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Ian’s German adventures | ||
Tags: German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jmagyar Triglot Newbie SlovakiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 16 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Slovak, Hungarian*, English Studies: German | Message 1 of 2 22 March 2015 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone!
Tomorrow I will start my adventures with German and I though I would start a log to keep track of my progress and also to share my feelings with others, possibly get or give some advice. Motivation I love Germany. I love the language and I love the culture, I've wanted to learn German ever since I was a young boy. So motivation definitely won't be a problem for me, but lately, I found two more driving forces. First of all, it's very probable that I will move to Germany after I finish university and I have two and a half years until then. In that time, I would like to reach a solid B2 level, to be able to live on my own there. The other huge motivation is that because of my studies and my interests I come across a lot of German texts and it is frustrating that I have to deduct the content from low-quality translations. I usually get the main idea thanks to my German background, but it's not enough to understand everything that is written. Background I studied German for three years in high school. No, that's not entirely accurate. I had German lessons in high school for three years. Our teacher was very bad and we never learned important grammatic structures. We got as far as the present tense (!) and most of the time we were supposed to read some texts and learn a lot of vocabulary, with memorizing dialogues. The result: I have some wild guesses about the structure of the language with a lot of passive vocabulary, but no real understanding. It feels like I was wasting my time in school, but I hope I can use this background to make the language learning on my own easier. Resources and goals The good thing is that I have access to a lot of different resources, but in the end I chose three courses that I want to follow: Assimil FSI Creative German language learning (a Hungarian course full of drills and words, but a less amount of audio recordings). As I've mentioned earlier, my goal is to reach B2 level in two and a half years. I hope it can be acquired with my language history and a lot of work. I can spend at least an hour every day on learning, my primary goal for now is finishing all the courses I've picked (and maybe add one concentrating on grammar if I will have the time for it). For my purposes, speaking and listening comprehension are the most important skills, so I will try to focus on them. For speaking, I'm not really planning to do anything until I don't have a solid base, but I will work on my listening comprehension from day one. I mean to listen to a German podcast every day (maybe you can suggest one) or watch German TV in the evenings. But what I want to do (and I will be very strict about that one) is watching at least one football game with German commentary each week. The reason? I love watching the Bundesliga and the language a commentator usually uses is simple (mostly present tense with a lot of names and recurring words). So that's it for now, I hope I haven't forgotten anything important. In that case, please remind me of them. Tomorrow my long (and hopefully successful) journey starts and I will try to post an update at least twice a week. Edited by jmagyar on 22 March 2015 at 7:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jmagyar Triglot Newbie SlovakiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 16 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Slovak, Hungarian*, English Studies: German | Message 2 of 2 27 March 2015 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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On day five, I guess it is time to summarize my progress. So far, I've started Assimil and FSI. I've avoided the Hungarian course because it looks very similar too
FSI, except it has no real examples of using the language. On the plus side though, it later introduces more difficult structures and also much more words, so I might pick it up after all, as an addition to the other two courses. I find Assimil very useful. I gave it a try last year but after around fifteen lessons I had to give it up because I was hospitalized for a month. So the texts are still somewhat familiar, although I feel that I'm getting more out of them than the last time I used the course. I learn a new lesson every day, with the seventh days designated for reviewing the previous six lessons. My routine looks something like this: first, I listen to the audio (I've edited them, I didn't really like the slow dialogues). Then, I listen to them while reading the translation (although I usually understand most of the words on the first hearing, I think it will be different later, so I want to get used to this method). I shadow the recordings, do the exercises, learn the 'new' words and then add them into Anki for later review. I try to be as accurate with my pronunciation as possible, because of the subtle differences I came across in FSI. Okay, so FSI. I really love it. At first, I was almost deterred by the speed of speaking, but after I listened to the recordings numerous times, I was very comfortable with it. The same stands for all the drills. The first trying was disastrous, but after that, a very rapid improvement, and after three days of doing the drills, I get almost each one right. I might do them one more time, though, just to be safe and then move onto the next lesson. The only significant problem I had was getting the difference between Café and Kaffee. They sound very similar, but thanks to them I understood the need of putting the emphasis on the right syllables. That's something I should not forget and ever since then, I'm extra careful about my pronunciation. I still have some problems with pronouncing the German 'r', but I'm working on it. As for the listening, I still haven't found the right podcast for me. They are either too slow or too hard to understand, but I haven't given up searching. But I watched the German NT's match against Australia with German commentary. Luckily, the game itself wasn't that interesting, so I could concentrate on what was being said. To state that I understood everything woul be an exaggeration, but I always knew what the commentator was talking about and that's a huge plus for me. Edited by jmagyar on 27 March 2015 at 11:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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