I had been planning on writing up a brief summary of the key points in the method advocated over at Fluent in 3 Months. From what I've read on his website, Benny wouldn't like it to be called a method, nor does he say it's the only way to go, but just think of it as a convenient label for the little pearls of wisdom on display at his site.
In any case, here's a time where I'm glad I procrastinated, because he's just written a nice little summary himself. I highly recommend reading it, and the links therein. And if you have time, go through the whole site, especially the older stuff which I sort of prefer, for some reason.
I know a lot of what he writes is a bit cheesy but for some reason I can't help but like the guy :-) I think it's because he seems quite genuine, and, perhaps, because we are both engineers, I just get his worldview.
The advice of his that I've followed has been more about just finding people to chat with and keeping a blog. He also lists lots of different ways to find people who speak your target language no matter where you are. Some of the advice, like only speaking in your target language (excellent article, btw - very motivating!), is, like much of the advice out there on the net from polyglots, or aspiring polyglots, not so realistic for people in relationships. For instance, when I lived in Germany, I worked in an English-speaking office (plenty of Germans there though, so I did waste a LOT of practice opportunity), and then I went home to my pregnant wife. That was what I did all the weekdays. On the weekend, we went exploring together, or relaxed together at home. My wife worked with German children who spoke English to varying degrees, and she had to get around all day in German a lot of the time. She did really well, and she enjoyed that, but at the end of the day, and on the weekends, the idea of hanging out with people so I could struggle through some German conversation was less than appealing to her. Since we've got back to Australia I made an effort to find German-speakers here, although I'm very selective because we need to enjoy hanging out, and it has worked out very well for us - we've met up a couple of times, and I have invited them to join in on the sport of Rogaining, since it was invented in Australia, and they are coming to the next 6 hour event in NSW. I will have an English-speaking friend too, and the details of teams, etc, aren't yet finalised, but I do hope it will lead to quite some speaking practice, as well as just hanging out with some cool new friends (and an old one) doing something we can all enjoy. So I see now that we could have done the same sort of thing in Germany, and much more easily of course!
Live and learn...
As to Benny's advice of keeping a blog, I think it's helped push me along a bit, but sometimes I just look back and laugh at my slow progress. Sigh. Still, one foot in front of the other and all that!
Yesterday I finished Lesson 8 of Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand (Advanced German). I have let my Anki slide a little over the last few days (just a little :-) ) and I find that not doing it for a few days does make it more frustrating. Certainly seems to be more useful when you're doing it every day (like the Assimil method). I started on one of the online sample B2 exams that I mentioned last time but I did it while I was at work and so have only managed to squeeze in 3 of the reading comprehension questions. My scores weren't great (4/5, 3/5 and 4/5) and the 10 mark question seems hard (though I think I'm just not used to the style of question) but my time for the first 3 questions seemed reasonable at least. Obviously still plenty more to do before mid-July!
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