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!