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Going back to Europe TAC 2014 DE|FR|日本語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5769 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 129 of 142 27 November 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
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Well I passed N2 nearly two years ago and when I look at N2 material now it doesn't feel much (if at all) easier than it did back then. I guess that's what you call a plateau.
In fact, since dampingwire and kraemder are both rapidly catching up with me, I've got some work to do to stay ahead! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4971 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 130 of 142 01 December 2014 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
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Maybe slowly catching up. I don't expect to pass lol.
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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4452 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 131 of 142 01 December 2014 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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I can't read much and I can only hear the odd few words when I watch dramas.
I don't think either of you need worry just yet :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5769 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 132 of 142 01 December 2014 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Come on, don't make this a race to the bottom!
BTW @kraemder, I didn't expect to pass either. So when I did pass, I was really confused. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4971 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 133 of 142 02 December 2014 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
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Lol yeah I remember.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5769 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 134 of 142 10 December 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged |
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I signed up for the November 6WC with German and pledged 30 hours of German study. At the time I thought it should be achievable (only 5 hours a week, and I'm doing a German class which would suck up some of that time without me having to do any more than just turn up). Well, the last 6 weeks haven't exactly been straightforward, with various life things going on, some expected and some not. I'm not going to be able to get anywhere near the overall 104 hours I logged back in November 2012. Nevertheless, this evening I reached my 30 hour target in German.
More importantly than hours counted, however, is the fact that I feel I have actually leveled up my German! I hit a low point a couple of weeks into the challenge where I was still turning up to class and doing my homework, but I wasn't doing any more than that. But I turned it back around again, backing up the work we were doing in class with some extra grammar study using the A Grammatik grammar workbook and starting to work through Sage and Schreibe, a vocabulary workbook Cavesa recommended in her log. I listened to a handful of the Warum Nicht lessons, although I think lately I've been listening more for the storyline than for the language lesson. I've been making regular use of an Anki deck to keep reviewing vocabulary and odd bits of grammar. Last week I noticed an email from Deutsche Welle which hadn't ended up in my spam trap and followed a link to a Top-Thema article about Christmas markets. I worked through the article with a dictionary and came away with a whole page of new vocabulary, but crucially my understanding of the grammar and basic vocabulary was good enough that I already had a basic structure I could hang the new stuff from, which meant that the article felt like it was an appropriate level to study and learn from. I even had my first encounter with the passive, which I think shouldn't be too big a deal once I get a more automatic understanding of the conjugation of werden. At the weekend I watched a film thanks to Das Erste Mediathek (which makes me happy every time I log on thanks to the lack of region locking). The film was called Sushi in Suhl, and was about a man who set up the very first Japanese restaurant in the DDR. I didn't use subtitles and naturally missed a lot, but I could understand enough to get the general gist and enjoy the film. Although I think I'd enjoy any film which included my two favourite languages! I then turned my attention to books and have made a start reading Der Kleine Prinz. I have already read this book in English, Japanese and French (in that order!) so I have a pretty good idea of what it's supposed to mean, even when I don't understand the German. There is no way I could read it at my current level otherwise. But it's still rewarding, if slow, to read in a semi-intensive way (that is, I don't look up every word I don't understand/can't figure out, but I look up the ones that annoy me). Anyway, with all this exciting German stuff going on in my head, when I showed up to class this week I just couldn't shut up speaking in German. Sure, I made mistakes and sometimes ran out of words to express myself, I'm still most definitely in the A2 zone, but I'm starting to get productive and it feels good! The next challenge is to balance German with equal efforts in Japanese, battling my natural tendency to be single minded, and to balance all my language stuff with the rest of my life! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4971 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 135 of 142 10 December 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
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Nice job with the German. I don't know if I can go two languages at once. It was going ok until the end of the
semester and the JLPT reared its head.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5769 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 136 of 142 14 December 2014 at 6:41pm | IP Logged |
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For a long time, I held quite dearly to my heart the idea that “more is better” when it comes to language learning. From AJATT, to the 6WC, to the ReadMOD Tadoku challenge, there is a lot of stuff out there which adds traction to this ideal.
I decided to sign up for the November 6WC and pledge 30 hours for German, because I knew that there would be other life things happening which would limit how much time I had available. The 30 hours was both a target and a limit, and it took the edge out of thinking about the top scorers on the leader board. In the end, I logged just over 30 hours for German, and just under 30 hours for Japanese. Since I’m still a novice in German, each time I work through a textbook I pick up a whole load of new vocabulary. I’ve been using Anki to keep track of the new vocabulary and it’s actually helped me put the brakes on a little bit. If I have a backlog of 200 new cards in Anki, I’ve been doing things too intensively and can afford to take a break from the textbooks for a couple of days while I catch up on learning the new vocabulary. Now I have started reading Der Kleine Prinz and I have to say I’m really glad I’m not trying to Super Challenge it. It is much more enjoyable to take the book at my own pace, without worrying about how many more pages I’ve got left to read or how long it is going to take. I’d already noticed when reading French, my strongest reading language, that if I deliberately slowed down my reading speed just a little bit, I had a much better comprehension of the text. Since my German is still pretty weak, I have to slow down my reading speed an awful lot more to feel the benefit, but that benefit is most definitely there. Also, although I am enjoying the book, after 4 or 5 pages (or about 15 minutes of reading) I actually feel pretty tired because it takes a lot of concentration, and I am ready to put the book down again. Rather than berating myself for not spending more time on task, I am just enjoying what I can do. My German has actually improved quite a bit, without me having to put in silly amounts of hours. This in itself has been a really important lesson for me. So I am trying to make “quality over quantity” my new mantra for language learning, so that I can still make progress, have fun, and not begrudge the hours that I am not learning languages because I am spending them on other important things in my life. I do wonder whether, excluding any short term boost from an immersion or immersion-like experience, there is an optimum intensity at which to study a language. That is, does three hours of study really give you three times the benefit of one hours study, or would you be better off studying for one hour and spending the other two hours at the beach? Edited by g-bod on 14 December 2014 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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