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Did you teach yourself to become fluent? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bobb328 Groupie Canada Joined 4396 days ago 52 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 12 24 May 2013 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been learning German for about exactly a year. I finished Assimil and now I'm kind of at a stage where I'm jumping around
between intermediate courses and native materials not really sure what to do next. I started TY Further German but gave up because the layout was confusing. Right now I'm working my way through Living Language Ultimate Advanced German but I'm not sure if I like it or not because I'm still not sure how long I should spend on each lesson. Yesterday I started the old TY German by Sir John Adams from the 60s because it's essentially 100 pages of translation exercises into German and has nice concise grammar explanations. And lastly, I bought Using German Vocabulary by Sarah Fagan and am putting the vocab into Memrise. My goal is to learn 30 new words a day and to get through the entire book in somewhere close to a year (10,000 new words in the book, Highly recommended!!). Anyway, sorry for that little briefing, my question is how did you teach yourself to be FLUENT in your target language. I know you're not allowed to say that word on this site but what I mean is, how did you mangage to quickly, without thinking, produce a message in your target language with reasonably good grammar whether that be in speaking or writing. Right now I know most of the basic grammar concepts and can recognize them but it takes me forever to actively use them. For example, writing a sentence with adjectives and multiple verbs would take me several minutes to think out the declinations of each case and gender (and forget about speaking, right know I don't know how anyone can speak an inflected language; especially one where there's almost no indication of what the gender is). I know using so many courses is only hurting me but I'm having trouble sticking to a single one. Native materials are a tad bit too difficult (put it this way, Harry Potter und der Orden des Phönix is still pretty challenging) but I'm going start using them more . I was thinking of starting in the middle of FSI or at least just doing the drills to really pound that grammar into my head. I need something that has tons of drills (especially speaking) because I realize I've taken my passive skills too far; my only real active output was the active phase of Assimil. My goal - which I'm very determined to accomplish - is to reach basic fluency in 3 months. When College starts up again I'm going to move on to Russian! What do you suggest I do to improve my active skills, especially speaking? P.S. -- Sorry for the atrocious writing, I'm tired, on a train, and writing with a cell phone. But thank you for any help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 12 24 May 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Right now, I have this ability for certain subjects, but not for others. As long as the topic is familiar and the grammar isn't too complicated, either the words come automatically, or they arrive 80% assembled and I just need to patch up the other 20% before talking. I've found that two things help me enormously: 1. Lots of exposure to native speech that I (mostly) understand. This burns in all sorts of handy verbal reflexes that I can use almost without thinking. If you haven't already, consider buying several of seasons of a television series on DVD. 2. Actually speaking to people. For me, it took about 2 weeks of intense, brain-melting practice before I could more-or-less speak, and a while longer to work out various bugs. You'll notice that I didn't mention any courses. At least for me, there's no way a course book and some CDs are going to allow me to have a fast, automatic conversation. For that, I need to speak, and listen to people speak. So consider looking for things like Verbling, iTalki, Skype partners or even a tutor. As for FSI, some people really like it, but it doesn't seem to be any kind of guaranteed miracle cure on its own. I think there's something really essential about talking to people, at least for me. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4243 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi | Message 3 of 12 24 May 2013 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I thought the same thing about speaking German before I could speak it. It took me a year to speak
brokenly and another year to understand almost everything, taking a summer off in between my first two years of university from studying it. But what I learned from becoming bilingual with French by living in Montréal is that you have to use the language every day and for everything, directions, food, illness, office work, monotony. You have to change your use of your mother tongue in monotonous, quotidian, daily situations into the use of your target language, and use it more than you use your mother tongue whenever possible. Our German profs required us to Skype with university students from Germany. I was scared the first 6 times I did it, I hardly spoke any German whatsoever, and a lot of my thoughts were in German although a lot of what I said was in English, to clarify and get corrected for what I had just said. I started listening to hour-long podcasts every day (Germans love radio culture and there are plenty of professionally- made and well-funded broadcasts available via iTunes, my favourite being the literary interview program MDR Figaro-Café with a lovely piano interlude every now and then by Stefan König which serves as a mental break while listening all in one sitting), started to watch the news in German, and started to try understanding my other courses and languages via German grammar and concepts. German has a beautiful way of compounding nouns into concrete ideas so taking notes for my philosophy class was a great time for me to get creative with my German. But the banal must be tended to as well. Assimil is great to get you speaking, but I doubt anyone can become fluent in 3 months without full- time (40 hours a week) input and interest. I am only 70% done my Russian Assimil book and I have a Skype date I'm late for now with a Russian! I'm very confident to speak, although my comprehension of natural Russian speech is somewhat off. It's a matter of practice. As for German, here are some good beginner and intermediate media resources I use: (sehr klischeehaftes Schreiben, gut für das Auswendiglernen und die Leser kommentieren gerne) neon.de (also available as an iTunes video podcast) http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute-Nachrichten-Startseite- 3998.html And also consider R & L (reading and listening) with Hörbuch programs, that is, audiobooks. I use this method with other languages, though not so much with German since I took a class in German literature, and I think it's a really good way to immerse yourself in a language and see how all its parts work in symbiosis, so to say, and you feel really accomplished with yourself afterwards despite all the difficulty there is in finding suitably challenging material as an intermediate learner. And one thing I like to recall from studying linguistics is that alphabets and writing systems are arbitrarily defined, and often in English (as well as in German) spelling and syntax have changed due to peoples' spoken usage of the language. A grammar can only take a snapshot of the use of a language whereas speaking it is putting your mind in the now, so to say, and people use colloquial and archaic expressions all the time in day-to-day life which no grammar will be able to deal with exhaustively. Languages are used fluently, not at a standstill or from a snapshot framework, so you have to go with the flow! Tschüss! EDIT: I agree fully with emk and wish I could have written what I did as clear and fast as he did! Edited by mahasiswa on 24 May 2013 at 8:29pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4720 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 12 24 May 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Don't worry too much about your active skills lagging behind your passive skills. That
is inevitable, and I personally just go with the flow and keep on improving my passive skills knowing that my active skills will inch along behind them. German has possibly the best set of free resources available of any single language: The Deutsche Welle website. Go to http://www.dw.de/deutsch-lernen/s-2055 and you will find loads of well produced language learning material. It is all arranged by level, and there are courses, podcasts, videos, etc. Since you've finished Assimil, I'm guessing you should look into the B1 material. You may also want to check out their "Audiotrainer" in the A2 section, which has 100 3-4 minute podcasts designed to build vocabulary. Langenscheidt also has brilliant resources for learners. I have really enjoyed some of their minibooks mit mini-CD, such as the Felix & Theo series and the Klara & Theo series. Books like these might help you bridge the gap from Assimil to Harry Potter. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4055 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 5 of 12 24 May 2013 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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You know, I've always wandered to what degree we teach ourselves a language. I've always
thought of it like...we teach ourself the stuff to help us get to the language: the vocab and the grammar, syntax and example sentences etc but the actual language itself we learn from native speakers and tv/audio and books and speaking. I find it helps if you accept it like that, and think of it as a process and just continue to expose yourself to the language and not lose heart. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 12 24 May 2013 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
You're allowed to say "fluent" but that word has a lot of connotations. I, like s_allard, prefer proficiency, but I know you mean that you'd like to be able to speak on a basic level with a minimum amount of errors in pronunciation, word choice and grammar. This "what do I now after I've finished Assimil?" question gets asked a lot here on the forum. In addition to the good advice given by emk, mahasiwa and Jeffers, My advice would be to ditch the courses, except for one or two (which should be used as a supplement) and start reading native materials, even though it's very difficult right now. Ideally, you should be using parallel texts in German/English, with audio even better! Also you should start speaking German as often as you possibly can, even imperfectly, especially imperfectly. Making mistakes and being corrected is a huge aid to achieving proficiency in a language. I still screw up almost every time I speak Portuguese, not as often in Spanish and my Haitian Creole still needs a ton of work. Obviously, I'd like to be able to speak without any errors at all, but I accept that I make them, try to correct them myself and when corrected by a native speaker, I take note of it and try not to make the same mistake again. Check your fear and ego at the door. When I first taught myself Spanish and started traveling in Latin America, I had a set piece down- Why I learned Spanish; How I learned Spanish; Appologizing for my poor Spanish and explaining that I was still learning; My biography; My travels; My opinions about the country, etc. Later, I learned that this is a concept called "language islands" which is explained here: "How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately" by Boris Shekhtman. This small book packs some good advice and should get you ready for speaking by helping you construct a solid floor upon which more language can be built. You have your foundation, now you must build upon it. Start with that floor, and then frame the walls. Eventually, you'll be ready for drywall/plaster, and everything else that comes with the house analogy. Reading often and widely will help you to see constructions and vocabulary that you will need. I don't count words or use anki. When I see a word or phrase I don't know or want to learn, I write it down in a notebook and say it at least ten times. This, and seeing the phrase, hearing it somewhere else really helps me to retain it. Reading when you're not "ready" isn't easy, but despite what Assimil would have you to believe, learning a language is a lot of hard work. Some people see how daunting the task is and it overwhelms them, because they are looking at the totality of what is involved instead of just the task in front of them in the present. Your first native material text will be hard, no getting around that I'm afraid. Your second one, hopefully, will be a little less difficult, and so on. Try to find shorter texts and preferably bilingual ones to start. To achieve your goal in three months is do-able, but you're going to have to really work at it. Good luck! Edited by iguanamon on 24 May 2013 at 9:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 12 24 May 2013 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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See various techniques here too :) also do more fun stuff like lyricstraining.com <333
When did you buy the 10k book? adding 30 words a day is easy in the beginning but it amounts to A LOT OF REVIEW in the long run. slow down. that's a hell lot of words, learn them passively at first. some will sneak into your active vocabulary, go through the book again to pick out those that don't. if you don't get bored of it, I'd imagine it would take 5-7 goes before you know all those words. and that's assuming you also use native materials. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4180 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 8 of 12 24 May 2013 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll answer primarily for writing, because I don't have many opportunities to speak German. Really one of the best things for me with writing was more careful reading. Meaning, if there is a new word, or a word used in an unusual way, or a particular interesting grammatical feature (right now, that's da/wo compounds), I would re-read the sentence sometimes several times to really understand it. For case endings, I just found several random sentences and translated them literally. I know that's usually seen as being outdated and a slower way of learning, but for me that was the only thing that made it "click." Again though, a lot of reading was helpful. By the way, I wrote very slowly at first, really trying to make sure I used the cases and genders properly. It's okay to start out slow in the beginning; at that point you're probably writing no more than 250 words at a time. After doing it a few times, it naturally becomes faster.
Speaking can still be a bit of a mess because I just don't have many opportunities to speak. It's noticeably behind my other skills. I did find though that once I have enough time, it goes up much closer to where my others are (though I still think it's behind--and maybe it always will be, I'm much more of a writer than a speaker). What helped for me though was a lot of listening, where I'm actually paying attention the whole time, and not just having it as background noise, and drilling phrases. I never actually used FSI, but what I would do is write out what I wanted to say, and then repeat it several times. Some people also seem to be able to do a lot of "self talk" throughout the day, which might also be beneficial. My "methods" I think don't really follow a particular technique, but more take the parts of techniques that I like the best. I'm nowhere near where I would eventually like to be, but I think that what really made the difference for me was slowing down to focus on what I was listening to or reading. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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