rate is somewhere around 80 - 90% and I can usually infer the rest from context. One issue seems to be the foreign vocabulary. Most German words have no connection to either English or Romanian counterparts, so even after having learned them, recognition is not instantaneous. Another difficulty arises from German's tendency to agglutinate words. For example, a root word like ... say 'Sicht' (sight), has many derivations with wildly varying semantics: 'Ansicht' (viewpoint), 'Aussicht' (outlook), 'Hinsicht' (aspect), 'Absicht' (intention) and so on. Context doesn't always help. For instance, hearing "Die Ansicht der Abgeordneten ...", unless you've clearly heard the "N" in "Ansicht", you might mistakenly think they're talking about the "The congressmen's intention ..." rather than their opinion. Even if you heard it correctly, you still need more time to retrieve the correct meaning from all the "Sichts" you have memorized. I see no quick fix for this. Words need to become better anchored in my head before I can recognize them quickly and this takes takes lots of time. Edited by valkyr on 06 July 2012 at 4:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4687 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 64 of 70 06 July 2012 at 3:40pm | IP Logged |
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The time to retrieve from memory will likely just come with time, but I certainly sympathize with this particular type of issue. I have a post-it next to my desk with definitions for 10 different words ending in "-trag" that still give me trouble sometimes.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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