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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3872 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 1 of 180 25 December 2013 at 8:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Started learning German about 5 months back. First month consisted of about 12 lessons
of Assimil (sporadic) Then month 2, 3 were spent in an intensive (3hr45min per day, 5 days a week) Goethe Institute course in Germany. The teaching, and the book used were a huge disappointed. Towards the end of month 2, I started searching for better material, and figured out various books and sources (with a lot of help from the kind folk here at HTAL). Month 4 onwards I have been doing an evening A2.1 course (2 lessons a week, each lesson 2hr15mins). The course is again not very good, a lot of time spent on just somewhat random vokab. And not on language structure as a whole. Month 4: I didnt do much studying outside of class due to work and other commitments. This week is semi-vacation so I have started self study. I am now primarily following five books: Assimil German with ease. Begegnungen A1 lesson 5 (really like this book, jampacked with information and words). Living German (when I have some time) Menschen A1/A2 (evening coursebook) For Vokab, I will use the Lextra Vokab book. Since Friday I have covered Assimil lessons 18-26. I was planning to cover 2 lessons per day for the next 12 days to get to lesson 50 before the evening class starts again, but I am feeling a bit burnt out now. I will have to drop to one lesson a day. The assimil constructs have picked up around lesson 24. Since Friday I also did 7 pages of chapter 5 of the Begegnungen book And lesson 1 of Living German. EDIT: Also started on improving English Edited by Gemuse on 30 September 2014 at 10:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 3797 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 2 of 180 25 December 2013 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I always wondered how good the Goethe Insitut was, why was it such a disappointment?
I'm always glad to find fellow German learners! If you're living in Germany, you're gonna pick up pretty quickly between everyday life and home study. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3872 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 3 of 180 25 December 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
I meant compared to the money they charged for the two sessions totaling 7.5 weeks - 34 days of 3hr45 min instruction (2100 euro, excluding lodging). Not saying its worse in teaching to other institutes. IMHO in language learning (and esp in intensive courses), a lot of the work is getting the language structure, grammer and vokabulary into the automatic memory of students. Language teaching *must* align itself towards how humans memorize. And this is where the Institut fell flat. For optimal learning, we must read the thing, hear the thing, speak the thing, and use the thing, repeatedly (remind anyone of Assimil?). Moreover, in an intensive course, the teaching and the teaching material must be as efficient as possible. Our group was given a terrible, terrible "textbook" (studio D). Not much text in there. So there was no reading and reviewing factor. The teachers would speak German in general, which was good, and we were encouraged to speak in German, which was also good, but before speaking something you have to internalize it, and we were not able to do that. Their approach works for someone who learns primarily by hearing, does not need to review, and can absorb information very fast, but for others it does not, at all. Except for a couple of people in our group of 16 people, we were all very disappointed. And another thing. They advertise on their site that it takes only one 3.5 week class to pass the A1 test (85 sessions of 45 mins). In what world? There were maybe two people who could have passed the A1 test after the first session (and one of them has been living in Germany for a few months). The rest of us, no way. In the second session, we were given the A1.2 studio D book, but we did not follow it (or any book). The teacher would give tasks in class borrowed from several places, which were good as exercises, but after class there was not a summary to review as there was no original text. And Again, there were no complete sentences to peruse after class to absorb the language. To give a very concrete example, in the second session on one day we were given a page out of the Begegnungen A1 book, the page has a list of new words (no example sentences), and an exercise. All good. We were expected to the complete the exercise, and to have internalized the words by next day. Yeah, thats not how memorization works. If you look at the Begegnungen A1 book, after that page, they have a page of example sentences using those words, another page of some dialogue using those words (written dialogue and spoken on CD), and more pages of exercises and review using those same words repeatedly. THAT is how memorization works. To be honest, I would have learnt more German had I NOT taken that class.
Hah, my workplace is English based, my colleagues are almost all non-German, and the official language of communication is German. Edited by Gemuse on 30 December 2013 at 10:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4974 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 4 of 180 26 December 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's been a while since I learned German. I enjoyed the Goethe courses I took for the speaking practice but I can see where you would be frustrated. I can't really say how much they helped. I mostly liked meeting people through the course. Personally, I found that reading books in German that I had already enjoyed in English was the best way to get a jump start on the language. It's not fast. But it's what worked best for me. That and listening to lots and lots of radio broadcasts.
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| Mareike Senior Member Germany Joined 6014 days ago 267 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German* Studies: English, Swedish | Message 5 of 180 26 December 2013 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ich wünsch dir viel Erfolg!
Have you thought about a "Gesprächskreis". It's often offered in big cities. In Hamburg it's called "Dialog in Deutsch". It's free for the participants. This could be a nice place to start speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3872 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 6 of 180 26 December 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Danke schön Mareike!
I will ask around if there is a Deutsch Gesprächkreis in my city (I could not find it by a google search). kraemder, were the Goethe courses you took normal paced, or intensive? ~~~~~~ Assimil: Lessons 27+28 (28 is a review lesson). Reviewed lessons 25+26. Begegnungen A1: Pages 118,119,120 With the amount of courses I have done, you would expect Assimil lesson 28 (personal and possessive pronouns in various cases to not be a problem at all, but it was tripping me up 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4974 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 7 of 180 26 December 2013 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I did both. When I took summer courses in Germany they were pretty long classes. I took a couple back in
Boston also which were not nearly as fast, more like a college course pace during a regular semester. I liked the conversational one the most of the ones I took in Boston. I'll be the first to admit I didn't have the best attendance when I took the German classes in Boston. I was a full time student and when I felt the pressure to stay on too of classes it was easy to just not go. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3872 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 8 of 180 28 December 2013 at 8:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Last two days:
Assimil Lesson 29 + Review of Lesson 27. The vokabulary introduced has increased sharply. Had to look up many words in the dictionary. Begegnungen A1: 121-129 Words which have different meanings in German than in English are SO confusing. Eg, "fast, der Sender". Brain automatically uses the English meaning, and then the sentence does not make sense. And then I'm like ****, what do these words mean in German again? Edited by Gemuse on 28 December 2013 at 8:55am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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