First let me recap briefly her approach and some of the key moments in her article. I think one quote right at the start of the article really sums up her path: "my husband in particular, enduring detailed descriptions of the irregular verbs I’m currently grappling with". Memorising verb tables? That way lies insanity.
Monica takes seemingly traditional German language classes although she is now on Zoom lessons. I'm not sure if that was a post-covid development, or if she has always used online lessons. I think one on one online lessons would always have been better than classroom language learning as you don't spend your time waiting for other people to produce incorrect sentences at a stage when you have no idea what's right or wrong. Either way, the style seems to be the same. Work with a teacher as you go through a traditional textbook for your level. Monica is also supplementing with Duolingo it seems.
The reason I'm so certain that it's a fairly traditional textbook is because of the incredibly slow pace and the attitude of Monica's German tutor. On the timeframe, she says "I take my language classes seriously, so when I started, I decided that five years was enough time to become fluent." Her actual chosen level for "fluency" is B2, which is the same one I chose many years ago. It's not "native like" fluency, but it is often considered (by those who have achieved it) to be the first level where you feel reasonably confident in saying that you "speak" the language. It was a level where I felt I could move to German and get a job in a German-speaking company and, within a short timeframe, feel relatively comfortable because I would mainly just need to acquire more work specific vocabulary as well as more day-to-day language. The B2 level is where you feel you've "acquired" the language. That is, you won't lose it just by not using it. Yes, you can forget vocabulary and be out of practice speaking, etc., but you can more easily get back up to the same level.
The B2 level is a platform for listening to a whole range of native content and enjoying it with a high level of comprehension, as well asc ertainly being the level where most native level content can easily serve as an in-context source of new vocabulary without the crutch of your native language. It's possible to achieve some of those skills earlier, of course, but by B2 you should be able to do these things to a reasonably useful degree. So, toi toi Monica! It was a good choice of goal and certainly plenty of time. I think perhaps this goal was too long in fact as it loses some of the sense of urgency that can bring with it momentum. This is so useful in language learning as you will forget almost as much as you learn over time.
With a solid goal in mind, and a timetable, Monica mentioned it to her tutor who, with stereotypical German directness and certainty, told her that her goal of reacing B2 by a certain date was, essentially, impossible. Worse, although Monica was plowing her way through a B1 textbook at the time (the first of two), her tutor seemed to agree that proficiency might be another 10+ years away! TEN YEARS! A DECADE! EIN JAHRZEHNTEN! ONE EIGHTH OF THE AVERAGE LIFESPAN! Well, to be fair on the tutor, it's unclear from the article if "proficiency" meant C2, or, indeed, if the word meant the same thing to Monica and her tutor. Even so, it seems crazy for someone who's willing to stay focussed on the language for that time. It's been almost 10 years since I passed my B2 exam and I haven't gone on to C1 or C2 yet. I have considered them recently, but I haven't really done the work required, other than reading Sten Nadolny's Weitlings Sommerfrischer. I even translated the first chapter into English and wrote to the publisher to see if they were interested in my translation. No response yet, but surely the English-speaking public is keen to see more works from the author of The Discovery of Slowness? But I digress... I think my main point is that if I had pushed on to get to C2 instead of doing very different things with my "spare" time for most of the intervening period, including studying other languages, I am pretty certain that it wouldn't have taken me 10 years to get that certificate!
https://twitter.com/monicadux/status/1456047563522539522 The distance between the levels is non-linear. Roughly, you could consider the difficulty between levels to double at each step. HOWEVER, there are some important caveats. First, it has to be recognised by anyone who has achieved a high level learning a language after childhood, especially outside an "immersion" environment where you're forced to live the language, that the traditional "classroom + textbook" route is a long, slow road. People do achieve fluency that way, but it's excruciatingly slow and exacting and often, as a result, those who have succeeded along this path and then become language teachers themselves will then have a view that language learning can only have the goal of the level of standardised grammatical perfection that they themselves have achieved, and the only realistic road to that goal is the one they followed.
I used the traditional route for all language learning before learning German. In particular, when I was about 19 I started doing French classes at Alliance Francaise in Sydney. I did their 8 levels of French (without doing any exams) and, at the end of that process, dutifully doing my homework and trying hard in class, I realised that I couldn't really read or speak French, so I took the last two levels again. It was the classic approach of attending classes once a week, following a textbook, trying to perfect one small "simple" area of grammar before moving on to the next, and doing homework exercises on those grammatical points. Sometimes you even learn some vocabulary! This got me to the stage of still not being able to speak, read much, nor understand native content. Looking back, I realise now that the whole approach is pretty terrible. I think the classes are OK - I personally enjoy that style of learning - but they must be supplemented by daily practice and vocabulary acquisition through either of a few different paths. In fact, as I learn with German, the "supplemental exercises" are actually the core. I would only go to a traditional language class now at an intermediate level to prepare for an exam or because I had a lot of spare time and money. Ditto for online tutoring, really. You don't really need it below upper-intermediate, in my opinion, and even then it's perhaps questionable.
Most future projects would be some variant on what worked best for me with German to get to the B2 exam within about 2 years from when I started, and including moving countries and having my first child, having a fulltime job and trying to maintain a "normal" life (as normal as a new parent's life can be). Those key points are listed in other posts on this blog, but I'll condense them here:
- Daily practice: at least a little every day. I wasn't perfect - life does get in the way - but it was a goal I stuck to fairly closely.
- Assimil's brilliant German with Ease (although I used an older edition). This book got me to a B2 level of grammar with strong intuition for "correct" forms. I used a form of shadowing. I would listen and repeat after the audio until I could keep up with the whole dialogue for all participants. At this stage, I had memorised the meaning as well (this is fairly easy - one or two quick reads of the English are generally enough). Only then would I go on to the next lesson. The exercises are unnecessary, indeed even anathema to the assimilation process.
- Anki . Absolutely amazing and indispensible. I went from thinking I was just hopeless at memorising vocabulary to rapidly acquiring and maintaining a solid vocabulary. Make sure you get the official app only - there are lots of rip-off versions floating about!
- Make friends with a conversation partner. I did this once I had reached I was about 80% of the way through German with Ease, IIRC.
- I made my own parallel translations as well of content that had audio. This was especially helpful for learning to comprehend the news at full speed which is a very relevant skill for passing a language exam.
(One thing to note is that the older version of German with Ease seems better than the latest, from what I've seen in the samples of the latest. I might write more on this later, but I can definitely recommend the older version that I used.)
I did other things as well, such as working through a single B2 exam prep book, as well as reading a German crime novel, and then recording all the unknown words and adding them to my Anki deck, but the above points are the main ones. In other, they were respectively the bedrock of grammar acquisition (including developing a "feel" for what's correct), vocabulary acquisition, developing speaking and conversational listening skills, and finally developing more formal, one-way listening skills.
What's important as a contrast with Monica's approach and my earlier attempt at French fluency is that I did essentially ZERO memorising of grammar rules or verb tables and I attended essentially ZERO traditional lessons. I never even owned or read a grammar to anything more than a passing glance, really. I did NOT follow specific levels in a textbook, except for the brilliantly progressive lessons in German with Ease which really did allow me to develop that elusive "feel" for how to form sentences correctly.
Sure, to progress to C2 I will definitely need to have more deliberate focus on more complex grammar. I think at this stage it's more efficient in terms of time to try to remember a few grammar rules to apply in rare occasions (though practice is still key!) rather than trying to assimilate these through real world examples as the examples are too rare to reinforce the lessons.
Now, after this long, rambling piece, I come to my suggestions for Monica:
- Develop a habit of daily practice. Do at least something small each day.
- I know you're already at B1 but try Assimil's German with Ease (I recommend older version). You can race through the early stuff, but remember to shadow the dialogues. Listen and repeat at full speed and with full comprehension (read the English text once when necessary) until you can repeat it without mistakes (while shadowing). Only then should you move on. DO NOT BOTHER DOING THE EXERCISES!
- You must get Anki. Start out perhaps with a pre-made list of "B2" level words. It won't be perfect, but it will help bootstrap your vocab to a great extent. At some stage you should be making your own list based on words you've gathered from your own sources.
- Find a conversation partner. You can try a language exchange. I've found the best conversation partners for a learner are those who themselves have struggled to learn a foreign language in their late teenage years or later. They understand your pain. Traditionally trained language tutors may not make good conversation partners.
- Ditch the current tutor/language school. They're slowing you down!
I talk about some of these in my post-mortem after having passed the B2 exam. This includes a description of how I make Anki cards so they're really useful (e.g., "sich um jdm kummern" not just "kummern", sometimes with irregular verb forms if I could be bothered looking them up, and nouns with their gender and plural always "der Mann/Männer" rather than just "Mann").
I hope this can help, or anyone in a similar situation as I was myself many years ago. Viel Glück!
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