OK, so this isn't going to be anything so dramatic as an open letter... But still, what's up with all the hillbilly music on Deutsche Welle Radio these days? I started listening to them about 3 months ago, but as far as I can remember it didn't use to have so much filler music... Or is it my imagination? Perhaps in the early days I was glad to have a break from a stream of speech I was having difficulty understanding... Maybe I was listening to it at different times.
I'm not sure, but last night while listening to "Das Magazin" I swear about half of the time was dodgy music. Not even any lyrics to help me with my German. Just filler music. Very strange, and somewhat irritating...
Then again, I'm getting it for free, so how can I really complain? :-)
Speaking of free resources, here's a bunch I've been using, or have stumbled across, as I aim for my goal of passing the Goethe-Zertifikat-B2. I've been meaning to put together this list for a while, which adds to my earlier post of translation tools. These are in no particular order, and they haven't been selected for any particular reason, other than that I've read them sometime in the past and liked them:
* Deutsche Welle: Plenty of articles here. Especially good is the Learning German section, which has stories with glossaries, the slowly-spoken news, and the telenovela "Jojo sucht das Glück" in which the actors speak very fast and very abbreviated. Good listening practice for the "real-world".
* Goethe-Institut Exams Page: Click around here and you will find several example exam questions - for all levels of exams. Downloadable and online. Here is an online B2 sample exam, and here is the B2 samples download page. Of course, you can't practice your speaking online, and you have to try to check your own written composition, but it's better than nothing. Use real people to practice speaking and listening!
* Slow German: As mentioned before - short, clear texts with downloadable audio for free.
* Australien-Blogger: A German speaker living in Melbourne, Australia and blogging about Australia and its culture. It's aimed at German-speakers, but people familiar with the topics he's blogging about (I guess that would mainly be Australians :-) ) will find it an interesting resource for learning German.
* Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: A very highbrow newspaper, but it's worth stretching for the quality of analysis available. On an unrelated rant, european newspapers like FAZ and Le Monde put to shame the poor level of analysis and bias that seems to characterise English-speaking media (and Australian media in particular). End of rant...
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in German! "Die galaktische Geschichte ist ein bißchen durcheinandergeraten". It seems to be just as witty in German as it was in English. I have no idea about the copyright, etc, of the material, so caveat lector. RIP Douglas Adams...
I'm actually very lucky to be learning German. There is so much out there that's helpful. There's a lot of helpful information in a lot of languages, of course, but probably the best, and most easily accessible, is in the big languages. For comparison, a quick look into a much smaller european language, Maltese, reveals that learning it would be much harder. My Nokia Internet Radio app on my N97 doesn't find any maltese internet radio stations when I do a search (though I'm sure they exist) and, although Google Translate advertises that it can handle Maltese, I asked it to translated a pretty easy sentence - "I love you". The translation? "I love you." Hmmm... Suspicious. In this case I know what it should be ("inhobok", if you're curious), but this indicates to me that it might be generally a bit useless. It would seem that finding native speakers for smaller languages (which, in itself, would often be more difficult) might actually be even more essential.
****
My diary update - I'm just finishing up Lesson 7 (review lesson) in Perfectionnement Allemand, about 1 week after I planned to finish lesson 6. My rate is as slow as ever :-) I've been keeping up with the Anki reviews for the most part. I did manage to get all the words from Aufgabe 3 into my Anki list, but I didn't do Aufgabe 4. Today I am starting on this Goethe-Zertifikat-B2 sample to see how I'm travelling. Still a lot more work to do I would say, but I've got to get an idea.
As for the rained-out BBQ-turned-cafe lunch, it was a bit of a wash out in terms of German practice. There were 7 people there, 4 of whom only spoke English, a 5th was my daughter who doesn't speak anything at all yet :-), and then my two Austrian friends. Because of the setting of being around a table, the opportunity to start speaking in German really didn't present itself - it would have excluded most of the table. So, damn :-) As we were leaving one of my Austrian friends said "and next time we will have to practice German more". Absolutely!
On the plus side, it looks like I might be able to set up some more extended practice periods in German starting mid to late June with one of my Austrian friends. I think, considering that my exam should be booked in by around then, I will do whatever I can to take advantage of this offer. Once again I am struck by how generous and helpful people have been with my German learning...
Anyone with some more helpful sites for learning German - feel free to post them in the comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment