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Intermediate German by July 2016 | ||
Tags: Intermediate | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4289 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 1 of 43 14 June 2015 at 8:38pm | IP Logged |
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Hey chaps! I've been away from this forum for quite a long time so I'd better start with a short intro.
I finished my university degree in autumn 2011. My knowledge of foreign languages was zilch. Back then I had a crazy idea going round my head. I wanted to go abroad and live seamlessly the life I'd pictured for myself! First thing I did was motivating myself to study English. School teachers had made me fed up with English but somehow the language started to grow on me. It was partly because of this forum and its motivating stories. I decided to combine my full time non-paid traineeship with a relentless 24/7 study of English. I succedded. And I fell in love with the language. Two years later my life changed. I got a job in Amsterdam and moved there. That was the end of my being in this forum and the beginning of my new life. By then I held a C1 level in English and had a smattering of Galician and German. Learning the basics of Dutch spoiled my German to the point that I can read basic texts in any of these languages without recognising the language unless I focus. In 2014 I was offered a great job and moved to London. I'm still here and happy to be. A number of experiences and my new lifestyle made my passion for languages fade away. I suspect my learning had been so intense it was just enough. I had achieved a C2 level in English. I know it because I took a C2 mock Cambridge Univ. exam and fared great. My intermediate Galician was enough to babytalk with Portuguese speakers. Regarding German and Dutch, I never went too far though I would utter and read basic stuff. Recently I've met some amazing people whose dreams spin around language learning. They rekindled the motivation inside me. Shortly before meeting them I travelled to Germany for the first time. I then decided to resume German. I want to succed this time. I want to be able to hold a conversation in German and read newspapers in this language. And I want to be capable of doing it by the end of September. Hopefully this forum will be such a valuable source of motivation as it used to be. Resources - Menschen textbooks and exercise books for Spanish speakers. - "Das Idealpaar": short stories for beginners. - Larousse's German grammar for Spanish speakers. - Pons online dictionary German-Spanish. - "Deutsch lernen Extra auf Deutsch Abschnitt" TV series (subtitles in German) - Der Spiegel website - Youtube: Songs with lyrics. UPDATE AFTER 6 MONTHS (December 20th 2015) Hey there! My initial goal of achieving a decent level in German after 4 months was extended to the end of 2015. I am now more motivated than ever and my study will span through 2016. Before tackling this challenge my German was extremely basic. My vocabulary was tiny and I could barely understand simple texts with a great effort, letting along my non-existant listening skill. Well, I have improved in all that! My vocabulary is still rather small, although it is sufficient to follow all A2 level and most B1 level texts I've come across during the last few months. I succeded in reading my first book in German and I actually enjoyed it. The book was Das Idealpaar and contains short stories ranging from levels A1 to A2. Although I have barely practised my writing, I can see my mistakes are not as worrying as before since my texts are actually understood by Lang-8 users. My listening skill has awakened and I have been lately focused on listening A2 to B1 level audiobooks rather than performing grammar drills. I feel my level in German has improved overall and I have started to actually enjoy what I can do in this language. This is mostly reading and listening to simply written books. This is very motivating and I will continue studying German in 2016! Edited by Dagane on 05 January 2016 at 10:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| SladeWilson Newbie Canada Joined 3234 days ago 17 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 43 21 June 2015 at 2:13pm | IP Logged |
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Your story is very interesting. At one time I never even considered learning German, but it's actually now on my hit list of languages to learn one day!
I hope you reach your goals to hold a conversation and read newspapers, and hey keep posting because you're good at communicating. SladeWilson 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4289 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 3 of 43 23 June 2015 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
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First week of study is over and here are the results. Thank you SladeWilson for dropping by! Hopefully you'll master French soon and will be free to tackle German as well ;)
I haven't fared very well last week. I fell ill half of it and had to overwork the remaining half. Alright, let's stop making up excuses. I did manage to study a few hours and the results of it are below. I intend to update my log every Sunday or Monday so I can track my progress. As I said above, I'm not undertaking German from scratch. However, my knowledge is so blurred I decided to follow the Menschen series from the very start. I should progress through the first 2 books (A1 level) fairly quickly. If I don't, well, you will notice I'm loitering. 1st week results - Menschen A1.1 textbook: 2/12 lessons studied - Menschen A1.1 book of exercises: 2/12 lessons studied - Das Idealpaar: 1/15 stories read - New vocabulary in Anki: 150 flashcards this week (150 in total) - Time of study: 4h 55min this week (4h 55min in total) Understanding "Das Idealpaar" has been the biggest surprise of the week. I was very pleased of picking the plot so easily despite my lack of vocabulary. Years ago I tried to study German through reading. It was a disaster since I used to spend ages staring at the paper. I would read each sentence a number of times incapable of grasping its true meaning. "Das Idealpaar" looks like a great book to start reading stories in German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rtickner Diglot Groupie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3296 days ago 61 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 Studies: French, Spanish | Message 4 of 43 23 June 2015 at 2:03am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for taking the time to write this log. It's great to see a few of us keeping
German logs here at the same time. Go team. In a week where you were ill and overworked, 5 hours is not bad at all! Glad to hear you are going well with the graded readers. How are you building your vocabulary, are you using a pre-made deck or are you building your own? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4289 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 5 of 43 24 June 2015 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
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rtickner, it's always good to hear from other German learners. You're way more advanced than me so I hope to pick up some tecnics and tips from you!
I think that building my vocabulary through pre-made decks is boring. Years ago I used to learn decontextualised words and sentences. It didn't work at all. What I'm now doing is writing down the vocabulary I come across in my lessons, short stories and newspaper articles. I aim for 50 new words a day. However, this is very difficult to achieve since I don't find so many new words every day. Is there a better method I haven't tried yet? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4311 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 43 24 June 2015 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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How are you reading newspapers? If you read online I can recommend the Readlang extension for Chrome or the Firelang extension for Firefox. They offer pop-up dictionaries, and you can add unknown words direct to an SRS program if you like (actually Readlang has its own SRS program on its site as well).
I think once you have a basic minimum number of words (say 2000) you can just read and vocabulary will naturally build-up without using lists. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4289 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 7 of 43 28 June 2015 at 1:19pm | IP Logged |
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patrickwilken, thank you for dropping by! I just read newspapers online since I had no idea of such a tool. That's very useful! Regarding my vocabulary, I think mine was already around or above 2,000 words before I resumed German last week. When I tried to read proper texts years ago I failed miserably. That's why I keep my readings easy for the time being. It feels good to understand the stories. Hopefully I'll be able to swift to more difficult texts in a few months.
2nd week results - Menschen A1.1 textbook: 3/12 lessons studied - Menschen A1.1 book of exercises: 3/12 lessons studied - Das Idealpaar: 2/15 stories read - New vocabulary in Anki: 129 flashcards this week (279 in total) - Time of study: 4h 00min this week (8h 55min in total) I have only studied one lesson this week. It was however a longer one and it included a set of exercises to review the first three lessons as a whole. I think I will soon start watching a subtitled TV-series as well as uploading small pieces of writing to Lang-8. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4289 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 8 of 43 05 July 2015 at 2:23pm | IP Logged |
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Difficulty steps up! Some pieces of vocabulary don't stick well into my mind. I had the same problem before. There are many German words similar to English and Latin ones so I can remember them quite easily. However, there're many others which are alien to any language I speak. I must know them. Otherwise I'll be stucked at a very basic level forever. Anki is helpful but is no panacea. From now on I'll definitely start to write short texts so that using my vocabulary regardless of my grammar. Hopefully this help me improve my memory.
I found "Frühstück" significantly more difficult than the first two stories of "Das Idealpaar". This is also because of the vocabulary. I could still understand the story very well but I had to use the dictionary quite often. All in all, I must sort out how to learn vocabulary quickler. Otherwise I'll have to slow down my study. 3rd week results - Menschen A1.1 textbook: 6/12 lessons studied - Menschen A1.1 book of exercises: 5/12 lessons studied - Das Idealpaar: 3/15 stories read - New vocabulary in Anki: 108 flashcards this week (377 in total) - Time of study: 5h 33min this week (14h 28min in total) (Editted) I'm struggling to focus just in German. Lately I've met a large group of Brazilian people and also some Portuguese (even German people who speak Portuguese). As I speak a bit of Galician I can understand most of what they say so Portuguese becomes the lingua franca among us. This doesn't mean I speak the language though. I always respond either in Galician or English. Portuguese is in my wish-list though I don't intend to undertake it before my German is at least conversational. I just don't have the time to study two languages at once. Will I be capable of restraining myself? Well, I'll keep you updated! Edited by Dagane on 05 July 2015 at 7:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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