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B1 German - September 2015 | ||
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| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4381 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes  Studies: English*, German | Message 1 of 31 30 September 2014 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Goal: Take the B1 German exam and pass by September 2015.
So far I am plodding along with German with Ease over the past few weeks but it has only been 1 lesson every couple of days/few days. Unfortunately, I am doing several hours of revision/school work after school each day and I simply get tired and go to bed. Several months ago I had some free time and anticipated that I would be able to put in lots and lots of hours of German but other activities and socialising with friends filled a lot of my free time. However, now I have been managing my time more effectively I am going back to 1 lesson a day. By November the 1st I hope to have started to the active wave of Assimil. I am going to be going onto lesson 19 tomorrow. I was hoping to be further ahead in the book, but I have been lazy and school work has been the biggest priority. Currently finishing reviewing lesson 17 and 18 to make sure I fully understand them. Will update shortly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CheChe Groupie United States Joined 3772 days ago 41 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 31 01 October 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Good Luck :)
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| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4381 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 3 of 31 07 October 2014 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Going onto lesson 20. I've had to complete essay after essay for school so that took priority. Bit disappointed I've
slipped but I still keep going even though I've done about 10/15 minutes a day, which is definitely not ideal. Aim for Sunday the 12th : Complete and review up to lesson 25. This is a bit ambitious, but hopefully by then I should a bit more free time. Edited by EnglishEagle on 07 October 2014 at 5:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4381 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 4 of 31 11 October 2014 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finishing reviewing previous lessons, particularly lessons 17, 18, 19 and 20. Going onto 21 and 22 tomorrow as I
have a bit more free time and also lesson 21 is only grammar recap, so it shouldn't overwhelm me too much. Word order is confusing me slightly, however I am going to consult my grammar book to see if I can find an explanation that makes it clearer for me. Although I would have liked to get to lesson 25, I knew that school work would have most likely taken priority. Today my chemistry revision took far longer than I anticipated and I had to go and get some more supplies for school. Short term goal: By Sunday the 19th of October I would like to get up to lesson 26. Longer term goals: This will most likely shift in the near future. - I want to finish Assimil by early January, I don't know if that will be feasible though - but I suppose we'll see. Ideally I would like to be around an A2 level by January time too. I really want to get started on the books that I purchased in German, especially Harry Potter! - I am going to try to do at least 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night on weekdays and 2 hours a day on weekends. Edited by EnglishEagle on 12 October 2014 at 11:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4381 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 5 of 31 26 October 2014 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Currently doing 1 lesson a day, I find that they are getting harder and longer. I feel like the grammar notes are
confusing me a bit, so I need to focus on that aspect a bit more. I have purchased 2 more grammar books that I can reference and I find them much less detailed than my Hammers German Grammar book. I find that because they are less detailed which means they are easier to understand and digest. I will update my log in a few more days once I have completed the grammar review lesson. Problems: I feel that I need to start supplementing Assimil with other resources to improve my listening, speaking and reading skills. Next task: Purchase some graded readers. I don't think I will be able to read my Harry Potter books until I have completed Assimil. If I flick through the book and stop on a random page I can understand very little of the book. Considering that I am not even on the active wave yet, I'm not too worried. I have read several posts regarding what to do after Assimil and I believe I read than EMK started on Harry Potter after learning French with Assimil. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clmns01 Diglot Newbie Austria Joined 3495 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Portuguese, Italian | Message 6 of 31 26 October 2014 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Viel Glück!
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| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4381 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 7 of 31 29 October 2014 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Hoping to going onto lesson 27 today, I am currently doing 1 lesson a day because I have developed a better
routine. I still feel like I should be doing more than just Assimil on it's own to increase my rate of progress. I think that because I am impatient I want to do more to get quicker results but I know this would probably be counterintuitive. Target: To have a better understanding of the grammar in my own native language. I feel like I have a very rudimentary understanding of my own grammar, as I only know very basic concepts which is hindering me in German. Example E.g Elizabeth plays football. The verb is 'to play' The subject is Elizabeth because she is the one 'doing'. The object is 'football'. Forming the past participle for play you add an -ed on the end to form played. If somebody asked me what an essential or nonessential subordinate clause, I wouldn't have a clue! I know basic terms like verb, subject, object and past participle but beyond that I am lost. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4339 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 31 29 October 2014 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
I started the HP in German after I was at about B1. The thing to realize is that your vocabulary just won't be anywhere near good enough to comfortably pick up anything by the time you've finished Assimil or any other course. You'll have vocab, but I vaguely remember that you learn about 500 words (?) through Assimil, but even a young adult book requires, say, about 6000 words to read knowing 98% of the words. On the other hand, you'll have almost too much grammar from the Assimil course to read. You really don't need that much grammar to access native materials. So the trick is to start reading when you can with a crutch like a pop-up dictionary in an e-book (the PONS is good for German). With that you should be fine to start reading something as hard as HP almost as soon as you want, as it makes very little difference whether you start reading with a vocabulary of 200, or 500 or even 1000 words. When you start you'll find that your reading rate is painfully slow, but if you read a bit every day you'll find really rapid progress. BTW: A lot of people recommend HP for German, but there are lots of other options out there. The Percy Jackson series is a bit easier, the Hunger Games trilogy is a bit harder than the early HP books, but has the advantage it's written in the first-person perspective. If you look for Young Adult books that should help as their vocabulary is usually a bit simpler, but anything that uses concrete language is fairly simple to use. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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