Normally people wait until the New Year to make resolutions, but not me. Any time is a good time for a new plan.
Since I successfully completed the Goethe Zertifikat B2, I've been essentially cruising with my German. I did a few parallel translations to help tune my ear more for movie dialogues and although I had fun with those sections of dialogue (from Der Untergang and Mädchen Mädchen 2 in particular), I haven't done much focused work in this area. I've read several books since passing: Das Todeskreuz and Das Parfüm. I've watched some German movies, listened to and watched the German news, and very, very recently discovered that you can get high-quality video from ZDF TV in Germany! Haven't had much of a chance to watch this yet, but I've seen a cop show and Abernteur Forschung already and I'm really glad this is out there and available to watch from outside Germany. The last time I revealed such a source of German TV on this blog the station quickly disabled traffic from outside Germany so I'm really hoping they don't do that again this time!
And of course, I've chatted with my German-speaking friends about once a week which is as fun as ever.
This level of study was really on purpose. For starters, I passed my B2 exam just before learning that my mother had incurable lung cancer. Over the next year from that devastating news there was a lot of stress and personal stuff to deal with. My second daughter was born in that same year, just a few short months before my mother finally passed. That was almost a year ago now and, to be honest, I don't think I've even recovered from the shock of first hearing the news of the illness, let alone everything since.
For this year I initially decided to try something new - learning Chinese (but mainly as a spoken language) and Latin (but mainly as a written language). I thought that because of their different focuses I would be able to work on both just fine, but I actually found it reasonably hard to feel like I was making progress. I got halfway through both books in about 4 months which is actually quite a good effort, but I didn't keep up with making an anki deck like I had wanted to with both. It was just too time consuming, especially for Latin because I had to look up the conjugations. During this time I took on a spare-time programming project and, with 2 small children and a full-time job, this was just all too much. I hadn't planned on the programming project when I started the two languages, so who knows how the year would have turned out without this change of plans.
On the topic of Chinese, I recently borrowed a very old book from a library which shows in pictures along with descriptions the actual physical mechanics of tongue positions, breath force, etc, for every single Chinese sound. Although it may seem strange, there were a few Chinese sounds that I just wasn't able to really distinguish. I couldn't make the sounds distinct, and I couldn't hear the difference consistently. This was most clearly shown to me by the fact that pretty much every Chinese person I tried some phrases out on would look perplexed. I realise now that I was actually pronouncing a bunch of the sounds in the in-between position of English where I actually need to move my tongue to two different extremes to produce them. Since this has been a significant weakness whenever I've tried to speak Chinese, it feels good to finally be able to say something (though I've forgotten much of what I learnt!) and see that Chinese people are now able to understand me. Although I don't plan on actively taking up Chinese again at this stage, I will try to keep working on my pronunciation so that whenever I come back to it more intensively, I can at least start with being able to say the words somewhat properly!
So, with all that other stuff happening, I haven't really thought much again about the future, but recently I came to an important decision - to push on with German and to really try hard to get to a much more comfortable level. I'm currently holding steady at B2, and "advanced" starts at the next CEFR level in theory, so C1, but I've decided to just go the whole hog and aim for the C2 exam. This is to force me to over-prepare but when I get closer to the exam date (sometime in early 2015), I can decide whether I'm risking my money for nothing and choose the C1 exam. Of course, exams are all well and good, but the exam is just a goal to push me to work harder. What I would really like is that German becomes a part of my psyche and that I understand almost everything I hear of movies and the TV and, especially, that I speak German much better and much more frequently. I want to speak it comfortably.
How will I do that? Well, I'm open to suggestions! I'll go over my own ideas in future posts, but for now I want to end with a quick discussion on some possible materials to help me prepare. I would really like some help to pick good stuff because, as a solo learner, I will be relying on the materials I use to help cover those gaps of knowledge that a teacher in a class would probably focus on like crazy.
My first idea is to subscribe to the magazine "Deutsch Perfekt"(electronic version). At the moment the 12 month subscription comes with 6 1-hr audio downloads + workbooks. I have a sample of each (the magazine and the audio) and they seem pretty good. I like reading about Mitteleuropa and the articles come with glossaries which are very helpful. The audio seems reasonable too. Neither is "real" content, but they're both something which I feel helps cover the gaps in my book knowledge. They cover a lot of grammatical concepts entirely in German which is something I've been looking for (surprising though that may sound :-) ).
Speaking of which, there are lots of gaps, I'm sure! That's why I've been looking at a few books, but I'm not yet certain which to get (if any). The two main ones I'm considering are "Mit Erfolg Zum Goethe-Zertifikat C2" and "Fit Furs Goethe Zertifikat C2". I find it hard to pick between them, but I only want to choose one. If I collect too many, I'll start to feel like I'll never get through them all! If you've had any experience of either of these books (or ones in the same series) then please let us all know in the comments below! I'm also considering an extra grammar book because I feel that getting confident in this area will not only score me some easy points in any exam, but bring up my level of grammatical correctness in general conversations as I practice what I learn. That's the theory at least! I've found one call "C-Grammatik" that seems to have some positive reviews, but I'd like to know what the other options are.
Of course, I'll need to have fun too. Youtube and ZDF are great sources of German-language entertainment. I'll read the news on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung more often because it definitely requires a high level of German knowledge, as well as easier German news sites. But some of this isn't all that relaxing. Just recently I read the first Harry Potter book in English. I know, I'm a bit late to the party! I actually really enjoyed it, so I'll read some of the others too, but in order to expose myself to more German for the next year it will obviously have to be in German! So, I'll order "Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens" (the German title for the second book in the series: "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") sometime soon.
However, after picking a few of these purchases, I probably won't be buying anything else for the rest of the year. I'll have enough to focus on with these materials. And besides, I'm a cheapskate who hates spending money :-) In particular, I want to avoid getting a professional German teacher at any stage because, whether here in Australia, or online, German teachers are very expensive. I may break this rule later on next year as I near the target date and I think I could push on to C2 with just a bit of professional help, but I would want to have put in a very big effort myself first before even considering that.
The thing is, I'm entering uncharted territory here a bit. I mean, how many people living outside the country try to learn a language to C2 from B2 in their "spare" time? There's lots of information to get started in any language but I guess that once you get to B2 level you should know how to proceed from there, or you have some sort of teacher helping you. I have some ideas of how to proceed, but they are as yet untested. If you follow along for the next year or so you'll get to see the result at the other end and the process of getting there!
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