Long time no post! So, I haven't yet written the posts I planned on yet, but I have done another parallel translation. This time it's an interesting little article about a physicist who's come up with a plan to introduce "anti-money" into the financial system to replace debt and interest and to bring stability to the world. Of course, it'll never happen because it (a) seems impractical and (b) would reduce the destabilising speculation that makes the very rich very much richer. So, it's doomed. Still, have a listen to the article and read along with my parallel translation where necessary. Here is the original text which I translated, along with a link to the audio:
http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/forschak/1751062
And you can find my parallel translation (i.e., like all the others, side-by-side with the original text) here:
Parallel translation of "Mit Antigeld gegen die Bankenkrise"
As always, all rights to the text and audio belong to dradio. Feel free to post any corrections to the translation in the comments!
Friday, June 8, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Sprechbude
Sorry to say, but I still haven't found the time to post my post-mortem. Hopefully I'll get more time soon!
In the meantime, I wanted to point you to a source of free audio books which I recently found:
http://www.sprechbude.de/
I guess all the material is out of copyright. There's some poetry by Heinrich Heine (of "Die Lorelei" fame) and works by Goethe and Kafka. Speaking of Kafka, how about reading and listening to "Der Prozess" to get the ball rolling:
Der Prozess (audio)
Der Prozess (text)
I haven't started on it yet, but it's quite famous and I believe it's worth a read and/or listen. Anyone who gets into it, please let us all know what you think in the comments. Personally, I still plan on reading Das Parfüm next, properly this time, including adding a lot of the new vocabulary to my Anki list. I haven't started yet because I've been reading some English language books that have been missing out on my attention due to my German studies.
In other news, everything is ticking along. We're still having a Stammtisch at work once a week, I still listen to podcasts (SWR2 Wissen podcasts are my current favourites) every day, and read articles in FAZ every few days.
Oh, and I keep up with my Anki list, of course! I'm adding words much more slowly these days, both due to a reduced necessity and reduced effort :-) Some recent additions have been words I've heard in Podcasts and which I later remembered well enough to look them up (several hours later) so this indicates an improved level of comfort with German. I still have to put in some really focused effort to bring up my listening comprehension to that 95++% region all the time. I'll let you know what I work out for that in the near future!
In the meantime, I wanted to point you to a source of free audio books which I recently found:
http://www.sprechbude.de/
I guess all the material is out of copyright. There's some poetry by Heinrich Heine (of "Die Lorelei" fame) and works by Goethe and Kafka. Speaking of Kafka, how about reading and listening to "Der Prozess" to get the ball rolling:
Der Prozess (audio)
Der Prozess (text)
I haven't started on it yet, but it's quite famous and I believe it's worth a read and/or listen. Anyone who gets into it, please let us all know what you think in the comments. Personally, I still plan on reading Das Parfüm next, properly this time, including adding a lot of the new vocabulary to my Anki list. I haven't started yet because I've been reading some English language books that have been missing out on my attention due to my German studies.
In other news, everything is ticking along. We're still having a Stammtisch at work once a week, I still listen to podcasts (SWR2 Wissen podcasts are my current favourites) every day, and read articles in FAZ every few days.
Oh, and I keep up with my Anki list, of course! I'm adding words much more slowly these days, both due to a reduced necessity and reduced effort :-) Some recent additions have been words I've heard in Podcasts and which I later remembered well enough to look them up (several hours later) so this indicates an improved level of comfort with German. I still have to put in some really focused effort to bring up my listening comprehension to that 95++% region all the time. I'll let you know what I work out for that in the near future!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Unheilbar
Today I learnt a new German word: "unheilbar". It means "incurable", which I was given as a translation for the word "terminal" as in "terminal lung cancer". It came about during my weekly Stammtisch with my Austrian work colleague as I described the diagnosis my mother recently received from her doctor. She's never smoked, though her own mother did. Still, she left home 50 odd years ago. Shitty news.
Anyway, this partially explains why I haven't yet posted my post-mortem or future plans, along with having to prepare for the upcoming mother's day and my wife's birthday. Priorities!
I have still been listening to plenty of podcasts, and keeping up with my Anki. Lately I've realised that I really want to bring my listening level up to "perfect". I understand pretty well a lot of the time, but never 100% all the time. Well, 98-99% all the time would do me :-) I feel like my speaking has been better lately, though I would need to find more opportunities per week to improve.
At the moment though, with all that's going on, that's not going to happen. I also found out a couple of months ago that, come November, I'll be a father for the second time! Much better news! I never want to say to my kids that something was impossible for me because of having them, so I'm sure it won't stop me. It might slow me down a little though for a while once they're born, so I'd better make sure I use the time I have now!
Hopefully I'll have those other posts ready soon. Bear with me if it takes a while...
Anyway, this partially explains why I haven't yet posted my post-mortem or future plans, along with having to prepare for the upcoming mother's day and my wife's birthday. Priorities!
I have still been listening to plenty of podcasts, and keeping up with my Anki. Lately I've realised that I really want to bring my listening level up to "perfect". I understand pretty well a lot of the time, but never 100% all the time. Well, 98-99% all the time would do me :-) I feel like my speaking has been better lately, though I would need to find more opportunities per week to improve.
At the moment though, with all that's going on, that's not going to happen. I also found out a couple of months ago that, come November, I'll be a father for the second time! Much better news! I never want to say to my kids that something was impossible for me because of having them, so I'm sure it won't stop me. It might slow me down a little though for a while once they're born, so I'd better make sure I use the time I have now!
Hopefully I'll have those other posts ready soon. Bear with me if it takes a while...
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
"How Tom Recovered Time" and Khorshid Verlag books
Just a really quick post today to let everyone know about a children's book that my former German teacher (for all 8 or 9 lessons! :-) ) from Germany, who happens to be a children's book author, has just released what I believe is her first e-book. This isn't an affiliate link or anything - I'm just recommending it on the basis of her having been very helpful to me out of the goodness of her heart, which I really appreciated. I don't have any Apple devices, so I can't give a proper review. For those that do, here it is:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/
There's also an English version! That means you (or you and your children) can look at them side-by-side and use them to learn German (or English :-) ). Just a thought...
I also mentioned her website once before, but it was down then, so here it is again: Khorshid Verlag. You may find something you like there - there are kids books, etc. I don't know if you can buy direct from the website. If there's anything you want to order but can't find, either contact the author direct through the website, or let me know in the comments below and I'll ask her for you.
In the youth book section there's a book called "Der Letzte und der Erste Almani". I read a few sample pages from this a while ago and it was pretty good, though at the time my German wasn't good enough to really get into it, and I started part way through the story, so I didn't know what was going on :-)
I just wanted to make sure that I spread the word about someone who has helped me. If you do pick anything up from the website, let me know in the comments below what it was and what you thought of it!
Coming soon... "Passing the Goethe-Zertifikat-B2: a post-mortem" :-)
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Goethe-Zertifikat-B2 BESTANDEN!!!
[EDIT on 08/01/2013: To anyone planning to do the B2 exam soon, please also check out my post-mortem where I examine what went right and what went wrong]
Finally got my results yesterday, and I passed!
I emailed during the day to ask when they might be available and was told that they had got sent out last Friday and that I should get the certificate soon. The email also told me that I passed with the grade "gut".
You wouldn't believe how happy I was! Well, ok, you might. It wasn't like getting married, or seeing your child be born, but it was a pretty awesome feeling. It was like finishing a long distance race. The finish line is the actual exam, the time while you await your results is like when you're recovering your breath from that final sprint, and then when you get the results, it's like when your sense of achievement finally kicks in from the run, along with the endorphins :-)
So, without further ado, here it is (personal details deleted, of course):
(Sorry it's not a scan - I don't have one available at home)
In case you can't read the scores in the image, they were:
Leseverstehen (reading comprehension): 22/25
Hörverstehen (listening comprehension): 25/25 (Lucky! I guessed one of the answers!)
Schriftlicher Ausdruck (written expression): 19/25
Mündlicher Ausdruck (oral expression): 23/25
Total: 89/100 (one point off the top grade of "sehr gut"!)
The score is a dream come true, really. It's absolutely no lie to say that I would have been completely satisfied with a pass. Well, almost completely. I prepared really hard, but I didn't expect to do so well. The reading comprehension score is roughly what I expected from my practices, and I was quite happy to get this much considering that the first question seemed a lot more ambiguous than any of my practice ones seemed, and the section that has those silly "does the author see this as positive or negative/sceptical" questions always trips me up, even when I understand the text and the question 100%. Maybe there's some special technique I'm missing with these, but who cares now :-)
The listening comprehension was a complete shock - 100% right! Well, ok, maybe not a complete shock. It all felt good except one of the 2 point questions in the first section which I missed somehow. I was glad I had practised so much though because one thing I learnt doing the test exams was to not dwell on a missed answer. If you miss it, cut your losses. If your attention is stuck on it when the next answer is said, you'll miss more answers. I managed to avoid that.
So how did I get it right if I didn't hear the answer? Well, it's a bit crazy, but I guessed. HOW CAN THAT BE? How can you guess the answer for a fill-in-the-blanks exercise in the listening comprehension part of an exam. Well, luckily it's not context free - the question requires you to fill in some specific blanks in a timetable of events on specific dates, at different places, etc. Someone leaves a message on an answering machine, or whatever, and you have to listen to the recording and fill in the blanks with the corrections. In this case, the answer I missed was a slot where the blank was above a date. In every other place in that column, the blank above the date just had the day of the week in it. It turns out this one was no different! This meant I was able to work out the day of the week from the dates in the same column. Pretty tricky, hey?
All I can say is, never give up :-) I knew I had the wrong answer (I just wrote something random during the recording) so as I was copying my answers I had a good look at the question sheet to see if I could figure something out, and I did. Bit of a lucky break, really...
My lowest score was in the written expression, but I'm not disappointed at all. It was still a good score, after all! I think that maybe I might have got 2 to 4 of the grammatical corrections wrong (just guessing here) and so maybe my written composition got 11 to 13. No idea really, this is just pure speculation. I know I got one of the grammatical corrections in the second question wrong. Considering that I didn't really start any form of writing practice until less than 2 weeks before the exam, I should count myself lucky. NOTE: This is not enough time to practice this component! Also, I always thought I could write OK, but until you actually compose something and get a native speaker's corrections, you've got no solid foundation to base your assessment on.
The final section was probably the biggest surprise. I was worried I might not pass the exam because I felt I might not get the required 60% (15/25) on the oral exam. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. An almost perfect score in the B2 oral exam is probably the best part of all for me. The day after my exam I had a phone call from my Austrian friends with a terrible phone line, and I suddenly felt like I'd forgotten how to speak German, and I had more trouble than usual understanding them. My confidence wasn't high after the exam...
But then today I had my once a week Stammtisch at work and I felt really good. I took a minute or two to really warm up, but I felt like my understanding was better than normal and I felt confident and relaxed while speaking. I normally try to be relaxed and not worry too much, but today it just clicked better. I guess everyone has their "ups and downs" from day to day, but the results gave me a confidence boost which actually improved my speaking. It was a nice little positive feedback loop (more confidence -> better speaking -> more confidence -> etc). I know the negative feedback works just as well: lack of confidence makes you dwell on your mistakes, which are thereby amplified. It makes you hesitant, and your confidence sinks. I don't think there's a single answer to break this cycle and get into the positive feedback loop - some days things just won't feel right.
I think the most obvious answer is to start out confident, assume your mistakes don't matter and that you can do it. This isn't a new idea, but it makes sense. Your current "real" level of speaking ability at the start of any conversation will be the same, no matter what your self-assessment of your abilities on that day is. You need to accept mistakes even as you try to minimise them and don't worry about how other people perceive you. It may very well be that you're torturing your speaking partner a little (I have often felt like this in the past with my Stammtisch partner!), but you're only going to be worse if you focus on it. Be bold, and push on! I've generally been successful in applying this strategy, and it's been a real winner for me. I still stumble, I still feel silly at times, but worrying about these mistakes just doesn't help.
As the wiseman said: don't worry, be happy!
In coming posts, I hope to do a post-mortem of my learning strategies to this point, and also to talk about where to go from here. I'll need to set some more firm goals I think to keep me motivated and focused, but I also just want to enjoy the process more and more. Also, there are other languages I would like to get to at some stage, and I want to work out where these could fit in to the overall scheme. Stay tuned...
And finally, to all those still awaiting results, or who have just received them, I hope you all get the marks you know you deserve!
Bis gleich!
Finally got my results yesterday, and I passed!
I emailed during the day to ask when they might be available and was told that they had got sent out last Friday and that I should get the certificate soon. The email also told me that I passed with the grade "gut".
You wouldn't believe how happy I was! Well, ok, you might. It wasn't like getting married, or seeing your child be born, but it was a pretty awesome feeling. It was like finishing a long distance race. The finish line is the actual exam, the time while you await your results is like when you're recovering your breath from that final sprint, and then when you get the results, it's like when your sense of achievement finally kicks in from the run, along with the endorphins :-)
So, without further ado, here it is (personal details deleted, of course):
(Sorry it's not a scan - I don't have one available at home)
In case you can't read the scores in the image, they were:
Leseverstehen (reading comprehension): 22/25
Hörverstehen (listening comprehension): 25/25 (Lucky! I guessed one of the answers!)
Schriftlicher Ausdruck (written expression): 19/25
Mündlicher Ausdruck (oral expression): 23/25
Total: 89/100 (one point off the top grade of "sehr gut"!)
The score is a dream come true, really. It's absolutely no lie to say that I would have been completely satisfied with a pass. Well, almost completely. I prepared really hard, but I didn't expect to do so well. The reading comprehension score is roughly what I expected from my practices, and I was quite happy to get this much considering that the first question seemed a lot more ambiguous than any of my practice ones seemed, and the section that has those silly "does the author see this as positive or negative/sceptical" questions always trips me up, even when I understand the text and the question 100%. Maybe there's some special technique I'm missing with these, but who cares now :-)
The listening comprehension was a complete shock - 100% right! Well, ok, maybe not a complete shock. It all felt good except one of the 2 point questions in the first section which I missed somehow. I was glad I had practised so much though because one thing I learnt doing the test exams was to not dwell on a missed answer. If you miss it, cut your losses. If your attention is stuck on it when the next answer is said, you'll miss more answers. I managed to avoid that.
So how did I get it right if I didn't hear the answer? Well, it's a bit crazy, but I guessed. HOW CAN THAT BE? How can you guess the answer for a fill-in-the-blanks exercise in the listening comprehension part of an exam. Well, luckily it's not context free - the question requires you to fill in some specific blanks in a timetable of events on specific dates, at different places, etc. Someone leaves a message on an answering machine, or whatever, and you have to listen to the recording and fill in the blanks with the corrections. In this case, the answer I missed was a slot where the blank was above a date. In every other place in that column, the blank above the date just had the day of the week in it. It turns out this one was no different! This meant I was able to work out the day of the week from the dates in the same column. Pretty tricky, hey?
All I can say is, never give up :-) I knew I had the wrong answer (I just wrote something random during the recording) so as I was copying my answers I had a good look at the question sheet to see if I could figure something out, and I did. Bit of a lucky break, really...
My lowest score was in the written expression, but I'm not disappointed at all. It was still a good score, after all! I think that maybe I might have got 2 to 4 of the grammatical corrections wrong (just guessing here) and so maybe my written composition got 11 to 13. No idea really, this is just pure speculation. I know I got one of the grammatical corrections in the second question wrong. Considering that I didn't really start any form of writing practice until less than 2 weeks before the exam, I should count myself lucky. NOTE: This is not enough time to practice this component! Also, I always thought I could write OK, but until you actually compose something and get a native speaker's corrections, you've got no solid foundation to base your assessment on.
The final section was probably the biggest surprise. I was worried I might not pass the exam because I felt I might not get the required 60% (15/25) on the oral exam. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. An almost perfect score in the B2 oral exam is probably the best part of all for me. The day after my exam I had a phone call from my Austrian friends with a terrible phone line, and I suddenly felt like I'd forgotten how to speak German, and I had more trouble than usual understanding them. My confidence wasn't high after the exam...
But then today I had my once a week Stammtisch at work and I felt really good. I took a minute or two to really warm up, but I felt like my understanding was better than normal and I felt confident and relaxed while speaking. I normally try to be relaxed and not worry too much, but today it just clicked better. I guess everyone has their "ups and downs" from day to day, but the results gave me a confidence boost which actually improved my speaking. It was a nice little positive feedback loop (more confidence -> better speaking -> more confidence -> etc). I know the negative feedback works just as well: lack of confidence makes you dwell on your mistakes, which are thereby amplified. It makes you hesitant, and your confidence sinks. I don't think there's a single answer to break this cycle and get into the positive feedback loop - some days things just won't feel right.
I think the most obvious answer is to start out confident, assume your mistakes don't matter and that you can do it. This isn't a new idea, but it makes sense. Your current "real" level of speaking ability at the start of any conversation will be the same, no matter what your self-assessment of your abilities on that day is. You need to accept mistakes even as you try to minimise them and don't worry about how other people perceive you. It may very well be that you're torturing your speaking partner a little (I have often felt like this in the past with my Stammtisch partner!), but you're only going to be worse if you focus on it. Be bold, and push on! I've generally been successful in applying this strategy, and it's been a real winner for me. I still stumble, I still feel silly at times, but worrying about these mistakes just doesn't help.
As the wiseman said: don't worry, be happy!
In coming posts, I hope to do a post-mortem of my learning strategies to this point, and also to talk about where to go from here. I'll need to set some more firm goals I think to keep me motivated and focused, but I also just want to enjoy the process more and more. Also, there are other languages I would like to get to at some stage, and I want to work out where these could fit in to the overall scheme. Stay tuned...
And finally, to all those still awaiting results, or who have just received them, I hope you all get the marks you know you deserve!
Bis gleich!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Ich bin enttäuscht... Total enttäuscht!
As usual, there's a Rammstein song for every situation...
I just found out that all the language centre staff at Goethe-Institut Sydney went home at 3pm WITHOUT SENDING OUT THE RESULTS.
Can you believe it? Why must they torture me so! That means I won't know till next Monday at the earliest. I think I'll email them next week to find out when they're planning on sending the results. Not knowing is killing me.
What if I'm waiting just to find out that I failed? That would be completely shit :-) I wouldn't mind waiting if I knew I had passed!!! Oh well. I'll just have to wait I guess. I remember being surprised when they said the results should be ready by the end of next week. Now... Ich bin enttäuscht. I'm going to go listen to the song to console myself...
One funny thing this just reminded me of actually. While I was wandering around the Goethe Institute at some stage on the day (remember, this was my first time ever in the building), I came across some posters which talked about people's German learning journeys, with regards to how they interacted with the Goethe Institute in particular. I think they were meant to be success stories but, to be honest, they struck me as examples of the complete failure of their teaching method.
The first story I read seemed reasonably typical. The first "bubble" on the journey gave the date of the guy's first class with the Goethe Institute (presumably as a teenager) where he had no knowledge of German at all. The next bubble talked about how some German people he knew were surprised to hear him speaking German to them after just a few classes. Sounds promising so far. The sequence of bubbles talked about trips to Germany for work, for classes, for extended holidays, etc, etc. The final bubble showed him happily working in a German-speaking company. I think it still mentioned him doing minor courses to help him from time to time.
The astonishing thing was the timeframe - 13 years from the first bubble till the last! Now, the last was his "very comfortable" phase, so I guess we should assume he had been fluent for quite some time. But looking back on his "bubbles", he complained about having trouble understanding people and expressing himself after something like 7 or 8 years of doing Goethe courses in and out of Germany itself, and after extended holidays and work assignments in the country itself (and by extended, I mean 3 weeks to 6 months!), in German. OK, so he could easily be setting very high goals for himself, and good on him if he is... But mein Gott is that a long time to reach some kind of comfortable fluency.
Look, I have to admit a few things here. Firsly, I may have got most of the details wrong. My memory is hardly "photographic". In fact, I'd settle for it being a magic eye puzzle most of the time. BUT, I think the general thrust of the story was as I reported - from zero to cool in 13 years, with lots of courses and time in the country in-between. I don't mind the time in the country bit, but all that expensive studying would appear not to have had much of an accelerating effect.
The second thing to admit is that my German ability is somewhere about the B2 level, maybe up towards C1 in reading, but perhaps not even at the required B2 standard in speaking (only the exam results can give me any confidence in that!). That is to say, I don't know how long it will take me to reach the same sort of level as this guy achieved, and I certainly don't mean to knock what he did.
All I'm saying is, it didn't sound to me like a really ringing endorsement for the Goethe Institute courses :-)
I haven't yet been in any Goethe Courses though, so I'm not speaking from direct experience here. Chances are, unless I find some wealthy benefactor, I'm unlikely to ever attend one either. My own German studies, in brief are:
1) A useless one or two semesters in high school. I tried to study it in year 9 but they wouldn't run the class because only 3 students wanted to do it.
2) I did one twelve week absolute beginner's night course later in high school (with my mother, of all people!). It was really poorly run, and dominated by old people who read ahead and wrote in all the answers and a older female student who could speak German FLUENTLY but said she wasn't confident. The teacher would say "does everybody understand?" and this fluent speaker would say yes, so we would move on. I did learn the phrase "ich habe meine Badehosen vergessen" which could come in handy I suppose, though I've yet to use it.
3) Fast-forward almost 20 years with no German study, and basically no exposure to it (though I did study something - I went to Alliance Francaise in the meantime), and I find myself living in Germany with my wife. We are both native English speakers, and I was working in an English-speaking company. At this time I started using Assimil's "New German with Ease" which can be twee at times, but was truly brilliant for giving me the ability to understand spoken as well as written German. I could even speak a bit, even though I didn't do much.
4) During this time my company sent my wife and I to German classes after we had been there about 3 months or even more I think. Assimil had already put me way beyond this level, and I asked to go to a higher level, but I was told that the pace was pretty quick and the next level up would be too hard. And besides, my wife didn't want to go to classes alone. What did I get out of the classes then? Not a lot, to be honest. I heard a lot of butchered German, and a lot of people (in the first one or two classes at least) who just rejected the difficulty of everything immediately. Happily, these idiots left pretty quickly. It was just like being in high school again. Except, back in high school, you were stuck with the idiots for the whole year, if not the whole six years :-) The main thing I got out of the class was some good vocab and a good friend in the form of the teacher. I still write to her occasionally and she even very generously corrected something I had written to help me prepare for the exam, which was lovely of her.
5) Pretty much as documented in this blog! About 4 or 5 months after getting back to Australia, I picked up learning German again.
The total time for all the real parts of that (steps 3 to 5) is roughly 2 years so far. When will I stop? Probably never. I know that I will change focus to other languages at some stage, but as yet I'm unsure when. This may actually be the subject of a future post, so stay tuned!
As usual, if you've got comments on any of the above, feel free to leave them below - especially if you've had experience with German courses in general, and Goethe Institute ones in particular, that you would like to share...
I just found out that all the language centre staff at Goethe-Institut Sydney went home at 3pm WITHOUT SENDING OUT THE RESULTS.
Can you believe it? Why must they torture me so! That means I won't know till next Monday at the earliest. I think I'll email them next week to find out when they're planning on sending the results. Not knowing is killing me.
What if I'm waiting just to find out that I failed? That would be completely shit :-) I wouldn't mind waiting if I knew I had passed!!! Oh well. I'll just have to wait I guess. I remember being surprised when they said the results should be ready by the end of next week. Now... Ich bin enttäuscht. I'm going to go listen to the song to console myself...
One funny thing this just reminded me of actually. While I was wandering around the Goethe Institute at some stage on the day (remember, this was my first time ever in the building), I came across some posters which talked about people's German learning journeys, with regards to how they interacted with the Goethe Institute in particular. I think they were meant to be success stories but, to be honest, they struck me as examples of the complete failure of their teaching method.
The first story I read seemed reasonably typical. The first "bubble" on the journey gave the date of the guy's first class with the Goethe Institute (presumably as a teenager) where he had no knowledge of German at all. The next bubble talked about how some German people he knew were surprised to hear him speaking German to them after just a few classes. Sounds promising so far. The sequence of bubbles talked about trips to Germany for work, for classes, for extended holidays, etc, etc. The final bubble showed him happily working in a German-speaking company. I think it still mentioned him doing minor courses to help him from time to time.
The astonishing thing was the timeframe - 13 years from the first bubble till the last! Now, the last was his "very comfortable" phase, so I guess we should assume he had been fluent for quite some time. But looking back on his "bubbles", he complained about having trouble understanding people and expressing himself after something like 7 or 8 years of doing Goethe courses in and out of Germany itself, and after extended holidays and work assignments in the country itself (and by extended, I mean 3 weeks to 6 months!), in German. OK, so he could easily be setting very high goals for himself, and good on him if he is... But mein Gott is that a long time to reach some kind of comfortable fluency.
Look, I have to admit a few things here. Firsly, I may have got most of the details wrong. My memory is hardly "photographic". In fact, I'd settle for it being a magic eye puzzle most of the time. BUT, I think the general thrust of the story was as I reported - from zero to cool in 13 years, with lots of courses and time in the country in-between. I don't mind the time in the country bit, but all that expensive studying would appear not to have had much of an accelerating effect.
The second thing to admit is that my German ability is somewhere about the B2 level, maybe up towards C1 in reading, but perhaps not even at the required B2 standard in speaking (only the exam results can give me any confidence in that!). That is to say, I don't know how long it will take me to reach the same sort of level as this guy achieved, and I certainly don't mean to knock what he did.
All I'm saying is, it didn't sound to me like a really ringing endorsement for the Goethe Institute courses :-)
I haven't yet been in any Goethe Courses though, so I'm not speaking from direct experience here. Chances are, unless I find some wealthy benefactor, I'm unlikely to ever attend one either. My own German studies, in brief are:
1) A useless one or two semesters in high school. I tried to study it in year 9 but they wouldn't run the class because only 3 students wanted to do it.
2) I did one twelve week absolute beginner's night course later in high school (with my mother, of all people!). It was really poorly run, and dominated by old people who read ahead and wrote in all the answers and a older female student who could speak German FLUENTLY but said she wasn't confident. The teacher would say "does everybody understand?" and this fluent speaker would say yes, so we would move on. I did learn the phrase "ich habe meine Badehosen vergessen" which could come in handy I suppose, though I've yet to use it.
3) Fast-forward almost 20 years with no German study, and basically no exposure to it (though I did study something - I went to Alliance Francaise in the meantime), and I find myself living in Germany with my wife. We are both native English speakers, and I was working in an English-speaking company. At this time I started using Assimil's "New German with Ease" which can be twee at times, but was truly brilliant for giving me the ability to understand spoken as well as written German. I could even speak a bit, even though I didn't do much.
4) During this time my company sent my wife and I to German classes after we had been there about 3 months or even more I think. Assimil had already put me way beyond this level, and I asked to go to a higher level, but I was told that the pace was pretty quick and the next level up would be too hard. And besides, my wife didn't want to go to classes alone. What did I get out of the classes then? Not a lot, to be honest. I heard a lot of butchered German, and a lot of people (in the first one or two classes at least) who just rejected the difficulty of everything immediately. Happily, these idiots left pretty quickly. It was just like being in high school again. Except, back in high school, you were stuck with the idiots for the whole year, if not the whole six years :-) The main thing I got out of the class was some good vocab and a good friend in the form of the teacher. I still write to her occasionally and she even very generously corrected something I had written to help me prepare for the exam, which was lovely of her.
5) Pretty much as documented in this blog! About 4 or 5 months after getting back to Australia, I picked up learning German again.
The total time for all the real parts of that (steps 3 to 5) is roughly 2 years so far. When will I stop? Probably never. I know that I will change focus to other languages at some stage, but as yet I'm unsure when. This may actually be the subject of a future post, so stay tuned!
As usual, if you've got comments on any of the above, feel free to leave them below - especially if you've had experience with German courses in general, and Goethe Institute ones in particular, that you would like to share...
Saturday, April 21, 2012
My Experiences with the Goethe-Zertifikat-B2 Exam at the Goethe-Institut Sydney
[EDIT on 08/01/2013: To anyone planning to do the B2 exam soon, please also check out my post-mortem where I examine what went right and what went wrong]
In this post I'll write about the actual day of my exam and how things ran. The intention is to give future test candidates some perspective about what the test setup is like, and also just to record it now while the memory is fresh, because my mind is like swiss cheese usually.
I'll start with the night before when, at about 9pm, as I finally had my first opportunity to study for the exam the next day, my daughter, who we had just put down to bed, vomited. She had been coming down with something since the night before, but this was her first vomit. It was on the floor, wall, in her bed and in her hair. So, it was off to the shower for the second time that night, and a bunch of washing had to be done too once she'd got back to bed. By about 10-10:30pm I was sitting down again, finally ready to study.
You see, it's shit like this that I think people without kids can't appreciate. Yes, we all have jobs, or other studies, and all sorts of other junk to deal with too. But then, when you've dealt with all that other crap, and you finally sit down (late) to do some final study, your kid throws up all over themself in bed. The joys of parenting!
At this stage I decided not to do too much so I could get to bed earlier, but I still didn't get to bed till just after midnight. I got to sleep alright, but at 5am I woke up from something and just couldn't get back to sleep due to thinking about the exam. Oh, and the rain was BUCKETING down. I mean in sheets as thick as lead. The weather chose to continue doing this for the rest of the day, which explains why the road outside the Goethe Institut in Sydney was flooded and they had literally had sand-bags protecting one of their entrances. Crazy!
My plan was to not use English once I entered the Goethe-Institut so as to get into the right frame of mind and stay there. This was immediately broken when, as I stepped through the door, the receptionist said "are you all here for the exams? Upstairs, please". In the waiting room upstairs I found about, I don't know 10-15 people, all waiting for the exams. I didn't get much of a chance to talk to anyone then as I had to make a trip to the bathroom - nerves will do that to you. When I came out we went to register. The people who were still standing there waiting to register were all asked what level they were doing. They were all either A1 or A2. I found out later that one girl was doing B1, and I was the only one doing B2. When I was asked what exam I was doing, despite being asked in English and despite the fact that everyone else had answered in English, I stuck to my plan and answered in German :-)
Then we returned upstairs. I had a chance to guess at everyone's ages by this stage, and I think that, although I may have been one of the oldest, there was a broad range. I would say mostly mid-20's to mid-30's, with one or two younger. I can't say I looked at everyone in detail though, but it was far from my "nightmare" mix of heaps of high school or early university students all doing the B2 exam or higher, and all being much better than me!
After a short while all the people for the A1 and A2 exams were taken off to separate rooms for their introductions to the exam conditions, etc. There were three of us left in the waiting room - me, the young woman doing the B1 exam, and another woman who had come in with one of the men doing the A1 exam. Whenever anyone coming through asked us if we were here for the exams, this woman was at pains to point out that she was just here as moral support with her boyfriend and that she was a native speaker. What luck for me! We started chatting in German and had a good 5 minutes to talk about why her boyfriend was there (they were planning on emigrating to Germany, so he needed to have some language skills to show for the immigration application process, and I guess even A1 is enough to count as something, as basic as it is). During our chat the young woman doing the B1 exam asked this German speaker something, which the native speaker didn't understand. I'm pretty sure I remember understanding it, or just not hearing it properly because she spoke too quietly. The German woman had to ask her to repeat it several times. I don't think it was wrong, or her accent was bad (it sounded good to me in this short sample), she just lacked the confidence to project her voice adequately when speaking German. I felt really bad for her, because I felt like that could really knock her confidence before the exam. Looking back, I wish I had told her to come sit with us so she could chat too. I hate thinking that this might have shaken her a little. I know I would have felt bad if the German speaker had kept asking me to repeat.
Luckily for me, since I was sitting next to her, she could understand me perfectly. I told her the spoken part was the bit I was most worried about because I left practising it till too late, but she very reassuringly told me that I'll do very well because my German was very good. What better compliment could you receive right before a German exam! A great confidence boost!
We were then called down to do our exams in separate rooms. I had a whole classroom to myself, which was both relaxing and weird at the same time :-) The order of exam components was all completely different to what I expected. I was given the written components in the following order:
1) Hörverstehen (Listening comprehension)
2) Schriftlicher Ausdruck (Written expression)
3) Leseverstehen (reading comprehension)
I expected the order to be 3, 1, 2, but it didn't matter too much, though I might have preferred not to do the listening section first!
I found out later that the exam organiser was locking me in to the room, and it could only be opened from the outside. Woah! Fire risk! Sure, it's cheaper and easier for them to run, but if someone burns to death some day during an exam, there'll be hell to pay...
So, Hörverstehen. I think it went OK. It's in two sections - the first part you hear only once, and you need to fill in the correct details in a table of information - surely some sort of itinerary. These 5 questions are worth 2 marks each, so I was very disappointed that I missed one of them. I knew I had the answer wrong so when I copied it over to the answer book, I just had a guess, but that was almost certainly 2 points gone, without allowing for other mistakes. Oh well. The second part is 10 questions worth 1.5 each. I think this part went better and less ambiguously than many of my practice runs had gone, so I think it was OK. My usual score for this part is about 7/10 = 10.5/15 points. I hope I got enough in the first section to bring this over the 15/25 required.
Just a sidenote, it's not strictly necessary to get 15 out of 25 in every section. You need 45/75 for the written parts, and 15 out of 25 for the spoken part (at least, of course!) to pass. However, I made it my goal to not let any area be weak enough that I needed to hope for cross-subsidisation between them.
The Schriftlicher Ausdruck section went OK I think. There's a written composition part, and correcting errors in a letter. I think the second one I got at least 6 in. I would have said 7, but I made a silly change as I was copying my answers to the answer sheet that's given me doubts. However, I've just looked it up and even the answer I thought was right is wrong, so I can stop worrying about it. I definitely got it wrong! :-) Damn... I knew there was something else in that sentence which I wasn't sure about, but I was so sure of this one that I ignored the other thing. Oh well, can't change it now.
In the free composition, I did this differently to how I practised it. In practice, I had written a rough version and then copied that over as a final version. VERY, VERY TIME-CONSUMING! I noticed that I wasn't making many corrections during this time, so in the exam I made brief notes of sentence fragments and words for each point and then just tried to compose it once and write it neatly. Any bad mistakes I just crossed through and wrote again. This gave me time at the end to re-read it at least once, which is good. It seemed mostly basic in its sentence structure (I deliberately tried to keep it that way to avoid tricking myself with over-complicated sentences) but it covered everything and had a decent flow. You are required to write at least 180 words - I think mine was at least 300! One thing I should have done at the end is to focus on grammatical errors of mismatches in the endings on the articles (words like "ein", "der") and related words ("mein", "dein", etc) and adjectives. I know what these should be, but often get them wrong in writing when I'm rushing (and VERY often when I'm speaking! This might be my next goal to fix up!).
Finally came the Leseverstehen. The first question in it was a bit awkward - it seemed very broad and ambiguous. Usually I scream through this in practice questions and get it close to 100% right, but this time I'm not so sure. It also took me more than the suggested 15 minutes, but I easily made up this loss on all the other sections (I can read quite fast now when the texts are at B2 level). The other question I had issues with is one that always gets me - the one where you have to say whether the author sees something as positive, or negative/sceptical (or ambiguous, really). So, you have a 50/50 shot. Should be easy! Except that even when I understand the text 100%, and the question 100%, I often find myself strongly disagreeing with the answer. They seem to expect you to find just the first sentence that relates to the question and form your opinion off that, but not always. And therein lies the rub. So, yeah, I think this question annoying. I could easily have got a couple wrong because the possible answer could go either way.
Overall, however, the reading section went OK and I was reasonably happy with it.
I think that all the written parts were OK. I'm reasonably confident that I could pass this part.
After a short 5 minute break, I started my preparation for the spoken part. It went quite well. As I was on my own, I didn't get a choice about the topic, but the topic I got was OK. I used some of the thoughts I had put together for some written practice prior to the exam, because the topics all overlap quite a lot to be honest. One thing that went wrong here is that I didn't make any notes for the dialogue question. (I just spent too much time on the monologue preparation, and didn't get into the right frame of mind for the dialogue. This may prove to have been a big mistake.
At the appointed time one of the oral examiners came to collect me. I went into one of the front offices, which was nicely lit and a pleasant change of venue from the dark, cold classroom where I had done the other parts. I was introduced to my two examiners, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, I began my monologue. My memory of it now is that it went OK. Probably about as good, or slightly better, than some of my better practice runs. It was actually much easier to deliver it to an audience than when I practised it by speaking into my mobile phone and listening back later. A real audience, on the contrary from being scary, actually helped with important visual cues of their attention, as well as the occasional brief word of agreement, or acknowledgement of what was said, which helped a lot with the flow I felt.
The second part, the dialogue, was done with one of the examiners because I was the only B2 candidate. He was very nice and friendly, and put me at ease. However, I hadn't prepared for this section, and I didn't have a lot to say about each thing - I should have at least looked over the photos in advance and had a think. Also, I committed the cardinal sin of letting him direct the conversation. I don't think I ever explicitly elicited his feedback, except with the occasional "oder?" or something similar. I was interactive, but more responsive than proactive. I'm really annoyed at myself because I knew one of the marking criteria where I could get points without necessarily knowing more German was by being very interactive, and I don't think I did enough of this to overcome some of my weaknesses where I would score lower. I had no trouble understanding the examiner, and he didn't have any understanding me (at least, none that he showed), but I'm just not sure how this part would pan out for me.
These two parts are worth equal marks overall, so only time will tell now. However, I do already know that spending ALL of my preparation time on the monologue was misguided. I got about 15 minutes to prepare (actually a little less), of which I would suggest to anyone else doing this exam that they spend 3-5 minutes on preparing for the dialogue. I had also prepared a small list of phrases specifically to help with the dialogue, eliciting feedback, etc. I hardly used any of these. It didn't help that I only compiled the list on the night before the exam, and with my limited time available, I didn't really practise them enough to make them flow out of me. I had also, obviously, never practised the dialogue section. I considered asking my Austrian friend at work to help me do that on the day before the exam, but as luck would have it she was off sick that day. All my own fault, of course, for leaving the specific spoken practice so late.
My honest final assessment is that I felt that, although I'm not guaranteed to pass, which is really where I wanted to be before the exam, I should at least come very close. It was definitely the right exam for me to take - B1 would have been too easy, and, although I think I could do OK on a C1 exam, OK in this context would most likely be a fail, especially in the spoken section. So, yeah, whatever the result, I now think of myself as being at B2 level. Still, it would be really, really nice if Goethe agreed. Then I could proudly write the name of my certificate on my resume!
PHEW! Sorry, that was a big post. If you made it this far, your reward is to know that I'll write a post sometime in the near future assessing my studies to this date - what went right, what went wrong, ideas for how to improve in the future, etc.
Danke fürs Lesen!
In this post I'll write about the actual day of my exam and how things ran. The intention is to give future test candidates some perspective about what the test setup is like, and also just to record it now while the memory is fresh, because my mind is like swiss cheese usually.
I'll start with the night before when, at about 9pm, as I finally had my first opportunity to study for the exam the next day, my daughter, who we had just put down to bed, vomited. She had been coming down with something since the night before, but this was her first vomit. It was on the floor, wall, in her bed and in her hair. So, it was off to the shower for the second time that night, and a bunch of washing had to be done too once she'd got back to bed. By about 10-10:30pm I was sitting down again, finally ready to study.
You see, it's shit like this that I think people without kids can't appreciate. Yes, we all have jobs, or other studies, and all sorts of other junk to deal with too. But then, when you've dealt with all that other crap, and you finally sit down (late) to do some final study, your kid throws up all over themself in bed. The joys of parenting!
At this stage I decided not to do too much so I could get to bed earlier, but I still didn't get to bed till just after midnight. I got to sleep alright, but at 5am I woke up from something and just couldn't get back to sleep due to thinking about the exam. Oh, and the rain was BUCKETING down. I mean in sheets as thick as lead. The weather chose to continue doing this for the rest of the day, which explains why the road outside the Goethe Institut in Sydney was flooded and they had literally had sand-bags protecting one of their entrances. Crazy!
My plan was to not use English once I entered the Goethe-Institut so as to get into the right frame of mind and stay there. This was immediately broken when, as I stepped through the door, the receptionist said "are you all here for the exams? Upstairs, please". In the waiting room upstairs I found about, I don't know 10-15 people, all waiting for the exams. I didn't get much of a chance to talk to anyone then as I had to make a trip to the bathroom - nerves will do that to you. When I came out we went to register. The people who were still standing there waiting to register were all asked what level they were doing. They were all either A1 or A2. I found out later that one girl was doing B1, and I was the only one doing B2. When I was asked what exam I was doing, despite being asked in English and despite the fact that everyone else had answered in English, I stuck to my plan and answered in German :-)
Then we returned upstairs. I had a chance to guess at everyone's ages by this stage, and I think that, although I may have been one of the oldest, there was a broad range. I would say mostly mid-20's to mid-30's, with one or two younger. I can't say I looked at everyone in detail though, but it was far from my "nightmare" mix of heaps of high school or early university students all doing the B2 exam or higher, and all being much better than me!
After a short while all the people for the A1 and A2 exams were taken off to separate rooms for their introductions to the exam conditions, etc. There were three of us left in the waiting room - me, the young woman doing the B1 exam, and another woman who had come in with one of the men doing the A1 exam. Whenever anyone coming through asked us if we were here for the exams, this woman was at pains to point out that she was just here as moral support with her boyfriend and that she was a native speaker. What luck for me! We started chatting in German and had a good 5 minutes to talk about why her boyfriend was there (they were planning on emigrating to Germany, so he needed to have some language skills to show for the immigration application process, and I guess even A1 is enough to count as something, as basic as it is). During our chat the young woman doing the B1 exam asked this German speaker something, which the native speaker didn't understand. I'm pretty sure I remember understanding it, or just not hearing it properly because she spoke too quietly. The German woman had to ask her to repeat it several times. I don't think it was wrong, or her accent was bad (it sounded good to me in this short sample), she just lacked the confidence to project her voice adequately when speaking German. I felt really bad for her, because I felt like that could really knock her confidence before the exam. Looking back, I wish I had told her to come sit with us so she could chat too. I hate thinking that this might have shaken her a little. I know I would have felt bad if the German speaker had kept asking me to repeat.
Luckily for me, since I was sitting next to her, she could understand me perfectly. I told her the spoken part was the bit I was most worried about because I left practising it till too late, but she very reassuringly told me that I'll do very well because my German was very good. What better compliment could you receive right before a German exam! A great confidence boost!
We were then called down to do our exams in separate rooms. I had a whole classroom to myself, which was both relaxing and weird at the same time :-) The order of exam components was all completely different to what I expected. I was given the written components in the following order:
1) Hörverstehen (Listening comprehension)
2) Schriftlicher Ausdruck (Written expression)
3) Leseverstehen (reading comprehension)
I expected the order to be 3, 1, 2, but it didn't matter too much, though I might have preferred not to do the listening section first!
I found out later that the exam organiser was locking me in to the room, and it could only be opened from the outside. Woah! Fire risk! Sure, it's cheaper and easier for them to run, but if someone burns to death some day during an exam, there'll be hell to pay...
So, Hörverstehen. I think it went OK. It's in two sections - the first part you hear only once, and you need to fill in the correct details in a table of information - surely some sort of itinerary. These 5 questions are worth 2 marks each, so I was very disappointed that I missed one of them. I knew I had the answer wrong so when I copied it over to the answer book, I just had a guess, but that was almost certainly 2 points gone, without allowing for other mistakes. Oh well. The second part is 10 questions worth 1.5 each. I think this part went better and less ambiguously than many of my practice runs had gone, so I think it was OK. My usual score for this part is about 7/10 = 10.5/15 points. I hope I got enough in the first section to bring this over the 15/25 required.
Just a sidenote, it's not strictly necessary to get 15 out of 25 in every section. You need 45/75 for the written parts, and 15 out of 25 for the spoken part (at least, of course!) to pass. However, I made it my goal to not let any area be weak enough that I needed to hope for cross-subsidisation between them.
The Schriftlicher Ausdruck section went OK I think. There's a written composition part, and correcting errors in a letter. I think the second one I got at least 6 in. I would have said 7, but I made a silly change as I was copying my answers to the answer sheet that's given me doubts. However, I've just looked it up and even the answer I thought was right is wrong, so I can stop worrying about it. I definitely got it wrong! :-) Damn... I knew there was something else in that sentence which I wasn't sure about, but I was so sure of this one that I ignored the other thing. Oh well, can't change it now.
In the free composition, I did this differently to how I practised it. In practice, I had written a rough version and then copied that over as a final version. VERY, VERY TIME-CONSUMING! I noticed that I wasn't making many corrections during this time, so in the exam I made brief notes of sentence fragments and words for each point and then just tried to compose it once and write it neatly. Any bad mistakes I just crossed through and wrote again. This gave me time at the end to re-read it at least once, which is good. It seemed mostly basic in its sentence structure (I deliberately tried to keep it that way to avoid tricking myself with over-complicated sentences) but it covered everything and had a decent flow. You are required to write at least 180 words - I think mine was at least 300! One thing I should have done at the end is to focus on grammatical errors of mismatches in the endings on the articles (words like "ein", "der") and related words ("mein", "dein", etc) and adjectives. I know what these should be, but often get them wrong in writing when I'm rushing (and VERY often when I'm speaking! This might be my next goal to fix up!).
Finally came the Leseverstehen. The first question in it was a bit awkward - it seemed very broad and ambiguous. Usually I scream through this in practice questions and get it close to 100% right, but this time I'm not so sure. It also took me more than the suggested 15 minutes, but I easily made up this loss on all the other sections (I can read quite fast now when the texts are at B2 level). The other question I had issues with is one that always gets me - the one where you have to say whether the author sees something as positive, or negative/sceptical (or ambiguous, really). So, you have a 50/50 shot. Should be easy! Except that even when I understand the text 100%, and the question 100%, I often find myself strongly disagreeing with the answer. They seem to expect you to find just the first sentence that relates to the question and form your opinion off that, but not always. And therein lies the rub. So, yeah, I think this question annoying. I could easily have got a couple wrong because the possible answer could go either way.
Overall, however, the reading section went OK and I was reasonably happy with it.
I think that all the written parts were OK. I'm reasonably confident that I could pass this part.
After a short 5 minute break, I started my preparation for the spoken part. It went quite well. As I was on my own, I didn't get a choice about the topic, but the topic I got was OK. I used some of the thoughts I had put together for some written practice prior to the exam, because the topics all overlap quite a lot to be honest. One thing that went wrong here is that I didn't make any notes for the dialogue question. (I just spent too much time on the monologue preparation, and didn't get into the right frame of mind for the dialogue. This may prove to have been a big mistake.
At the appointed time one of the oral examiners came to collect me. I went into one of the front offices, which was nicely lit and a pleasant change of venue from the dark, cold classroom where I had done the other parts. I was introduced to my two examiners, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, I began my monologue. My memory of it now is that it went OK. Probably about as good, or slightly better, than some of my better practice runs. It was actually much easier to deliver it to an audience than when I practised it by speaking into my mobile phone and listening back later. A real audience, on the contrary from being scary, actually helped with important visual cues of their attention, as well as the occasional brief word of agreement, or acknowledgement of what was said, which helped a lot with the flow I felt.
The second part, the dialogue, was done with one of the examiners because I was the only B2 candidate. He was very nice and friendly, and put me at ease. However, I hadn't prepared for this section, and I didn't have a lot to say about each thing - I should have at least looked over the photos in advance and had a think. Also, I committed the cardinal sin of letting him direct the conversation. I don't think I ever explicitly elicited his feedback, except with the occasional "oder?" or something similar. I was interactive, but more responsive than proactive. I'm really annoyed at myself because I knew one of the marking criteria where I could get points without necessarily knowing more German was by being very interactive, and I don't think I did enough of this to overcome some of my weaknesses where I would score lower. I had no trouble understanding the examiner, and he didn't have any understanding me (at least, none that he showed), but I'm just not sure how this part would pan out for me.
These two parts are worth equal marks overall, so only time will tell now. However, I do already know that spending ALL of my preparation time on the monologue was misguided. I got about 15 minutes to prepare (actually a little less), of which I would suggest to anyone else doing this exam that they spend 3-5 minutes on preparing for the dialogue. I had also prepared a small list of phrases specifically to help with the dialogue, eliciting feedback, etc. I hardly used any of these. It didn't help that I only compiled the list on the night before the exam, and with my limited time available, I didn't really practise them enough to make them flow out of me. I had also, obviously, never practised the dialogue section. I considered asking my Austrian friend at work to help me do that on the day before the exam, but as luck would have it she was off sick that day. All my own fault, of course, for leaving the specific spoken practice so late.
My honest final assessment is that I felt that, although I'm not guaranteed to pass, which is really where I wanted to be before the exam, I should at least come very close. It was definitely the right exam for me to take - B1 would have been too easy, and, although I think I could do OK on a C1 exam, OK in this context would most likely be a fail, especially in the spoken section. So, yeah, whatever the result, I now think of myself as being at B2 level. Still, it would be really, really nice if Goethe agreed. Then I could proudly write the name of my certificate on my resume!
PHEW! Sorry, that was a big post. If you made it this far, your reward is to know that I'll write a post sometime in the near future assessing my studies to this date - what went right, what went wrong, ideas for how to improve in the future, etc.
Danke fürs Lesen!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
EXAM OVER!
Today was the Big Day - the day of my B2 exam. I haven't been posting for the last week because I've been using whatever time I can find to practice for the exam, which actually, to be honest, wasn't much. I turned my attention from practising the written section of the exam to just the spoken section. It sounds crazy to me now, but I avoided practising this type of question for a long time, because I couldn't imagine how to even do it, and probably also because I figured that since I had regular speaking practice already, that would be enough. When I finally turned my attention to this type of question, I recorded myself speaking and listened back to it.
I was shocked.
It sounded terrible! Pauses, bad sentence order, searching for words. The pauses were the main thing that got to me.
So starting last Saturday, I practised whenever I could. Actually my weekend was quite busy with work around the house, so it was hardly intensive, but it was certainly important. In the exam today, with a real person at the other end of the table nodding and interacting in their little ways, I felt a lot happier and was really glad that I had done that practice. I still wish I had started earlier, but I can't change that now! One of the main things was to fine tune what I did with the preparation time, which was to write down abbreviate rephrasings of the main text, along with short notes of possible things to talk about. This all worked out quite well for me - I didn't read off my notes, because there wasn't enough detail for that, but I had enough prepared to keep up a good flow without constantly searching for something semi-interesting to say (the topics are always so boring, really) at the same time as trying to remember the words.
The second part was the interactive dialogue which I did with one of the instructors because I was the only person sitting the B2 exam today. I think it went OK too - the instructor kept the conversation very directed. It's hard to tell what they really thought - I think I gave good input, but perhaps I should have tried to drive it more.
This oral exam was the part I was most worried about in the end, given my lack of specific preparation, so I hope I've passed. You need to pass this section (i.e., achieve 60%) on its own, as well as getting 60% in the other 3 sections combined, in order to pass. I could always have hoped for a higher grade, but in all honesty, I'll be perfectly satisfied with a pass!
I hope to find the time soon to describe the overall exam...
And when do I find out my results? By the end of next week, hopefully.
Macht's gut!
I was shocked.
It sounded terrible! Pauses, bad sentence order, searching for words. The pauses were the main thing that got to me.
So starting last Saturday, I practised whenever I could. Actually my weekend was quite busy with work around the house, so it was hardly intensive, but it was certainly important. In the exam today, with a real person at the other end of the table nodding and interacting in their little ways, I felt a lot happier and was really glad that I had done that practice. I still wish I had started earlier, but I can't change that now! One of the main things was to fine tune what I did with the preparation time, which was to write down abbreviate rephrasings of the main text, along with short notes of possible things to talk about. This all worked out quite well for me - I didn't read off my notes, because there wasn't enough detail for that, but I had enough prepared to keep up a good flow without constantly searching for something semi-interesting to say (the topics are always so boring, really) at the same time as trying to remember the words.
The second part was the interactive dialogue which I did with one of the instructors because I was the only person sitting the B2 exam today. I think it went OK too - the instructor kept the conversation very directed. It's hard to tell what they really thought - I think I gave good input, but perhaps I should have tried to drive it more.
This oral exam was the part I was most worried about in the end, given my lack of specific preparation, so I hope I've passed. You need to pass this section (i.e., achieve 60%) on its own, as well as getting 60% in the other 3 sections combined, in order to pass. I could always have hoped for a higher grade, but in all honesty, I'll be perfectly satisfied with a pass!
I hope to find the time soon to describe the overall exam...
And when do I find out my results? By the end of next week, hopefully.
Macht's gut!
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Goethe-Zertifikat-B2 written composition question: How long it takes me...
I've done three practice questions for the written composition question in the B2 exam. The way I've been practicing them is to write out the full thing as quickly as possible without worrying about how messy it is, and the making a "neat" copy. By that I mean a slightly neater copy. My handwriting has never been neat! Maybe I should have applied to get special consideration so I could type the answer up instead of writing it by hand. That would only take me about 20 minutes...
Anyway, written it must be. So how should I approach it? I'm actually thinking that perhaps I should just write it out as rough notes and then expand on it neatly just once, checking each sentence as I go. The purpose of the first phase would be to get down all the points I need to cover. This should give me more time to just write neatly and check over my work. However, this also means that I wouldn't know how many words I'm going to write in advance.
One thing I want to be sure of is that I stick to the 180 word limit (roughly - less than 200 would be good) because, as long as I've covered all the required points, then the more words I write the more time I have to spend copying it neatly, and the more I have to check. I won't get extra points for writing 250 words, but the marker will deduct marks for mistakes made within those extra 70 words. At least, that's what I suspect. I haven't done any Goethe Institute classes (in fact, I've only ever done about 8 classes in 2010 and about as many about 20 years ago) and, especially, I haven't done any exam preparation classes. I suppose they might have been useful...
Anyway, I thought I'd note down roughly how long each part has taken me for the 3 handwritten practice questions I've done recently, just to get a clear idea in my head of how long it should take in the real deal. Here they are, in the order I did them:
Modellsatz Thema 2: 218 words, approx 48 mins (in 2 chunks) for rough draft. No neat copy made!
Modellsatz Thema 1: 219 words, 45 mins for rough draft, 17 mins for neat copy. I chopped one or two sentences as I was copying it as I was running out of time.
Uebungspruefung 1 (no longer available on Goethe website): 239 words, approx 37 mins for draft copy, 29 mins for neat copy and proof-reading.
You may have noticed that that last one adds up to 66 minutes, but you only get 65. What happened was that I fnished up, felt very pleased with myself, started proofreading and generally faffing about. Then I thought "maybe I'll check to see if I've answered all the parts". And guess what - I hadn't copied a whole paragraph! I went into panic mode and copied it out as best I could, although it was messy :-(
It's not the end of the world - actually I usually finish the second part of the schriftlicher Ausdruck section with a bit of time to spare (even though I don't get 100% on it!), so I won't run out of time, but there's an important lesson to be learned here - be bloody careful!
All of the above are also longer than they need to be. I definitely don't want to do anything more than 220, and would, of course, rather show everything the examiners are looking for in < 200 words, and give myself some time to at least find the obvious errors!
If you've done the B2 or the C1 exam before, how about leaving your strategies for dealing with these questions in the comments!
[EDIT: I just noticed that on page 41 of this B2 exam description there is an example of the level of writing expected. After a quick read, I notice that it's much simpler in terms of vocabulary and structure than what I've been writing, which is good news. I think I can safely focus on trying to eliminate errors and making sure I don't try to write anything so clever that I outwit myself!]
Anyway, written it must be. So how should I approach it? I'm actually thinking that perhaps I should just write it out as rough notes and then expand on it neatly just once, checking each sentence as I go. The purpose of the first phase would be to get down all the points I need to cover. This should give me more time to just write neatly and check over my work. However, this also means that I wouldn't know how many words I'm going to write in advance.
One thing I want to be sure of is that I stick to the 180 word limit (roughly - less than 200 would be good) because, as long as I've covered all the required points, then the more words I write the more time I have to spend copying it neatly, and the more I have to check. I won't get extra points for writing 250 words, but the marker will deduct marks for mistakes made within those extra 70 words. At least, that's what I suspect. I haven't done any Goethe Institute classes (in fact, I've only ever done about 8 classes in 2010 and about as many about 20 years ago) and, especially, I haven't done any exam preparation classes. I suppose they might have been useful...
Anyway, I thought I'd note down roughly how long each part has taken me for the 3 handwritten practice questions I've done recently, just to get a clear idea in my head of how long it should take in the real deal. Here they are, in the order I did them:
Modellsatz Thema 2: 218 words, approx 48 mins (in 2 chunks) for rough draft. No neat copy made!
Modellsatz Thema 1: 219 words, 45 mins for rough draft, 17 mins for neat copy. I chopped one or two sentences as I was copying it as I was running out of time.
Uebungspruefung 1 (no longer available on Goethe website): 239 words, approx 37 mins for draft copy, 29 mins for neat copy and proof-reading.
You may have noticed that that last one adds up to 66 minutes, but you only get 65. What happened was that I fnished up, felt very pleased with myself, started proofreading and generally faffing about. Then I thought "maybe I'll check to see if I've answered all the parts". And guess what - I hadn't copied a whole paragraph! I went into panic mode and copied it out as best I could, although it was messy :-(
It's not the end of the world - actually I usually finish the second part of the schriftlicher Ausdruck section with a bit of time to spare (even though I don't get 100% on it!), so I won't run out of time, but there's an important lesson to be learned here - be bloody careful!
All of the above are also longer than they need to be. I definitely don't want to do anything more than 220, and would, of course, rather show everything the examiners are looking for in < 200 words, and give myself some time to at least find the obvious errors!
If you've done the B2 or the C1 exam before, how about leaving your strategies for dealing with these questions in the comments!
[EDIT: I just noticed that on page 41 of this B2 exam description there is an example of the level of writing expected. After a quick read, I notice that it's much simpler in terms of vocabulary and structure than what I've been writing, which is good news. I think I can safely focus on trying to eliminate errors and making sure I don't try to write anything so clever that I outwit myself!]
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
ONE WEEK TO GO!
One week to go today. In fact, in a week's time from now I'll probably be beating myself up about all the mistakes I made. Hopefully not!
I had a nightmare about the exam a couple of night's ago, which made me wonder why I'm doing it to myself. It took me TEN YEARS after I finished University before I stopped having nightmares about bloody exams - being late to them, not having a clue about how to answer the questions, etc. TEN LONG YEARS, and now I'm paying for the privilege of doing it again.
Sigh...
Anyway, what the hell, right? It'll be fun...
A couple of updates to report. Firstly, my Austrian friend has corrected my two written practice attempts. They weren't horribly bad. Mostly good. A couple of minor errors, some poorly chosen words, and each had one or two sentences which were a little hard to understand. Hopefully that puts them above 60%. My gut feeling is that it would, but I can't guarantee it of course. More practice will follow - I will rewrite these two compositions in order to get the corrections into my head better, and then I'll send them to my former German teacher (well, for 7 or 8 weeks at least) and ask for her opinion of whether I've actually hit the mark at all. She might have an idea of whether these would pass. After that I'll do a couple more at least of this question type.
The other update - since I've run out of B2 specific test material, I decided to do the C1 audio practice questions. I started with the modellsatz on the Goethe Institut's website. It actually didn't go too bad. As usual, on the first part of the audio exam I was too slow, and this time you needed to hear more detailed information and write it down, not just fill in a date, or a price, or whatever. Some of my problem was the detail required, but I actually felt like I heard all the answers, but I just can't retain them to write them down fast enough without missing out on some other part of the audio, and once I get behind I never feel like I can catch up. In the second section, listening to an interview and then answering questions, I did better. As usual I felt like a lot of the answers are too ambiguous. Even now, when I've read through the transcription, some of the answers seem wrong. Upon reflection, I think you need to be really careful that the answer you're choosing isn't supplying any extra details. If that's the case, a more generic answer is actually the correct one. Something for me to remember in the future.
Overall, I scored 14/25 for these two. 10.5 for the second part, and only 3.5 out of 10 for the first part. And that includes a half mark I gave myself because I felt that out of all the details that could have been supplied, I had answered the most important ones for the specific question. In fact, maybe that's just a 1 and not a half. Anyway, 14 out of 25 would be a fail, if extrapolated to the whole exam (though this may be my weakest section even in the B2 exam). I'm not totally unhappy with that - and I will try another C1 practice exam.
The other section I tried from this same C1 exam was in the Leseverstehen. A different type of fill-in-the-blanks exercise to the B2 one I'm used to - this one (Aufgabe 3) is multiple choice. Not too much to say about it except that I got 7 out of 10. Not bad.
Overall, I feel like I am between B2 and C1 right now in lots of areas. Perhaps not in speaking (I have no idea of the required level), but in other areas, probably. However, I won't be able to say that with any real authority until I get that piece of paper from the Goethe Institut saying that I am *at least* B2!
More work will be required...
What else? Still listening to podcasts, I've watched the German Biggest Loser (pretty funny!) and I met up with my German speaking friends at work this week, but not last week due to me having too many meetings on the only available day :-( I felt very awkward at the start this week, but I warmed up quite well. I think I needed a bit of warmup time, but something else that seemed to help was making sure I kept saying little words of agreement while the other person was speaking like "ja", "genau", "stimmt", "das stimmt", "natürlich", etc. I think this is important because otherwise I'm just sitting there silently listening a lot, sometimes getting lost, and then at the end I feel like I need to say something more than just a single word to show my agreement. I need to make sure I keep doing this in future conversations, including the exam.
And since I know a few people who read this will probably be doing a Goethe exam soon, let me end by sending out my best wishes to all of you and good luck for your final week/s of preparation!
I had a nightmare about the exam a couple of night's ago, which made me wonder why I'm doing it to myself. It took me TEN YEARS after I finished University before I stopped having nightmares about bloody exams - being late to them, not having a clue about how to answer the questions, etc. TEN LONG YEARS, and now I'm paying for the privilege of doing it again.
Sigh...
Anyway, what the hell, right? It'll be fun...
A couple of updates to report. Firstly, my Austrian friend has corrected my two written practice attempts. They weren't horribly bad. Mostly good. A couple of minor errors, some poorly chosen words, and each had one or two sentences which were a little hard to understand. Hopefully that puts them above 60%. My gut feeling is that it would, but I can't guarantee it of course. More practice will follow - I will rewrite these two compositions in order to get the corrections into my head better, and then I'll send them to my former German teacher (well, for 7 or 8 weeks at least) and ask for her opinion of whether I've actually hit the mark at all. She might have an idea of whether these would pass. After that I'll do a couple more at least of this question type.
The other update - since I've run out of B2 specific test material, I decided to do the C1 audio practice questions. I started with the modellsatz on the Goethe Institut's website. It actually didn't go too bad. As usual, on the first part of the audio exam I was too slow, and this time you needed to hear more detailed information and write it down, not just fill in a date, or a price, or whatever. Some of my problem was the detail required, but I actually felt like I heard all the answers, but I just can't retain them to write them down fast enough without missing out on some other part of the audio, and once I get behind I never feel like I can catch up. In the second section, listening to an interview and then answering questions, I did better. As usual I felt like a lot of the answers are too ambiguous. Even now, when I've read through the transcription, some of the answers seem wrong. Upon reflection, I think you need to be really careful that the answer you're choosing isn't supplying any extra details. If that's the case, a more generic answer is actually the correct one. Something for me to remember in the future.
Overall, I scored 14/25 for these two. 10.5 for the second part, and only 3.5 out of 10 for the first part. And that includes a half mark I gave myself because I felt that out of all the details that could have been supplied, I had answered the most important ones for the specific question. In fact, maybe that's just a 1 and not a half. Anyway, 14 out of 25 would be a fail, if extrapolated to the whole exam (though this may be my weakest section even in the B2 exam). I'm not totally unhappy with that - and I will try another C1 practice exam.
The other section I tried from this same C1 exam was in the Leseverstehen. A different type of fill-in-the-blanks exercise to the B2 one I'm used to - this one (Aufgabe 3) is multiple choice. Not too much to say about it except that I got 7 out of 10. Not bad.
Overall, I feel like I am between B2 and C1 right now in lots of areas. Perhaps not in speaking (I have no idea of the required level), but in other areas, probably. However, I won't be able to say that with any real authority until I get that piece of paper from the Goethe Institut saying that I am *at least* B2!
More work will be required...
What else? Still listening to podcasts, I've watched the German Biggest Loser (pretty funny!) and I met up with my German speaking friends at work this week, but not last week due to me having too many meetings on the only available day :-( I felt very awkward at the start this week, but I warmed up quite well. I think I needed a bit of warmup time, but something else that seemed to help was making sure I kept saying little words of agreement while the other person was speaking like "ja", "genau", "stimmt", "das stimmt", "natürlich", etc. I think this is important because otherwise I'm just sitting there silently listening a lot, sometimes getting lost, and then at the end I feel like I need to say something more than just a single word to show my agreement. I need to make sure I keep doing this in future conversations, including the exam.
And since I know a few people who read this will probably be doing a Goethe exam soon, let me end by sending out my best wishes to all of you and good luck for your final week/s of preparation!
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Written expression exam practice
Just a quick update. The last two nights I've managed to do a practice question from the written expression section of the Modellsatz currently available here. In terms of content, I think it's going fine. In terms of correctness, I think it's currently just passable. In terms of time, it's not going great :-) The first time I did this type of practice, I did it all on my computer and just made it. It actually never occurred to me that it would be a written exam, despite all information I had already read which stated that very clearly. Just a case of wishful thinking really.
So, I've been getting that familiar writing cramp I used to experience back in University exams. I can't say that I've missed it at all! The only good news is that I did indeed manage to finish my answer tonight within the 65 minutes allowed, including time to make a neat copy (that takes me 20 minutes!). Although I let the neatness of my "neat" copy slide drastically when I was running out of time :-)
I've sent both answers off to one of my German-speaking friends for some comments, but since they are on their honeymoon, I'm not expecting an answer any time soon! I might post my answers here at some stage in order to elicit some feedback from you readers out there, but I don't want to put it up as an example of how to do it well because, even once most of the mistakes have been corrected, I still will have no idea whether the examiners would like them and what marks they would assign.
This is one of those times when I would like to have done an exam preparation course, because then I would get some directly relevant feedback that I'm currently lacking. At this stage, I think I can only do my best, keep practicing, and get some small modicum of feedback once I get my results for the actual exam!
If anyone can point me to a link with examples of the B2 exam's written section (and the oral exam too would be great!!), please let me know in the comments.
So, I've been getting that familiar writing cramp I used to experience back in University exams. I can't say that I've missed it at all! The only good news is that I did indeed manage to finish my answer tonight within the 65 minutes allowed, including time to make a neat copy (that takes me 20 minutes!). Although I let the neatness of my "neat" copy slide drastically when I was running out of time :-)
I've sent both answers off to one of my German-speaking friends for some comments, but since they are on their honeymoon, I'm not expecting an answer any time soon! I might post my answers here at some stage in order to elicit some feedback from you readers out there, but I don't want to put it up as an example of how to do it well because, even once most of the mistakes have been corrected, I still will have no idea whether the examiners would like them and what marks they would assign.
This is one of those times when I would like to have done an exam preparation course, because then I would get some directly relevant feedback that I'm currently lacking. At this stage, I think I can only do my best, keep practicing, and get some small modicum of feedback once I get my results for the actual exam!
If anyone can point me to a link with examples of the B2 exam's written section (and the oral exam too would be great!!), please let me know in the comments.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Knaller Frauen
[Allen Deutschmuttersprachlern: Es tut mir leid, wenn ihr hier zufällig gelandet habt. Mein Blog ist kein Fansite für diese Sendung! Es ist nur ein Art Tagesbuch, in dem ich über meine Erfahrungen mit Deutsch schreiben. ABER - wenn ihr mir helfen könnt, wie man Sat1-Sendungen online und kostenlos anschauen kann, ohne in Deutschland zu leben, dann wäre ich super-dankbar!]
Just a quick one to share a link to a funny show that you can watch online for free - and you don't have to live in Germany!
It's called Knaller Frauen. Not sure what it means exactly - maybe "Firecrackers", or "Bombshells"? Not sure. It's just a comedy sketch show - some hit, some miss, but I found it very easy to follow so I'm sure others will as well. Here's a link to a recent episode.
There are plenty of other shows there - not sure what's available to watch in full yet, but when I get a chance I'll try to check it out more.
Now I've got to go practice the long written part of the exam. And yes, I'm writing it out by hand, because I'll have to for the real exam. Sigh...
Just about 18 days to go till my B2 exam, by the way...
[UPDATE: As of today, none of the tv shows on the sat1 website are available outside Germany (or at least, in Australia!) anymore. I was watching part of a show last night "Der letze Bulle" which was pretty good. Man. Why can't shit just be free, and freely available? Copyright sucks :-) ]
Just a quick one to share a link to a funny show that you can watch online for free - and you don't have to live in Germany!
It's called Knaller Frauen. Not sure what it means exactly - maybe "Firecrackers", or "Bombshells"? Not sure. It's just a comedy sketch show - some hit, some miss, but I found it very easy to follow so I'm sure others will as well. Here's a link to a recent episode.
There are plenty of other shows there - not sure what's available to watch in full yet, but when I get a chance I'll try to check it out more.
Now I've got to go practice the long written part of the exam. And yes, I'm writing it out by hand, because I'll have to for the real exam. Sigh...
Just about 18 days to go till my B2 exam, by the way...
[UPDATE: As of today, none of the tv shows on the sat1 website are available outside Germany (or at least, in Australia!) anymore. I was watching part of a show last night "Der letze Bulle" which was pretty good. Man. Why can't shit just be free, and freely available? Copyright sucks :-) ]
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The countdown is on...
In just under three weeks from today I should be sitting the Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam. Registration form emailed in and confirmed! I haven't been revving up in the way I was planning too, but I need to now!
I have finished Der Beobachter at least. In fact, I used the silly graph I posted last time to predict when I would finish it and that actually worked! It said I would finish on the 21st of this month, which is precisely what happened. Then again, when I got close to the date and I still had 30 pages to go, I picked up my pace. Anyway, good, I finished it - my first full novel in German, all 652 pages of it. I think that knowing I can enjoy a proper, normal, everyday sort of book gives me a confidence boost ahead of the exam. And besides, I really did enjoy it!
Since I got sick a few weeks ago, I haven't got back into my study as much as I need to. I had been using all my available lunchtimes to read Der Beobachter. Now I need to get back into the habit of doing some exam style questions for practice at lunchtime. Today I did manage to do some of the B2 practice exams - just the second part of the Schriftlicher Ausdruck section for two practice exams. This is the part where you need to correct the mistakes in a letter written by a non-native speaker (well, that's the scenario - I'm sure they're not real!!). You get 15 minutes in the real exam, and I took about 9-10 minutes for both of them. I got 10/10 for one and 9/10 for the other, so I feel pretty good about this part. Hence, I've decided to focus my "study time" on practising the writing section. I guess it would be too much to ask to get a computer to type my answers on, so I suppose I should practice writing my answers on paper. Sigh. I hate writing by hand in exams :-)
I have managed to read some more of my German grammar book, as well as doing one more lesson from Perfectionnement Allemand. In fact, I skipped lesson 19 in the end because it was just boring me too much (some bollocks about the history of the German and Austrian national anthems - in fact, I wanted to know about the topic, but the ratio of boredom to information was too high) so I moved on and did lesson 20. It's silly, but in a way that made it easy to get through. I actually feel that now I don't get as much out of Assimil at a higher level. I would get much more out of it if my French was better, but now that I can listen to and read more interesting things that aren't designed for learners, I often prefer to do just that. Still, the reason I went back to Assimil is because I haven't been getting the speaking practice I need, and even though it's not interactive, I have definitely always found it to be really good for getting the words to roll off the tongue. So, lesson 20 done, and review lesson 21 is also now complete.
So, anyway, better get on with it. I'll try to update more frequently as I make my final preparations.
I have finished Der Beobachter at least. In fact, I used the silly graph I posted last time to predict when I would finish it and that actually worked! It said I would finish on the 21st of this month, which is precisely what happened. Then again, when I got close to the date and I still had 30 pages to go, I picked up my pace. Anyway, good, I finished it - my first full novel in German, all 652 pages of it. I think that knowing I can enjoy a proper, normal, everyday sort of book gives me a confidence boost ahead of the exam. And besides, I really did enjoy it!
Since I got sick a few weeks ago, I haven't got back into my study as much as I need to. I had been using all my available lunchtimes to read Der Beobachter. Now I need to get back into the habit of doing some exam style questions for practice at lunchtime. Today I did manage to do some of the B2 practice exams - just the second part of the Schriftlicher Ausdruck section for two practice exams. This is the part where you need to correct the mistakes in a letter written by a non-native speaker (well, that's the scenario - I'm sure they're not real!!). You get 15 minutes in the real exam, and I took about 9-10 minutes for both of them. I got 10/10 for one and 9/10 for the other, so I feel pretty good about this part. Hence, I've decided to focus my "study time" on practising the writing section. I guess it would be too much to ask to get a computer to type my answers on, so I suppose I should practice writing my answers on paper. Sigh. I hate writing by hand in exams :-)
I have managed to read some more of my German grammar book, as well as doing one more lesson from Perfectionnement Allemand. In fact, I skipped lesson 19 in the end because it was just boring me too much (some bollocks about the history of the German and Austrian national anthems - in fact, I wanted to know about the topic, but the ratio of boredom to information was too high) so I moved on and did lesson 20. It's silly, but in a way that made it easy to get through. I actually feel that now I don't get as much out of Assimil at a higher level. I would get much more out of it if my French was better, but now that I can listen to and read more interesting things that aren't designed for learners, I often prefer to do just that. Still, the reason I went back to Assimil is because I haven't been getting the speaking practice I need, and even though it's not interactive, I have definitely always found it to be really good for getting the words to roll off the tongue. So, lesson 20 done, and review lesson 21 is also now complete.
So, anyway, better get on with it. I'll try to update more frequently as I make my final preparations.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Obsessed with Der Beobachter
OK, so now I'm nearing the end of "Der Beobachter" and it's been taking most of my focus in my German studies. I haven't done any more exam practice since my last post, mainly because I've been off work sick twice since the last post, and have been pretty ill for about half of the intervening days. Pretty shitty really. It's taken away my lunchtimes, and my time at home has been split between looking after my daughter, lying in bed sick, and family things. I had started to pick up my training for the Shark Island Swim this Sunday (I'm only doing the 1km event!), but I haven't done anything for that in 2 weeks now.
But the pause has been good in a way. When I read my book, I don't feel like I'm studying. It's not at all a struggle, and I'm just enjoying the story. I've never actually read a crime novel in English, so it's a novel experience all round (no pun intended). I'm up to page 570 which leaves just 81 pages to go! I think I'll have it knocked over in the next few days - I've been reading it at lunchtime and before bed whenever I can. Then I can get back to thinking about where to focus my study attention.
Something I've just noticed that youtube seems to have a lot of full-length German movies, like this one about Goethe. Don't know how I've been missing this all this time! Maybe the copyright owners don't look too hard for movies in the smaller markets? Whatever the reason, I'm going to start taking advantage of it as often as possible!
And finally, just because everyone loves a good graph, I've whipped up a graph of my reading progress in Der Beobachter by searching through my posts for where I've reported it. I couldn't have done this if I wasn't keeping a blog - so useful!
But the pause has been good in a way. When I read my book, I don't feel like I'm studying. It's not at all a struggle, and I'm just enjoying the story. I've never actually read a crime novel in English, so it's a novel experience all round (no pun intended). I'm up to page 570 which leaves just 81 pages to go! I think I'll have it knocked over in the next few days - I've been reading it at lunchtime and before bed whenever I can. Then I can get back to thinking about where to focus my study attention.
Something I've just noticed that youtube seems to have a lot of full-length German movies, like this one about Goethe. Don't know how I've been missing this all this time! Maybe the copyright owners don't look too hard for movies in the smaller markets? Whatever the reason, I'm going to start taking advantage of it as often as possible!
And finally, just because everyone loves a good graph, I've whipped up a graph of my reading progress in Der Beobachter by searching through my posts for where I've reported it. I couldn't have done this if I wasn't keeping a blog - so useful!
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Quick little update - a bad listening test result!
So, last Friday I got round to doing the practice test 03 for the B2 exam (click "set of practice exercises") but I only got 17.5 out of 25. This is sailing awfully close to the pass/fail line of 15/25 for listening comprehension. The funny thing was that I didn't find it all that difficult. It seemed a little harder than the other practice tests they had provided). It was definitely faster and I just made a couple of silly mistakes. Still, a silly mistake in an exam is a point lost!
In better news, my Austrian friends got married last Thursday night (HOORAY!) and I was lucky enough to get invited, and to sit next to the Best Man (der Trauzeuge) for the whole night. He was just as polite, easy to talk to and friendly as the newlyweds have always been to me, so I spent a lot of the night enjoying his company in German! I also played handball (schoolyard rules) with some of the young kids there, and we all spoke in German too, even though they are really native English speakers (they're grown up in Australia). The key was that I started in German and never switched back, so they stuck with it too. It's just natural to them to respond like that, I guess.
I was filled with admiration for all the non-native English speakers involved in performing a wedding ceremony (albeit a relatively casual affair) in their second language. These things are hard enough in your first language! Even the best man gave his speech in English, and I was thoroughly impressed. Awesome :-) One funny moment came when the marriage celebrant asked the best man if he had the wedding rings and he said, with typical deadpan, "of course". The celebrant, for whom cultural sensitivity seemed to be a foreign concept, said "what do you mean 'of course'? Not 'of course' at all, otherwise I wouldn't ask!" She was a bit of a crank. I explained to him later why this sounds funny in English. A note to any passing German readers: if in doubt, don't say "of course" :-)
I let myself laugh at it, in the same vein as my German-speaking friends often feel free to laugh when I mix up a phrase like "Mir ist heiss" and "ich bin heiss". Actually, I don't make this mistake much, but when it gets a little more involved - like saying "it depended on how hot I got", then things can get whacky and, apparently, hilarious :-)
In better news, my Austrian friends got married last Thursday night (HOORAY!) and I was lucky enough to get invited, and to sit next to the Best Man (der Trauzeuge) for the whole night. He was just as polite, easy to talk to and friendly as the newlyweds have always been to me, so I spent a lot of the night enjoying his company in German! I also played handball (schoolyard rules) with some of the young kids there, and we all spoke in German too, even though they are really native English speakers (they're grown up in Australia). The key was that I started in German and never switched back, so they stuck with it too. It's just natural to them to respond like that, I guess.
I was filled with admiration for all the non-native English speakers involved in performing a wedding ceremony (albeit a relatively casual affair) in their second language. These things are hard enough in your first language! Even the best man gave his speech in English, and I was thoroughly impressed. Awesome :-) One funny moment came when the marriage celebrant asked the best man if he had the wedding rings and he said, with typical deadpan, "of course". The celebrant, for whom cultural sensitivity seemed to be a foreign concept, said "what do you mean 'of course'? Not 'of course' at all, otherwise I wouldn't ask!" She was a bit of a crank. I explained to him later why this sounds funny in English. A note to any passing German readers: if in doubt, don't say "of course" :-)
I let myself laugh at it, in the same vein as my German-speaking friends often feel free to laugh when I mix up a phrase like "Mir ist heiss" and "ich bin heiss". Actually, I don't make this mistake much, but when it gets a little more involved - like saying "it depended on how hot I got", then things can get whacky and, apparently, hilarious :-)
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Recent listening test results
Just recently I've been going through more of the practice listening test material supplied by the Goethe Institute for the Goethe-Zertifikat B2 exam. I've got one more of these to go. I realised after starting one of them that I had done it once before, but I didn't remember the details enough to really help me answer anything, so it was still decent practice/checking my current level. They both went well - in the Modellsatz test, I got 20/25 for the two listening test questions, and in Uebungssatz 01 (which I had done before but forgotten) I got 23/25. I think the real reason for the difference in results is just that I was familiar with the exam format the second time. This practice is really important because, the more familiar you are with the exam format, the better you can concentrate on showing what you know. Both of these test results were with the normal time/repetition restrictions from the actual exam (the audio Goethe supplies has all the correct repeats and gaps built in already). After I do Uebungssatz03 (I wonder where I can find Uebungssatz02? Or 04??), I'll either work on the test exams from TestDaF because they are on a scale from B2-C1, or just the C1 practice exams.
I recently re-did a couple of the "level checking" tests I had done last year. Here's one of them:
http://www.goethe.de/cgi-bin/einstufungstest/einstufungstest.pl
I got 20 out of 30. I'm actually pretty sure this is close to what I got when I did it ages ago. What's going on there? In the meantime, my vocabulary has increased significantly. I know that for sure. My reading ability is up to the stage where I can comfortably and enjoyably read a significant novel (not that I understand every single word or phrase!), and I feel reasonably comfortable (not fluent) in conversations with native speakers. Both of these facets have definitely improved.
What hasn't really changed is that I still haven't gone to any structured classes. Although I've read some of a really good German grammar book (without trying to memorise it), I haven't spent much time on learning the sorts of minutia which seem to fill most courses - is it "wenn" or "ob", for example. I'm not saying this isn't important, I'm not saying that I don't care about making this sort of mistake (I do!) but I don't think they're as important as improving conversational fluency and vocabulary, and I haven't spent much time on them. Anyway, I'll check back this level in a few months and see if anything's changed!
One last bit of exam practice to mention - I did one of the "correct the mistakes" questions in the Schriftlicher Ausdruck section of the B2 Modelssatz mentioned above and got 8 out of 10. On of the two mistakes I missed was "wenn" being used instead of "ob/wann" :-) You get 15 minutes to do this section in the exam, and I did it in 8 minutes. I think that for one lunchtime soon I'll print out a few of these questions and do them all at once, because I can probably knock over a bunch really quickly.
Other than that, the focus will remain, for the next week or two, on listening test practice (at a higher level next).
By the way, all of the above have been squeezed into the few lunchtimes I've had free lately. If it weren't for lunchtime, I don't know when I would get this stuff done at all!
I recently re-did a couple of the "level checking" tests I had done last year. Here's one of them:
http://www.goethe.de/cgi-bin/einstufungstest/einstufungstest.pl
I got 20 out of 30. I'm actually pretty sure this is close to what I got when I did it ages ago. What's going on there? In the meantime, my vocabulary has increased significantly. I know that for sure. My reading ability is up to the stage where I can comfortably and enjoyably read a significant novel (not that I understand every single word or phrase!), and I feel reasonably comfortable (not fluent) in conversations with native speakers. Both of these facets have definitely improved.
What hasn't really changed is that I still haven't gone to any structured classes. Although I've read some of a really good German grammar book (without trying to memorise it), I haven't spent much time on learning the sorts of minutia which seem to fill most courses - is it "wenn" or "ob", for example. I'm not saying this isn't important, I'm not saying that I don't care about making this sort of mistake (I do!) but I don't think they're as important as improving conversational fluency and vocabulary, and I haven't spent much time on them. Anyway, I'll check back this level in a few months and see if anything's changed!
One last bit of exam practice to mention - I did one of the "correct the mistakes" questions in the Schriftlicher Ausdruck section of the B2 Modelssatz mentioned above and got 8 out of 10. On of the two mistakes I missed was "wenn" being used instead of "ob/wann" :-) You get 15 minutes to do this section in the exam, and I did it in 8 minutes. I think that for one lunchtime soon I'll print out a few of these questions and do them all at once, because I can probably knock over a bunch really quickly.
Other than that, the focus will remain, for the next week or two, on listening test practice (at a higher level next).
By the way, all of the above have been squeezed into the few lunchtimes I've had free lately. If it weren't for lunchtime, I don't know when I would get this stuff done at all!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Leseverstehen B2 finished!
So, finally, I've finished all the practice reading tests in Leseverstehen B2. It took me 2 weeks to find the time to finish the last few tests. So much other stuff always comes up to fill my lunchtimes, which is my main free time to do this kind of study. Anyway, phew, I did it. I ordered the book on the 16th of March last year, and got it a few weeks later, so I finished it in under a year. It wasn't the only thing I did in that time, of course, and I did it in fits and starts. When I first attempted it I immediately discovered, on the first "easy" practice test, that my vocabulary was woefully inadequate. I immediately started a new Anki list just to contain the words that came up from this book. Since that time it has become my general list with words from everywhere going into it. It has grown to 2,600 "facts" (1,300 cards, which probably represent at least 2,600 words and phrases). And I haven't even added all the words from the last 3 or 4 practice tests yet! Studying this list, and adding to it on a semi-regular basis, have proved to be vital so far.
Speaking of my Anki list, I've been a little slack with it lately. I don't know why, but for a few days there I couldn't find the time and/or enthusiasm to do my daily study, even though I kept up my other activities. After a bit of a burst yesterday, I should be able to catch up today.
As for other activities, I recently passed the halfway mark in Der Beobachter. I'm up to about page 330, and the story's really starting to get interesting. I still don't think we've met the murderer yet, but who knows. I could be totally wrong. Time will tell. I've also kept up my weekly Stammtisch at work, though I really don't feel like my fluency is improving enough - probably because I haven't been able to meet up with my other German-speaking friends very much lately. I really get a lot of opportunities to talk in the time that I'm with them, and they make me feel very comfortable. I feel like I'm at the stage where, in order to progress, I really need to be doing more. At a lower level, you can make good progress with an hour a week, but as you get better, the time requirement goes up. Sure, if you've got the time and the opportunity, do as much as you can from the start. But when time is limited, and you can only really focus on one thing in your life at a time without letting everything else fall by the wayside, then, like me, you can probably only do a lot of interaction in your target language in concentrated bursts. That's what I feel like I need to do now. I also need to take a leaf out of Keith over at Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning and watch a lot more German TV and movies with no subtitles. The main problem I have is that I need the volume turned up, and since I can only watch them once my daughter has gone to sleep, that really means watching them on my phone. And since that doesn't support a lot of resolutions and formats, that means a slow conversion process for each one, often with a loss of audio sync or some other annoyance. Maybe I should get some remote headphones and just watch stuff on the TV!
As a final note to sign off, I've pretty much decided that I should just do the B2 exam now to get it out of the way, and think about aiming to do the C2 in the future as I discussed before. I wasn't sure when I found out that the next exam date will be the 18th of April and I thought that that maybe gave me enough time to prepare for the C1 instead. Perhaps it does in everything except that my speaking probably won't be up to the required level in time. Even if I could do it, the chances are that I would be looking at somewhere between a low pass and a fail. Since this has always just been a goal to help encourage and push me on, I think it would be better to get a good pass at the lower level for now. Still, I plan on studying for the C1 exam in terms of listening practice, etc, as I'd rather be over-prepared than under!
I haven't sent in the form yet, but at least I know the date for my exam now: the 18th of April. I'm looking forward to it!
Speaking of my Anki list, I've been a little slack with it lately. I don't know why, but for a few days there I couldn't find the time and/or enthusiasm to do my daily study, even though I kept up my other activities. After a bit of a burst yesterday, I should be able to catch up today.
As for other activities, I recently passed the halfway mark in Der Beobachter. I'm up to about page 330, and the story's really starting to get interesting. I still don't think we've met the murderer yet, but who knows. I could be totally wrong. Time will tell. I've also kept up my weekly Stammtisch at work, though I really don't feel like my fluency is improving enough - probably because I haven't been able to meet up with my other German-speaking friends very much lately. I really get a lot of opportunities to talk in the time that I'm with them, and they make me feel very comfortable. I feel like I'm at the stage where, in order to progress, I really need to be doing more. At a lower level, you can make good progress with an hour a week, but as you get better, the time requirement goes up. Sure, if you've got the time and the opportunity, do as much as you can from the start. But when time is limited, and you can only really focus on one thing in your life at a time without letting everything else fall by the wayside, then, like me, you can probably only do a lot of interaction in your target language in concentrated bursts. That's what I feel like I need to do now. I also need to take a leaf out of Keith over at Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning and watch a lot more German TV and movies with no subtitles. The main problem I have is that I need the volume turned up, and since I can only watch them once my daughter has gone to sleep, that really means watching them on my phone. And since that doesn't support a lot of resolutions and formats, that means a slow conversion process for each one, often with a loss of audio sync or some other annoyance. Maybe I should get some remote headphones and just watch stuff on the TV!
As a final note to sign off, I've pretty much decided that I should just do the B2 exam now to get it out of the way, and think about aiming to do the C2 in the future as I discussed before. I wasn't sure when I found out that the next exam date will be the 18th of April and I thought that that maybe gave me enough time to prepare for the C1 instead. Perhaps it does in everything except that my speaking probably won't be up to the required level in time. Even if I could do it, the chances are that I would be looking at somewhere between a low pass and a fail. Since this has always just been a goal to help encourage and push me on, I think it would be better to get a good pass at the lower level for now. Still, I plan on studying for the C1 exam in terms of listening practice, etc, as I'd rather be over-prepared than under!
I haven't sent in the form yet, but at least I know the date for my exam now: the 18th of April. I'm looking forward to it!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Almost finished Leseverstehen B2!
Good times! I've done the first test from test 14, and there are only 15 in the book. I've been doing them all in 40-60 minutes, and usually 20-22 out of 25. Generally I got 15 out of 15 in the first few questions (with exceptions in those stupid "positiv or negativ+skeptisch" type questions) and generally lose points in the fill in the blanks exercises. When I first started with easier exercises I thought I would just never be able to do them, and now I consistently get about 7, which I'm quite pleased about. I plan on trying to come up with a few tips for this type of question. I'll go back through and sort them out, but one I've noticed (which I keep missing myself) is that there's often one blank that's for a "sich". There's are easy to find because they'll occur early in a sentence or a relative clause, and may have an adverb next to them (which should hint that you don't want to try to think of another adverb!). Something to look out for...
I've also continued reading "Der Beobachter" and just got up to page 190. Another old lady just got whacked in a horrible way, and the main female character just cheated on her husband, for no real apparent reason. I'm not really enjoying the story about the main female character's family, to be honest, but I'm getting a feeling that she is somehow linked to the murderer. At the moment, they are completely disconnected from the murders, so it's a bit weird.
I've also been reading, very occasionally and in very short bursts, "Das Parfüm" at work sometimes. I'm only up to page 32, and I haven't been adding its vocabulary. Given that it's only 250 pages long, I probably wouldn't have been better off to just read it in the first place to give me that boost of having at least one full German-lanaguage novel under my belt. Der Beobachter is 650 pages long! But really, it's pretty easy reading. Lots of conversations, not complicated, a fair bit of day-to-day vocab, so it's a good choice really, and my progress has been OK.
Hopefully by my next update I'll be finished Leseverstehen B2 and can figure out what "study" type material I should focus on next. I'll probably start to focus on doing C1 level listening tests because that's an area where I would really like to bring up my comfort. I mean, I listen to a lot of German audio podcasts, and understand most of it in broad terms, and some of it perfectly, but I still think I have some work to do here to feel fully comfortable all the time. However, I think I'm close to being ready for the listening section of the B2 exam, which is why I've been thinking I'll do it sometime soon, and set a more distant goal of doing the C2 exam in another year or so perhaps.
More updates on this later...
I've also continued reading "Der Beobachter" and just got up to page 190. Another old lady just got whacked in a horrible way, and the main female character just cheated on her husband, for no real apparent reason. I'm not really enjoying the story about the main female character's family, to be honest, but I'm getting a feeling that she is somehow linked to the murderer. At the moment, they are completely disconnected from the murders, so it's a bit weird.
I've also been reading, very occasionally and in very short bursts, "Das Parfüm" at work sometimes. I'm only up to page 32, and I haven't been adding its vocabulary. Given that it's only 250 pages long, I probably wouldn't have been better off to just read it in the first place to give me that boost of having at least one full German-lanaguage novel under my belt. Der Beobachter is 650 pages long! But really, it's pretty easy reading. Lots of conversations, not complicated, a fair bit of day-to-day vocab, so it's a good choice really, and my progress has been OK.
Hopefully by my next update I'll be finished Leseverstehen B2 and can figure out what "study" type material I should focus on next. I'll probably start to focus on doing C1 level listening tests because that's an area where I would really like to bring up my comfort. I mean, I listen to a lot of German audio podcasts, and understand most of it in broad terms, and some of it perfectly, but I still think I have some work to do here to feel fully comfortable all the time. However, I think I'm close to being ready for the listening section of the B2 exam, which is why I've been thinking I'll do it sometime soon, and set a more distant goal of doing the C2 exam in another year or so perhaps.
More updates on this later...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Recent Leseverstehen B2 results
This is one of those "checkpoint" posts really. Apart from the last few days being spent sick as a dog in bed, I've finally been working through the sample exam section of Lesetraining B2 (as opposed to the practice section!) and my results have been encouraging so far, both in terms of time taken and results, so I'm pretty happy right now. It's made me think that I need to focus on listening skills again as much as possible. Here are the results I got recently:
Part B, Test 8: 22/25 including 7/10 in the part I always found the hardest before (filling in the blanks).
Part B, Test 9: 19/25 - a couple of rushed mistakes. Done at lunchtime at work while eating lunch in 34 mins (80 mins allowed for the real exam).
Part B, Test 10: 22/25 done in about 54 mins, spread out over a few days.
I still need to add the words I didn't know or was unsure about to my Anki list. I only just got to the stage of not having any new words introduced to me from the last time I added a tonne of vocab. Fun times ahead!
I've also done one of the practice writing questions from the online version of the B2 exam. My time was broken up into two chunks, with the second being quite a distracted chunk indeed. However, I managed to keep within the time limit (60 minutes I think?) and produced a 280 word answer where 180 are required, which means that if I had kept myself to the topic better, I could have easily finished with plenty of time to spare to check for mistakes. I've sent it to my Austrian friend for corrections whenever she gets time. I'm not in a rush at the moment, though I plan to do more of this as I really feel that just this one piece of written composition helped.
Practice makes less imperfect, I guess...
Part B, Test 8: 22/25 including 7/10 in the part I always found the hardest before (filling in the blanks).
Part B, Test 9: 19/25 - a couple of rushed mistakes. Done at lunchtime at work while eating lunch in 34 mins (80 mins allowed for the real exam).
Part B, Test 10: 22/25 done in about 54 mins, spread out over a few days.
I still need to add the words I didn't know or was unsure about to my Anki list. I only just got to the stage of not having any new words introduced to me from the last time I added a tonne of vocab. Fun times ahead!
I've also done one of the practice writing questions from the online version of the B2 exam. My time was broken up into two chunks, with the second being quite a distracted chunk indeed. However, I managed to keep within the time limit (60 minutes I think?) and produced a 280 word answer where 180 are required, which means that if I had kept myself to the topic better, I could have easily finished with plenty of time to spare to check for mistakes. I've sent it to my Austrian friend for corrections whenever she gets time. I'm not in a rush at the moment, though I plan to do more of this as I really feel that just this one piece of written composition helped.
Practice makes less imperfect, I guess...
Adding up the costs...
Just for the sake of it, I've decided to try to do a brief rundown of how much money I've spent on learning German so far. I'm very conscious of price in my studies. The question is not "how much do I need to spend?" but rather "why spend anything at all?"
The biggest cost for a lot of people in language learning could be their language courses, or private tutors. I've used both of these in the past for languages other than German and I was much less successful, despite as much calendar time passing, as well as a not insignificant amount of money passing out of my bank account! I felt as though I just needed to go to the class, put in the time there and with *assigned* homework, and one day I would know when I was ready. The secrets would be revealed to me, and I'd magically be able to read, write and speak with confidence.
Well, the magic never happened.
Now that I don't go to classes, I do something most days. Anki reviewing and listening to German podcasts being the two main daily activities. I get to speak about once a week at the moment, and I find the odd moment here or there to do some study-type activities. I've also met up with my new German-speaking friends both in and out of work, whenever that's been possible. But what I've done very little of is spend my hard-earned cash :-)
I've been lucky too to receive gifts from friends and family, and to get a few items on loan from my sister. I've listed these below as well. Which of them would I have bought myself? Probably none of them, though I appreciate all of them immensely. I do think that one of the books I received as a present is a really good confidence boost, if only in the sense of achievement I get from easily following the story (but still not understanding every single word!). I don't know what I would do about this in the future. Probably check out my local library to see what they have. I might try to buy some books second-hand as well wherever possible, though this can be quite hit and miss. Maybe I can just wait till I receive some more presents!
So, the tally. First the items I have bought (note that none of the links below are affiliate links):
And that's it so far. AU$70. The textbooks for a couple of levels of German at the Goethe Institute probably cost something like that.
I've been given the following as various kinds of presents or loans:
Of course, much of my reading and listening comes from online - Der Spiegel, Deutsche Welle, etc. In fact, without the internet, I don't think I could make anywhere near the progress I've been able to without spending some more money on content. In the old days, it just wasn't that easy to get foreign language material for free. Possible yes, but not easy!
There might be something I've actually spent money on that's missing from this list, but I can't think of it at the moment. I'm going to try to keep my total expenditure (excluding the cost of the exam) to be below $100, which means I can't spend more than another $30. I'd really rather not even spend that :-)
The biggest cost for a lot of people in language learning could be their language courses, or private tutors. I've used both of these in the past for languages other than German and I was much less successful, despite as much calendar time passing, as well as a not insignificant amount of money passing out of my bank account! I felt as though I just needed to go to the class, put in the time there and with *assigned* homework, and one day I would know when I was ready. The secrets would be revealed to me, and I'd magically be able to read, write and speak with confidence.
Well, the magic never happened.
Now that I don't go to classes, I do something most days. Anki reviewing and listening to German podcasts being the two main daily activities. I get to speak about once a week at the moment, and I find the odd moment here or there to do some study-type activities. I've also met up with my new German-speaking friends both in and out of work, whenever that's been possible. But what I've done very little of is spend my hard-earned cash :-)
I've been lucky too to receive gifts from friends and family, and to get a few items on loan from my sister. I've listed these below as well. Which of them would I have bought myself? Probably none of them, though I appreciate all of them immensely. I do think that one of the books I received as a present is a really good confidence boost, if only in the sense of achievement I get from easily following the story (but still not understanding every single word!). I don't know what I would do about this in the future. Probably check out my local library to see what they have. I might try to buy some books second-hand as well wherever possible, though this can be quite hit and miss. Maybe I can just wait till I receive some more presents!
So, the tally. First the items I have bought (note that none of the links below are affiliate links):
- Lesetraining B2 - AU$25 delivered from The Book Depository.
- Perfectionnement Allemand ("Using German") by Assimil - AU$25 also from the Book Depository. This is without audio - with audio it's about $100. Unfortunately I couldn't stretch to this, but I was lucky enough to later find it second-hand.
- Das Parfum - the movie. Can't remember but it was pretty cheap (bought while in Germany). AU$10 at the most.
- Das Parfum - the book. Got it second-hand online (bought while in Germany) for about AU$10 as well.
And that's it so far. AU$70. The textbooks for a couple of levels of German at the Goethe Institute probably cost something like that.
I've been given the following as various kinds of presents or loans:
- Assimil's German with Ease, which I received as a going-away gift before I left for Germany. This was the start of it all for me really. Without this book, I don't think I would have lasted on this path for so long. I learnt reading, pronunciation, listening comprehension and grammar all at the same time in a way I could apply immediately through lots and lots of examples of native speakers. Just perfect!
- Grimm's Fairy Tales - actually a gift from our Austrian friends for my daughter's first birthday, but she needs some help reading it :-)
- Der Beobachter by Charlotte Linke, an author from where I lived in Germany (Frankfurt-am-Main). It's not the sort of thing that I would read in English (maybe I should start?), but then I think that can be a good thing some times. I decided not to be daunted by the enormous size of this book (600+ pages of story!) and just get started on it, and I'm now about page 107 or so. I think this is faster than I read the Lord of the Rings (in English!) the first time I tried, because I just hated Hobbits so much. Please, LOTR fans - don't kill me!
- Two other 600+ page novels. Haven't touched either of these yet.
- Two other children's books to read to my daughter. Have read these to my daughter already a couple of times. One of them is all about the noises animals make, which is pretty cool to know, really :-)
- Duden's Bildwörterbuch + some grammar books on loan from my sister. I've only ever really flicked through these.
Of course, much of my reading and listening comes from online - Der Spiegel, Deutsche Welle, etc. In fact, without the internet, I don't think I could make anywhere near the progress I've been able to without spending some more money on content. In the old days, it just wasn't that easy to get foreign language material for free. Possible yes, but not easy!
There might be something I've actually spent money on that's missing from this list, but I can't think of it at the moment. I'm going to try to keep my total expenditure (excluding the cost of the exam) to be below $100, which means I can't spend more than another $30. I'd really rather not even spend that :-)
Friday, January 13, 2012
Weichnachtsgeschenke...
Before two weeks pass into the New Year, I should do a bit of an update!
I scored at Christmas! My Austrian friends were getting a visit from their parents and so they had them bring over a couple of books for me - just some normal Bestseller, sold-in-airports types of books, but they're just what I've been looking for. The one I started on was from a German author from my old hometown (or rather, where I lived for 6 months) - Frankfurt am Main. It's called "Der Beobachter" by Charlotte Link. At 650 pages all, I have to admit that I found the prospect daunting. To be honest, I rarely read fiction books in English, and I'm hardly a super-fast reader as it is, but I've got through 60 odd pages already and I'm really enjoying it. There have only been one or two passages where the meaning was a little unclear to me. This is not to say there haven't been many words I haven't understood. There've been plenty! I intended to add unknown words to my Anki list, but so far I only managed to add those from the back and inside covers and the first couple of pages. It just takes a lot of time, and it's time I could be spending actually reading the book. Still, I should do it every now and then because words do pop up multiple times. Perhaps I'll make that my rule - if it pops up twice, and I don't know it, I'll write it down somewhere so I can add it to Anki later.
I also got another fat novel and two children's books in German as gifts from my parents for Christmas. I've really enjoyed reading the children's books to my daughter!
I did manage to keep studying German throughout the break too, despite working between Christmas and New Year's and the rest of the time mostly being about family things. I made sure I stayed on track with Anki as a minimum. I went to a BBQ with my wife and daughter to my Austrian friends' house and had a chance to talk to their visiting parents and sister. The parents spoke no English, so it was a good opportunity. They were lovely and I really enjoyed talking to them. They took a while to speak to me too much. They probably weren't sure how much I would understand. I had to remember too that Standard German (Hochdeutsch), which is pretty much all I understand, is just about no one's actual first language. If I hadn't been there, they would have been speaking "in dialect" as they put it. My friend's mother was really nice and, for the first hour or so at least, spoke to me really, really slowly :-)
Unfortunately, apart from this language practice, and once at work between Christmas and New Year's, I haven't had much practice lately. It looks like I'll have more of a chance in mid-January but I've been accelerating my efforts in other areas, with the goal, of course, of getting ready for a Goethe exam sometime soonish. This means I need to be intensify this area as well. I've been giving this a little thought and hope to come up with something soon.
Some other news - I finally did another lesson from Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand (Using German) - lesson 18 complete! I had decided not to do it anymore, but since my speaking practice has dropped off a bit, I figured I may as well do some more as a weak substitute. It's better than nothing! I think now that I've left it for so long I realise that I've been enjoying real world material more and it's probably more useful for building the vocabulary I really want. However, as a source of parallel translations with recordings all already prepared, it's hard to beat for the drive to work.
Oh yeah, and I realised the other day that I bought Lesetraining B2 in mid-March (got it early April I think?) and I hadn't even finished the first half of the book, which contains tests that get progressively harder in order to prepare you for the second half, which is the real practice tests. I'm not sure how much of a difference in difficulty there really is, but anyway, I recently finished all of Part A! That includes adding any vocab I didn't know to my Anki list. When I think back to how hard I found some of the first lessons, I realise that I've come a long way. Today at lunch I also did the first part of the first question in Part B. Got 5 out of 5, did it in 10 minutes (15 would be available in the exam), and added the roughly 10 words I either didn't know or just wasn't 100% sure about to my Anki list. I plan on using my time better to get through the rest of these sample questions before I've had the book for a year!
I suppose that's part of the reason why my posts have become less frequent (if that's possible). And with that, I'll sign off so I can continue to work on the first New Year's Resolution that I've made in a long time - to get to bed earlier. Not to sleep longer, no, but just to get to bed, maybe read for a few minutes first, and just generally live life a bit earlier in the day!
Tschau!
I scored at Christmas! My Austrian friends were getting a visit from their parents and so they had them bring over a couple of books for me - just some normal Bestseller, sold-in-airports types of books, but they're just what I've been looking for. The one I started on was from a German author from my old hometown (or rather, where I lived for 6 months) - Frankfurt am Main. It's called "Der Beobachter" by Charlotte Link. At 650 pages all, I have to admit that I found the prospect daunting. To be honest, I rarely read fiction books in English, and I'm hardly a super-fast reader as it is, but I've got through 60 odd pages already and I'm really enjoying it. There have only been one or two passages where the meaning was a little unclear to me. This is not to say there haven't been many words I haven't understood. There've been plenty! I intended to add unknown words to my Anki list, but so far I only managed to add those from the back and inside covers and the first couple of pages. It just takes a lot of time, and it's time I could be spending actually reading the book. Still, I should do it every now and then because words do pop up multiple times. Perhaps I'll make that my rule - if it pops up twice, and I don't know it, I'll write it down somewhere so I can add it to Anki later.
I also got another fat novel and two children's books in German as gifts from my parents for Christmas. I've really enjoyed reading the children's books to my daughter!
I did manage to keep studying German throughout the break too, despite working between Christmas and New Year's and the rest of the time mostly being about family things. I made sure I stayed on track with Anki as a minimum. I went to a BBQ with my wife and daughter to my Austrian friends' house and had a chance to talk to their visiting parents and sister. The parents spoke no English, so it was a good opportunity. They were lovely and I really enjoyed talking to them. They took a while to speak to me too much. They probably weren't sure how much I would understand. I had to remember too that Standard German (Hochdeutsch), which is pretty much all I understand, is just about no one's actual first language. If I hadn't been there, they would have been speaking "in dialect" as they put it. My friend's mother was really nice and, for the first hour or so at least, spoke to me really, really slowly :-)
Unfortunately, apart from this language practice, and once at work between Christmas and New Year's, I haven't had much practice lately. It looks like I'll have more of a chance in mid-January but I've been accelerating my efforts in other areas, with the goal, of course, of getting ready for a Goethe exam sometime soonish. This means I need to be intensify this area as well. I've been giving this a little thought and hope to come up with something soon.
Some other news - I finally did another lesson from Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand (Using German) - lesson 18 complete! I had decided not to do it anymore, but since my speaking practice has dropped off a bit, I figured I may as well do some more as a weak substitute. It's better than nothing! I think now that I've left it for so long I realise that I've been enjoying real world material more and it's probably more useful for building the vocabulary I really want. However, as a source of parallel translations with recordings all already prepared, it's hard to beat for the drive to work.
Oh yeah, and I realised the other day that I bought Lesetraining B2 in mid-March (got it early April I think?) and I hadn't even finished the first half of the book, which contains tests that get progressively harder in order to prepare you for the second half, which is the real practice tests. I'm not sure how much of a difference in difficulty there really is, but anyway, I recently finished all of Part A! That includes adding any vocab I didn't know to my Anki list. When I think back to how hard I found some of the first lessons, I realise that I've come a long way. Today at lunch I also did the first part of the first question in Part B. Got 5 out of 5, did it in 10 minutes (15 would be available in the exam), and added the roughly 10 words I either didn't know or just wasn't 100% sure about to my Anki list. I plan on using my time better to get through the rest of these sample questions before I've had the book for a year!
I suppose that's part of the reason why my posts have become less frequent (if that's possible). And with that, I'll sign off so I can continue to work on the first New Year's Resolution that I've made in a long time - to get to bed earlier. Not to sleep longer, no, but just to get to bed, maybe read for a few minutes first, and just generally live life a bit earlier in the day!
Tschau!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
How many words does an adult know?
I've been wondering this a little lately, so I thought I'd lay down some thoughts just briefly since it's really not the purpose of this blog.
To be honest, I'm not too hung up on the number of words I know in German, though I must admit I did get a little thrill when my own Anki list passed the 2,000 card mark! That's over 1,000 pairs of mappings from German to English. I say mappings because it's quite rare for my cards to be a 1-to-1 pairing. I map 1 to N words to 1 to N words. N is probably never bigger than four. This means that the number of words represented in these mapping pairs is a lot more than 1,000. Probably at least 2,000. And yet, that's not too important to me really. The most important thing for me is that I am adding new words all the time because then at least I know I'm growing my possible vocabulary. Like I've said before, sure, it's not all about words, but they are a massive part of the task, especially, I feel, at my intermediate stage, but it's probably true at any stage. It's the one thing you will always need to increase to become a fully literate, high-functioning individual in a foreign language.
I read a very interesting article recently:
http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html
The basic gist of it is that reading substantially enhances your vocabulary (in your own language) and that early differences in reading ability and word recognition are magnified throughout your life. Perhaps the same could be said of reading a foreign language?
It also makes this very interesting point which seems to me to also relate to language learning:
"Part of the reason is that it is not clear what it means to "know" a word. Speaking personally, there are some words I am much more familiar with than others.
Consider these words: WHITE, DOG, and HOME
And compare them to these words: CALLIOPE, FOP, and BRACHIAL"
For a brachial specialist, the answer would be different of course, but I agreed somewhat with his assessment. Perhaps "fop" is more familiar to me than to him, but really all that's going on in your brain is some very clever neural network processing (with time sequencing of course). This maps firings to other firings to other firings, and you have meaning. Items that fire frequently are reinforced (hence the name "reinforcement learning") and less frequent items degrade over time to some extent.
I feel this way about German. I can think in German at times, and it feels pretty much like thinking in English except that I get stuck on some concepts. English and German have started to differentiate themselves in my head so that switching between them can be slow. Sometimes I'll get stuck for a word and first have to think of the word in English before it comes to me in German, at which point I switch back. This feeling of switching is probably fairly normal at an intermediate stage. Although I can (sometimes!) hold a relatively long conversation in German, I still have a long way to go. I feel like I have internalised many words and structures so that, normally, I can produce correct sentences at normal speed without thinking *consciously* about them. The same goes for comprehending. However, both, in general, require my full focus. English does not require my full focus, though it is still hard to listen to details if I don't pay attention, of course!
In German, it feels like the main conscious effort is in maintaining that focus, that attention. It's tiring. No, it doesn't often come easy yet, but I feel it slowly changing over time.
I think the interesting point for me from the link above was that people who read have a larger vocabulary than people who don't. This may not be *universally* true, but it sounds pretty reasonable as an assumption. This has two corollaries for language learning: (1) If you want a large vocabulary in the language you're studying, you're going to need to read LOTS and (2) When you read in a language you're learning, you will likely encounter a lot more unknown words than in general conversation. I would say that this is all even more so for literature as opposed to just general websites.
Of course, you don't just want a large vocabulary. You need to comprehend native speech at full-speed and interact. To be able to do that, you need to practice that skill. It won't just appear by magic. You also need to understand incomplete input over noisy channels (telephones, radios, speech partner mumbling, etc). Again, this is an acquired skill through practice.
After all, you wouldn't expect to become a Chess Grandmaster by just watching lots of games being played, would you? And yet, Chess is a purely deterministic, mathematically simple problem (albeit one with a very, very large search space). Chess Grandmasters are made through study, practice, instruction and LOTS and LOTS of progressively harder practice.
Anyway, enough talking about practice - I'll get back to actually doing it :-) I'll give an update on what I've been up to lately in my next post...
To be honest, I'm not too hung up on the number of words I know in German, though I must admit I did get a little thrill when my own Anki list passed the 2,000 card mark! That's over 1,000 pairs of mappings from German to English. I say mappings because it's quite rare for my cards to be a 1-to-1 pairing. I map 1 to N words to 1 to N words. N is probably never bigger than four. This means that the number of words represented in these mapping pairs is a lot more than 1,000. Probably at least 2,000. And yet, that's not too important to me really. The most important thing for me is that I am adding new words all the time because then at least I know I'm growing my possible vocabulary. Like I've said before, sure, it's not all about words, but they are a massive part of the task, especially, I feel, at my intermediate stage, but it's probably true at any stage. It's the one thing you will always need to increase to become a fully literate, high-functioning individual in a foreign language.
I read a very interesting article recently:
http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html
The basic gist of it is that reading substantially enhances your vocabulary (in your own language) and that early differences in reading ability and word recognition are magnified throughout your life. Perhaps the same could be said of reading a foreign language?
It also makes this very interesting point which seems to me to also relate to language learning:
"Part of the reason is that it is not clear what it means to "know" a word. Speaking personally, there are some words I am much more familiar with than others.
Consider these words: WHITE, DOG, and HOME
And compare them to these words: CALLIOPE, FOP, and BRACHIAL"
For a brachial specialist, the answer would be different of course, but I agreed somewhat with his assessment. Perhaps "fop" is more familiar to me than to him, but really all that's going on in your brain is some very clever neural network processing (with time sequencing of course). This maps firings to other firings to other firings, and you have meaning. Items that fire frequently are reinforced (hence the name "reinforcement learning") and less frequent items degrade over time to some extent.
I feel this way about German. I can think in German at times, and it feels pretty much like thinking in English except that I get stuck on some concepts. English and German have started to differentiate themselves in my head so that switching between them can be slow. Sometimes I'll get stuck for a word and first have to think of the word in English before it comes to me in German, at which point I switch back. This feeling of switching is probably fairly normal at an intermediate stage. Although I can (sometimes!) hold a relatively long conversation in German, I still have a long way to go. I feel like I have internalised many words and structures so that, normally, I can produce correct sentences at normal speed without thinking *consciously* about them. The same goes for comprehending. However, both, in general, require my full focus. English does not require my full focus, though it is still hard to listen to details if I don't pay attention, of course!
In German, it feels like the main conscious effort is in maintaining that focus, that attention. It's tiring. No, it doesn't often come easy yet, but I feel it slowly changing over time.
I think the interesting point for me from the link above was that people who read have a larger vocabulary than people who don't. This may not be *universally* true, but it sounds pretty reasonable as an assumption. This has two corollaries for language learning: (1) If you want a large vocabulary in the language you're studying, you're going to need to read LOTS and (2) When you read in a language you're learning, you will likely encounter a lot more unknown words than in general conversation. I would say that this is all even more so for literature as opposed to just general websites.
Of course, you don't just want a large vocabulary. You need to comprehend native speech at full-speed and interact. To be able to do that, you need to practice that skill. It won't just appear by magic. You also need to understand incomplete input over noisy channels (telephones, radios, speech partner mumbling, etc). Again, this is an acquired skill through practice.
After all, you wouldn't expect to become a Chess Grandmaster by just watching lots of games being played, would you? And yet, Chess is a purely deterministic, mathematically simple problem (albeit one with a very, very large search space). Chess Grandmasters are made through study, practice, instruction and LOTS and LOTS of progressively harder practice.
Anyway, enough talking about practice - I'll get back to actually doing it :-) I'll give an update on what I've been up to lately in my next post...
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