I received a few comments directly after my last post (not sure why people are too shy to post comments here!) and I realise that its title and some of the content may have sounded unfair. That wasn't my intention really, and I've since read a follow-up post on Randy's Yearlyglot blog which just shows that I should probably have made my intention clearer.
Randy's post is a good one where he talks about the year not being a failure just because he won't reach his goal. I totally agree with him. In fact, I have to since I set myself the goal originally of passing the B2 exam in July of this year. I didn't hit that goal. I'm actually now considering just pushing on to do the C1 exam because that's where I would end my "academic" language goals, and I think that if I were to ever have a need for the qualification, the C1 level would be far more useful to me. In any case, I don't consider the time leading up to missing the goal a waste of time at all. Far from it! I've never been so confident and capable in a second language (not that I'm really good!) and that's all thanks to the goal I set myself. Even though the deadline has slipped, and I might move the goalposts on my self, the existence of the goal and the time spent heading towards it have all been very worthwhile. It really pushed me to do several things, mainly finding people to meet up with and chat to in German and I've made some great friends as a result. I didn't start having regular conversations (and I mean, just once a week) until about 4-6 weeks before I had originally planned to do the exam, and that wasn't anywhere near early enough. If I were to start again, I would get my shit together much earlier.
I still consider the method that was employed by Randy to have been less successful than it could have been, and as such the experiment, under the conditions it was done, was a sort of failure. The most important thing is that he had goals, and the goals pushed him to succeed. In terms of learning language (as opposed to experimenting with a method) he didn't fail and he didn't waste his time. It just reinforces to me the importance, above just about anything else, of having a goal.
As for an update for what I've been doing lately. Well, keeping up with my Anki, of course, and listening to German podcasts of course, and trying to find the time to read a German grammar book called "Modern German Grammar - A Practical Guide" (going cheap here for Aussies - maybe even cheaper than other people can get it from their local Amazon). I've borrowed it rather than bought it because I'm really trying to keep the costs of this exercise down (to as close to zero as possible!). It seems like a really good reference and is full of examples. I am actually reading it from cover-to-cover and that's far more enjoyable than it sounds! I don't expect to remember every little rule, or edge case, or even the big things. Right now I just want to get a sense for when there might be something to check or explore later. I'm currently up to about page 90 although I also read the 20 or so pages at the end entitled "Communication Strategies" which is really useful. So useful that I think I should review it on a semi-regular basis and do my best to absorb more of it all the time.
I'm still speaking German in person once a week, and last night I got the chance to watch an old favourite movie (Wargames) on a DVD that has a German language soundtrack and subtitles. I started off with both on, and then switched the subtitles off because they were just completely different. There was hardly even the smallest of exchanges that was the same in both the dubbing and the subtitles. Pretty funny :-) I hope to do some more of this. After looking through all my DVDs, I found about 15 in total that have at least German subtitles, and actually most of those also have German audio (it's not a common language to find in subtitles actually).
On a sort of language learning note, I've been chatting online with a french couple who've come to Australia for three months. One of them needs to pass the OET (an English language test for medical professionals) and so they're looking to meet up with people to practice English. In a sort of "pay it forward" sense, I've decided to return the kindness shown to me in my German studies (amongst other things!) by my new Austrian friends by doing the same favour for this new couple and helping to correct some English texts for them.
Bis zum nächsten Mal!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Language learning experiments that have failed...
I read something recently that made me think about how much advice there is floating from people on the internet and how often it is untested. Sometimes people put their results out there for you to assess yourself and make your own judgement. Benny the Irish Polyglot is generally one of these. I thought his results in Hungarian and Dutch were particularly impressive and demonstrated his point. Whether or not you choose to call what he achieved "fluency", he was interacting with people and using the language much, much better than most people who study languages more formally and stay forever at the "beginner" level, at least in speaking. I was one of those with French, but I think I read Benny's advice in time to stop my German getting stuck in the same rut.
On the other hand, Benny also puts up his results when they're not so good - Tagalog and Turkish being two examples I can think of.
There might be something about Turkish that drags these language learning experiments down, because it seems that Yearlyglot, who had a great year in 2010 learning Italian, has decided to call it quits in 2011 after having tried to learn Turkish. It's a shame because he was always good for a laugh - not usually intentionally, but still. His experiment for Turkish was to not use any language learning materials at all. None, that is, apart from normal content in Turkish. It was an interesting concept, but I have to admit to feeling that my Assimil "German With Ease" and Anki wordlists have given me a kickstart to comprehension and production that is hard to beat. Being presented with tonnes of content you don't understand at all can be a little useless to you. The experiment seemed to involve complicated contorsions to avoid just looking up words, or even basic concepts. The experiment never finished, so it's hard to draw conclusions, but Randy admitted to making slow progress even in the first six months before he started a new job. This really just bears out the way it felt to me - it was a very interesting idea, and I was keen to see the results, but I was glad I wasn't the one trying it! It felt like the kind of painstaking research a linguist does on an as-yet undescribed language. Sometimes it's just quicker to look up an answer!
And I think it's wrong to claim, as many do, that looking up the answers is useless or produces completely inferior results. I started my Anki studies with a wordlist I downloaded (I have since been creating my own and reviewing that every day as well). There have been problems with that wordlist - sometimes I've used a word incorrectly because the card I learnt off was wrong - but those problems were far outweighed by the number of times I learnt a word from a card, never having seen or heard it before, and then I've later been listening to a podcast and recognised the word and thereby unravelled the sentence. To my mind, we all say we're time poor (I have a full time job, a young family, a large and socially active extended family and circle of friends, and an old house which we're always doing something to) and the fact is that languages are made up of LOTS and LOTS of words. Sure, they're more than just words, but that's a big part of them. I say, learn words however you can. If you find you've been mistaken about a word, correct it in your memory however best works for you (I update my Anki list :-) ) and move on. You WILL be mistaken, about MANY words. The goal is to have a pretty solid command of most of the words in a decent sized vocabulary (you can see I'm no longer too hung up on perfectionism!). Perfect is not an option.
Which reminds me of another language learning experiment that I feel demonstrates a technique to avoid rather than emulate, but many people still want to believe in over on "Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning". This one was to not say a word of Chinese while just listening to it (and watching it) for 2,000 hours. People's opinion on the value of the progress made, as demonstrated in the test with Friedemann, has varied widely. To my mind it seems pretty much exactly like what I would expect from someone who studied Chinese with Ease up to level 64 and then did nothing with the language for several years... But then, I don't speak Chinese at all, so I have to admit that I don't have much basis to be objective :-)
And just to be clear, Keith seems like a nice guy, and he's given this experiment a solid shot. I say, good on him! I was interested to read some of what he had to say and to see some of the results. I'm not saying to avoid hearing the language at natural, full speed. No way! Don't avoid it - embrace it from day one! I'm just saying that you're not likely to make much progress if that's ALL you do. Anyway, it was another experiment I was glad I didn't have to do...
I think one of the things that let this experiment down was that it didn't really have any specific goals, which was not a problem for Randy at Yearlyglot with his Turkish challenge. As I looked through his goal list, I realised that I had reached many of them by the 1 year mark myself. I hadn't tried to watch too many movies in German without the subtitles, so I'm not sure how it would have gone. Then again, I hadn't started really speaking much German regularly until after 12 months of learning. It sounds crazy to me now when I think about it. I did have a conversation all in German for about an hour within the 12 month mark (maybe the 8 or 9 month mark?), and since I started having regular conversations (probably averaging roughly 1.5 hours per week over the last 5+ months) my comprehension, production and just general comfort with German has increased dramatically, and the one movie I watched without subtitles, I understood pretty well. Randy's goals are better than mine because there are several to tick off along the way. I only have one - to pass the B2 exam, and I never broke that down into smaller milestones. If I had, my goals might have been similar to Randy's, and I also might have come up with a more realistic deadline, given my available time...
What's my point in all this? Well, there's a lot of advice out there. You need to sort through it for yourself. Personally, I don't think there's any magic bullet. The biggest "secret" I've discovered so far is that you need to do something every day. The two things I always make sure I get done whenever physically possible (so, not when I've gone off for a 3 day camping trip) is to review my Anki lists and listen to German (general news, science news, reportage, whatever I can find that interests me). My Anki lists aren't massive like many people's. I don't focus on their size, or how many items I've added today, or really too many of the numbers, I haven't worked out how much I've spoken in conversations, or how many hours I've spent listening to it (though I'm sure it's lots by now, considering it's what I usually listen to while commuting), but I am certain that doing something every day (reviewing Anki lists in particular) has been great for my conversational confidence and speed.
I think anyone who's struggling to make progress needs to consider doing something similar... Along with, of course, having conversations in your target language on a regular basis!
On the other hand, Benny also puts up his results when they're not so good - Tagalog and Turkish being two examples I can think of.
There might be something about Turkish that drags these language learning experiments down, because it seems that Yearlyglot, who had a great year in 2010 learning Italian, has decided to call it quits in 2011 after having tried to learn Turkish. It's a shame because he was always good for a laugh - not usually intentionally, but still. His experiment for Turkish was to not use any language learning materials at all. None, that is, apart from normal content in Turkish. It was an interesting concept, but I have to admit to feeling that my Assimil "German With Ease" and Anki wordlists have given me a kickstart to comprehension and production that is hard to beat. Being presented with tonnes of content you don't understand at all can be a little useless to you. The experiment seemed to involve complicated contorsions to avoid just looking up words, or even basic concepts. The experiment never finished, so it's hard to draw conclusions, but Randy admitted to making slow progress even in the first six months before he started a new job. This really just bears out the way it felt to me - it was a very interesting idea, and I was keen to see the results, but I was glad I wasn't the one trying it! It felt like the kind of painstaking research a linguist does on an as-yet undescribed language. Sometimes it's just quicker to look up an answer!
And I think it's wrong to claim, as many do, that looking up the answers is useless or produces completely inferior results. I started my Anki studies with a wordlist I downloaded (I have since been creating my own and reviewing that every day as well). There have been problems with that wordlist - sometimes I've used a word incorrectly because the card I learnt off was wrong - but those problems were far outweighed by the number of times I learnt a word from a card, never having seen or heard it before, and then I've later been listening to a podcast and recognised the word and thereby unravelled the sentence. To my mind, we all say we're time poor (I have a full time job, a young family, a large and socially active extended family and circle of friends, and an old house which we're always doing something to) and the fact is that languages are made up of LOTS and LOTS of words. Sure, they're more than just words, but that's a big part of them. I say, learn words however you can. If you find you've been mistaken about a word, correct it in your memory however best works for you (I update my Anki list :-) ) and move on. You WILL be mistaken, about MANY words. The goal is to have a pretty solid command of most of the words in a decent sized vocabulary (you can see I'm no longer too hung up on perfectionism!). Perfect is not an option.
Which reminds me of another language learning experiment that I feel demonstrates a technique to avoid rather than emulate, but many people still want to believe in over on "Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning". This one was to not say a word of Chinese while just listening to it (and watching it) for 2,000 hours. People's opinion on the value of the progress made, as demonstrated in the test with Friedemann, has varied widely. To my mind it seems pretty much exactly like what I would expect from someone who studied Chinese with Ease up to level 64 and then did nothing with the language for several years... But then, I don't speak Chinese at all, so I have to admit that I don't have much basis to be objective :-)
And just to be clear, Keith seems like a nice guy, and he's given this experiment a solid shot. I say, good on him! I was interested to read some of what he had to say and to see some of the results. I'm not saying to avoid hearing the language at natural, full speed. No way! Don't avoid it - embrace it from day one! I'm just saying that you're not likely to make much progress if that's ALL you do. Anyway, it was another experiment I was glad I didn't have to do...
I think one of the things that let this experiment down was that it didn't really have any specific goals, which was not a problem for Randy at Yearlyglot with his Turkish challenge. As I looked through his goal list, I realised that I had reached many of them by the 1 year mark myself. I hadn't tried to watch too many movies in German without the subtitles, so I'm not sure how it would have gone. Then again, I hadn't started really speaking much German regularly until after 12 months of learning. It sounds crazy to me now when I think about it. I did have a conversation all in German for about an hour within the 12 month mark (maybe the 8 or 9 month mark?), and since I started having regular conversations (probably averaging roughly 1.5 hours per week over the last 5+ months) my comprehension, production and just general comfort with German has increased dramatically, and the one movie I watched without subtitles, I understood pretty well. Randy's goals are better than mine because there are several to tick off along the way. I only have one - to pass the B2 exam, and I never broke that down into smaller milestones. If I had, my goals might have been similar to Randy's, and I also might have come up with a more realistic deadline, given my available time...
What's my point in all this? Well, there's a lot of advice out there. You need to sort through it for yourself. Personally, I don't think there's any magic bullet. The biggest "secret" I've discovered so far is that you need to do something every day. The two things I always make sure I get done whenever physically possible (so, not when I've gone off for a 3 day camping trip) is to review my Anki lists and listen to German (general news, science news, reportage, whatever I can find that interests me). My Anki lists aren't massive like many people's. I don't focus on their size, or how many items I've added today, or really too many of the numbers, I haven't worked out how much I've spoken in conversations, or how many hours I've spent listening to it (though I'm sure it's lots by now, considering it's what I usually listen to while commuting), but I am certain that doing something every day (reviewing Anki lists in particular) has been great for my conversational confidence and speed.
I think anyone who's struggling to make progress needs to consider doing something similar... Along with, of course, having conversations in your target language on a regular basis!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Some business conversation and letter writing tips...
I just thought I would check out what the practice material for the Goethe exam ... looks like and I found this leaflet on their website:
http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prf/pro/hdb/Pruefungsziele_Testbeschreibung_PWD.pdf
I've only had a really quick scan through it, but I noticed that, starting on page 31, they have a bunch of mini tips for formal letter writing, making business presentations and conversational tips for agreeing and disagreeing. I'm sure they're all reasonably formal, but still, worth reading. Conversational strategies (Gesprächsstrategien) start on page 37 and have advice on what to say when you're not sure you've understood correctly, how to agree/disagree, etc.
Have fun!
http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prf/pro/hdb/Pruefungsziele_Testbeschreibung_PWD.pdf
I've only had a really quick scan through it, but I noticed that, starting on page 31, they have a bunch of mini tips for formal letter writing, making business presentations and conversational tips for agreeing and disagreeing. I'm sure they're all reasonably formal, but still, worth reading. Conversational strategies (Gesprächsstrategien) start on page 37 and have advice on what to say when you're not sure you've understood correctly, how to agree/disagree, etc.
Have fun!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
German letter writing tips
Just found these when I was looking for help with writing a formal letter to cancel a phone contract in Germany. I plan on doing something I wouldn't have dreamed off while I actually lived there - I'm going to do the whole thing myself in German. Anyway, here's the resource which had a few good tips:
http://www.oxfordlanguagedictionaries.com/Public/PublicResources.html?direction=b-de-en&sp=S/oldo/resources/de/Writing_Letters_in_German.html
Looks like they've got one or two other German resources which I'll check out when I get some spare time. To their informal ways of signing a letter, I would add "(ganz) liebe Grüße" or just "Lg" as this is the way all my German speaking friends sign off in their letters. They are all Austrian, so perhaps this is a southern German thing.
Just one final note - today I did the online Goethe B2 test's written practice where you need to correct the mistakes in someone else's letter and got 8 out of 10. I plan on doing the writing practice questions in this section soon and asking my friends to make comments. Hopefully constructive ones!
Oh, and one really final thing - bad news on the speaking practice front. One of my Austrian friends will be too busy until mid-January to meet up so I'll need to keep up my practice with my workmate and also use the time to do more written type practice, which I also sorely need anyway...
I do think this should be the impetus for finding a new practice partner at my work - I'll reach out again and see what happens!
http://www.oxfordlanguagedictionaries.com/Public/PublicResources.html?direction=b-de-en&sp=S/oldo/resources/de/Writing_Letters_in_German.html
Looks like they've got one or two other German resources which I'll check out when I get some spare time. To their informal ways of signing a letter, I would add "(ganz) liebe Grüße" or just "Lg" as this is the way all my German speaking friends sign off in their letters. They are all Austrian, so perhaps this is a southern German thing.
Just one final note - today I did the online Goethe B2 test's written practice where you need to correct the mistakes in someone else's letter and got 8 out of 10. I plan on doing the writing practice questions in this section soon and asking my friends to make comments. Hopefully constructive ones!
Oh, and one really final thing - bad news on the speaking practice front. One of my Austrian friends will be too busy until mid-January to meet up so I'll need to keep up my practice with my workmate and also use the time to do more written type practice, which I also sorely need anyway...
I do think this should be the impetus for finding a new practice partner at my work - I'll reach out again and see what happens!
Friday, November 25, 2011
Goethe Zertifikat B2 Hörverstehen looking good!
In my last post I mentioned that I had tried Aufgabe 1 from the online Goethe Zertifikat B2 Hörverstehen test and I got 8 out of 10. I only listened to the audio once as per test conditions, so I was pretty happy. Today I did Aufgabe 2. I relistened to two of the segments. I understood them reasonably well, but I just wasn't able to figure out the right answer. I guess you could say that means I'm still not 100% there, and I would totally agree with that :-) Anyway, given that I listened twice to some segments (whereas in the real exam you would hear the whole thing once, and then each segment only once) I did at least get a good score: 13.5 out of 15 (that means 9 correct out of 10 questions). Ironically the only question I got wrong is one I changed after listening to the audio a second time. Let that be a lesson to me!
bis zum nächsten Mal!
bis zum nächsten Mal!
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Grüße aus Deutschland!
Just a small post which I've meant to do previously. The Goethe Institut did a series a while ago under this name. It is targetted at A2->B1 level but I often find the interviews hard to understand, and although it seems targetted at high school language learners, I find the tweeness amusing and the format quite useful. Anyway, you can find all the text and audio here:
http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prj/gad/deindex.htm?wt_sc=gad
However, since they are not producing any new episodes, the RSS feed is no longer advertised, but after writing to the person responsible I was told that the feed is still available, so I figured I'd pass it on in case anyone else ever wanted it. I personally find it easier to use the podcast version since it just means selecting a different podcast within the same application on my phone as I drive home, and I could grab the whole lot at once without any fuss. You can find the RSS feed at:
http://media.goethe.de/
On a sidenote, just for the record, I did the first audio exercise in the online B2 sample exam from the Goethe Institut just a short while ago and got 8 out of 10. I lost 2 points on a question which required me to listen to a name being spelled out. I heard the name and immediately wrote out the spelling I thought it would be and so didn't pay proper attention to the actual spelling given. The mistake I made was to write a "v" instead of a "w" which is the sort of mistake I could make under pressure even if I was paying attention, so I'm glad I did the practice test!
http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prj/gad/deindex.htm?wt_sc=gad
However, since they are not producing any new episodes, the RSS feed is no longer advertised, but after writing to the person responsible I was told that the feed is still available, so I figured I'd pass it on in case anyone else ever wanted it. I personally find it easier to use the podcast version since it just means selecting a different podcast within the same application on my phone as I drive home, and I could grab the whole lot at once without any fuss. You can find the RSS feed at:
http://media.goethe.de/
On a sidenote, just for the record, I did the first audio exercise in the online B2 sample exam from the Goethe Institut just a short while ago and got 8 out of 10. I lost 2 points on a question which required me to listen to a name being spelled out. I heard the name and immediately wrote out the spelling I thought it would be and so didn't pay proper attention to the actual spelling given. The mistake I made was to write a "v" instead of a "w" which is the sort of mistake I could make under pressure even if I was paying attention, so I'm glad I did the practice test!
Some movies, some fairy tales, and some grammar drills...
Sorry the updates have been slow. I've been busy with a whole bunch of things, including a new job and renovations to my house.
The title says it all... Well, some of it. I've watched some (well, three) movies in German recently. Two had subtitles (The Downfall and Das Boot) and one didn't (Nowhere in Africa). It was cool to finally see that famous scene with correct subtitles. It's a brillilantly acted movie and really well put together. "Nowhere in Africa" (Nirgendwo in Afrika) had no subtitles which actually worked great while they were speaking German, but a good, solid third of the movie is in Swahili. Not having subtitles made these sections somewhat tricky to follow :-|
That was all a while ago now - maybe more than a month. I really should find some more to watch and get back into it, since it's something I really enjoyed. I've come to the conclusion that watching the movies without (English) subtitles is the best way to go because I can't stop myself reading them if they're available and they make my thought process switch back to English which breaks my flow of understanding.
After watching these movies, I went through my collection of DVDs for movies and TV shows and discovered that several of them offer either German subtitles or German language soundtracks, or both (some classic Monty Python movies and Fawlty Towers being amongst them). I don't know why it took me so long to think of this as a source of German content, but now that I have found them, and when I move back into my house (in a few weeks - after the renovations) I will find the time to watch some of them.
I still listen to German every day - downloaded podcasts mainly of the general news, and lots science news as well. And when I don't feel like doing that, I listen to Rammstein or Unheilig of course! One important thing to note is that you really need to concentrate to make this time worthwhile. The audio must have your attention, otherwise it's doing nothing.
As for fairy tales, well, my daughter was given a beautiful German-language edition of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales and I've been reading them to her every few nights. She really seems to enjoy it which is pretty cool. I've also had a sneaky read of a few on my own. By and large, I understand them very well, but there is some unusual and old-fashioned language in fairy tales which, coupled with my only intermediate German, means that I don't understand every word, but I always understand every story pretty well and sometimes pretty much perfectly. Reassuring, since they're targetted at little kids!
As for grammar drills, I've worked through a few more questions in Lesetraining B2 (in fact, I just finished Aufgabe 4, question 4 and got 10/10 during my lunch break today and added some new words to my Anki list) as well as grammar drills from "German Grammar Drills". I don't consider this necessary for speaking confidently in the language at an early stage, but it's certainly helpful for polishing off the (very) rough edges and pretty much vital in preparing for the exam itself. I actually feel like my speaking has become more flowing as a result, probably because I feel more confident that I have reduced my more obvious errors. If you're at an intermediate level and haven't done much in the way of grammar drills so far, I highly recommend doing so.
One important change in the last one or two weeks is that I've been adding vocabulary at least every few days to my Anki list. To increase my vocabulary I really need to be learning new words every day. Sounds obvious, but unless I'm making a conscious effort to add new words to my Anki list, I'm really only in a holding pattern. However, when I do make this effort and get the words into my Anki list, I only have to make sure that I do the list every day to make sure I'm learning the new words properly and maintaining old words. New words come from everywhere - Lesetraining B2, Deutsche Welle articles, Der Spiegel, from podcasts or the SBS radio program. Speaking of Der Spiegel, if you're an intermediate learner I highly recommend it. I've been finding that I understand most of the vocabulary in the articles and can figure out most of the rest fairly easily. For some reason, I don't find all Deutsche Welle articles as easy to understand as the one that was the subject of my last post, but most Der Spiegel articles present few problems. And, of course, when I have the opportunity, I add unknown words to my Anki list.
And no, I haven't yet decided on when I'll do the B2 exam *sigh*. I should finish my preparatory books first I think at a minimum before I fork out the $230!
The title says it all... Well, some of it. I've watched some (well, three) movies in German recently. Two had subtitles (The Downfall and Das Boot) and one didn't (Nowhere in Africa). It was cool to finally see that famous scene with correct subtitles. It's a brillilantly acted movie and really well put together. "Nowhere in Africa" (Nirgendwo in Afrika) had no subtitles which actually worked great while they were speaking German, but a good, solid third of the movie is in Swahili. Not having subtitles made these sections somewhat tricky to follow :-|
That was all a while ago now - maybe more than a month. I really should find some more to watch and get back into it, since it's something I really enjoyed. I've come to the conclusion that watching the movies without (English) subtitles is the best way to go because I can't stop myself reading them if they're available and they make my thought process switch back to English which breaks my flow of understanding.
After watching these movies, I went through my collection of DVDs for movies and TV shows and discovered that several of them offer either German subtitles or German language soundtracks, or both (some classic Monty Python movies and Fawlty Towers being amongst them). I don't know why it took me so long to think of this as a source of German content, but now that I have found them, and when I move back into my house (in a few weeks - after the renovations) I will find the time to watch some of them.
I still listen to German every day - downloaded podcasts mainly of the general news, and lots science news as well. And when I don't feel like doing that, I listen to Rammstein or Unheilig of course! One important thing to note is that you really need to concentrate to make this time worthwhile. The audio must have your attention, otherwise it's doing nothing.
As for fairy tales, well, my daughter was given a beautiful German-language edition of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales and I've been reading them to her every few nights. She really seems to enjoy it which is pretty cool. I've also had a sneaky read of a few on my own. By and large, I understand them very well, but there is some unusual and old-fashioned language in fairy tales which, coupled with my only intermediate German, means that I don't understand every word, but I always understand every story pretty well and sometimes pretty much perfectly. Reassuring, since they're targetted at little kids!
As for grammar drills, I've worked through a few more questions in Lesetraining B2 (in fact, I just finished Aufgabe 4, question 4 and got 10/10 during my lunch break today and added some new words to my Anki list) as well as grammar drills from "German Grammar Drills". I don't consider this necessary for speaking confidently in the language at an early stage, but it's certainly helpful for polishing off the (very) rough edges and pretty much vital in preparing for the exam itself. I actually feel like my speaking has become more flowing as a result, probably because I feel more confident that I have reduced my more obvious errors. If you're at an intermediate level and haven't done much in the way of grammar drills so far, I highly recommend doing so.
One important change in the last one or two weeks is that I've been adding vocabulary at least every few days to my Anki list. To increase my vocabulary I really need to be learning new words every day. Sounds obvious, but unless I'm making a conscious effort to add new words to my Anki list, I'm really only in a holding pattern. However, when I do make this effort and get the words into my Anki list, I only have to make sure that I do the list every day to make sure I'm learning the new words properly and maintaining old words. New words come from everywhere - Lesetraining B2, Deutsche Welle articles, Der Spiegel, from podcasts or the SBS radio program. Speaking of Der Spiegel, if you're an intermediate learner I highly recommend it. I've been finding that I understand most of the vocabulary in the articles and can figure out most of the rest fairly easily. For some reason, I don't find all Deutsche Welle articles as easy to understand as the one that was the subject of my last post, but most Der Spiegel articles present few problems. And, of course, when I have the opportunity, I add unknown words to my Anki list.
And no, I haven't yet decided on when I'll do the B2 exam *sigh*. I should finish my preparatory books first I think at a minimum before I fork out the $230!
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