So my slight malaise in German learning that I had to push myself through is lifting a bit. I've finished Assimil lesson 95 (passive) and lesson 46 (active). 95 is a good number, but 100 will be even better. My god, it's already March and I still haven't finished all the passive lessons!
Crazy laziness I say :-)
Not to worry. I feel like I'm making progress, and that's a good feeling...
I've been listening to the radio (Deutsche Welle) a lot more in the last few days too. During the day at work I listened to it for about half the day yesterday and today (the other half of those days was spent recharging my battery, which is particularly badly drained by listening to internet radio over wireless). I've even discovered that I can keep listening to the radio even when I walk into the bathroom, though it cuts out eventually. How's that for efficiency!
I haven't done any measurements, but it's feeling less and less like a foreign language. I usually understand the presenters reasonably well. At least, I hardly ever have a situation where I have no idea what they're talking about. Listening to it regularly helps - I've been keeping up to date with the German news stories lately - for example, the resignation of the Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. It was a lot easier to know what they were banging on about when he finally resigned and they went out into the streets to ask people what they thought. By the way, it might have just been my own opinion colouring my interpretation of what they said, but I think most people they interviewed on the street thought something similar to me - that it shows that he's possibly a dishonest person and in any case he probably should have left sooner.
I still don't have a plan with mini steps/goals in it in order to achieve my July goal of passing the B2 exam at the Goethe Institute. Nothing well thought out, anyway. One current "goal" is to make a few german friends in my local area and so be able to speak a lot more German. Just last night I made an approach to a couple on CouchSurfing who specifically mention in their "Teach/Learn/Share" section "Teach: German, Learn: English" which is cool. There are plenty of German-speakers near where I live on CouchSurfing, but I'm trying to be a bit selective. My point is not just to find someone to practice speaking German with. I've tried that before with French, and my penpal and I didn't have much to talk about really. I want to make German-speaking friends. It's important that we will want to do things together, because I'm married and have a young family, so I don't have a limitless supply of time in which to just meet up with random people. Fingers-crossed that they will get back to me soon.
Considering that my other main goal this year is getting back into shape (to make up for doing nothing last year due to freezing weather in Germany, and the birth of my first child), and that I have limited time available to be away from my family, I would really like to find a German-speaker who is also looking for a running partner. Perhaps unlikely, but I can dream...
One thing I plan on posting soon is a brief overview/review of the good work from Benny the Irish Polyglot. Clearly, since no one is reading this blog, I can safely say that the purpose is just to provide a summary of his main advice so far to help me organise it in my head. His main points are pretty simple, so it won't be a very long post I imagine.
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