It just occurred to me this morning as I listened to the German program on SBS World Radio that it is a good addition to listening to Deutsch Welle Radio. Deutsche Welle is generally very proper, very correct, and generally speaks with native speakers, albeit with some variety of German dialects - not in the presenters, but rather in the occasional interval with a Swiss german speaker or Austrian. In the future I'll find some other stations for a mix of accents, but for now I think this is enough exposure.
SBS is a different kettle of fish, at least in the material it produces itself (it plays a lot of articles from DW too). Its focus on Australian events helps for a start, because I am often already familiar with the topics, but they also interview germans living in Australia, and have phone-ins on every show from the local German-speaking community. Every monday (I can't remember if it's more often than that) they have a mystery sound that people try to guess to win a prize, and they also ask each caller to comment on their current stories. Today the prize was a DVD (can't remember the exact title) and the topic of discussion was the death of Peter Alexander on saturday at the age of 84. I had never heard of him before, but he was apparently a famous german entertainer and actor. A few of the oldies rang in and had some funny recollections of his works, etc. I didn't catch every detail of what everyone said, but I found myself laughing at the same time as the callers and hosts, so I guess that means we had the same understanding of what was happening :-)
One important feature is that many people who call in are clearly not native, fluent speakers of german. A few days ago a lung-specialist surgeon called in to guess the secret sound, and he was definitely a german beginner. I really respected his guts to ring up and comment nonetheless. Today I heard a few more - the hosts were very helpful with them, and repeated questions or tried to rephrase them if the caller didn't understand. Very helpful for their other non-native listeners as well! And finally, when they are native speakers, the tone is much more conversational and relaxed than I ever hear on DW. The differences don't strike me as massive, to be honest, but it's nice to hear some variety. In any case, I plan on being one of these callers, guessing the mystery sound, some day soon...
Speaking of listening to the radio, I had a "moment" while listening to DW last night. Now, when I listen to the radio, if I don't have other noise happening, I usually understand what is being discussed in general, and then plenty of specific details as well (and more all the time), but last night for one particular article which I was following quite well there was one long sentence which, when it finished, I felt that I had really understood it. Fully - I heard and understood every word, and the nuances, all without needing to think about it afterwards and lose my train in the audio as a whole. I can't really put my finger on what was so different about that moment, but it felt damn good :-)
My "book" learning update: yesterday I finished lesson 41 (active phase) of Assimil "New German With Ease". I had wanted to finish it on saturday evening, but between doing my taxes, and family life, I only got a little done that evening. I managed to find the time on sunday between going out for an early Valentine's Day lunch and preparing an old PC (clearing the hard-drive, etc) for sale.
Now I'm up to two review lessons - lesson 91 and lesson 42. I've read the review text for lesson 91, so I just need to listen to the 6 most recent lessons and repeat them on my way home today, and read the review section for the active lesson (lesson 42) and then I'll be ready to move on to 92 (passive) + 43 (active) tomorrow.
This blog's really working - hard though it is to believe, considering my tight timeframe and goal, my pace is now a lot faster than it was before I started the blog. And in trying to speed up, I have had to reconsider how I'm tackling the process and forced me to focus on just exactly what will achieve my short-term goals that lead to my mid-year goal. Right now, I want to finish the passive phase of my Assimil book as fast as possible!
There are no fancy tricks - just putting one foot in front of the other. Just like in running where some of your training sessions are just a matter of putting in some (lots of!) kilometres on your feet, each day you just have to keep pushing that little bit more - keep the kilometres ticking over - in between chances to hang out with native speakers, or watch a movie in the language you're learning, or whatever. It's not pretty, but there are no shortcuts here. I just try to make sure that I'm moving in the right direction every single day...
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