Today I visited the Enemy at Home exhibition in Sydney. Not a large exhibit, but it was included in the $10 entry price of the museum, and it was a really quality exhibit. Congratulations to curator Nadine Helmi et al for the great work! I visited it with my Austrian friends and my parents, so a mixed-language group, but this time, unlike with recent disappointing encounters with German speakers where I have just been basically too lazy (and inhibited perhaps?) to speak German, especially in a mixed group, I decided to do my best and did find some good time to just speak German.
I had originally intended to stay to listen to Nadine's lecture/readings in German, but due to time constraints on our group, I skipped it and we had afternoon tea together instead. A very pleasant way to spend the afternoon and I can really recommend it for those interested in Australian modern history or of Germans in Australia. I'm not sure if Nadine is planning on doing her lecture in German again - perhaps check out the Sydney German Group on Meetup and see if she posts again on the subject.
As for the conversation - it felt good at times, especially listening to my Austrian friends, even with noisy backgrounds. And, as ever, they taught me some interesting new words and phrases! On the other hand, I almost felt like my German was worse than the last time. Maybe I just had higher expectations, maybe it's because I didn't speak German all the time and so didn't develop such a good flow, but sometimes I would just listen to myself and cringe at my horrible mistakes. It can be hard to block those out, but I really have to, because today I really felt like I was torturing my friends. Not a great feeling...
Come this Monday I'll be meeting up with a native speaker at my workplace, so that should mean the start of a more regular use of German. My Austrian friends have also offered to help me more specifically with my preparation for the B2 exam, which I will definitely take advantage of, even outside of just meeting up for a chat or for the upcoming rogaine in NSW that I managed to rope one of them in to :-) The only problem with taking advantage of their offer of specific B2 exam preparation help is that I don't really know what I'll need to do for the exam! I have past exams, and I need to practice those, and there's probably a million things I don't do right. I was kind of hoping that just improving my German speaking would tie lots of other things together, and I think it's starting to do that. It's also, unsurprisingly, improving my confidence and comfort with speaking (despite my negative feelings at times today). But what I would need to do for specific preparation - well, that I still don't know. I'm probably just too used to studying on my own now, but then it wouldn't be study so much as help refining specific problems while I speak, which is always a good thing!
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Die Lore-Ley
"Ich glaube, die Wellen veschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
die Lore-Ley getan..."
Lesson 11 in Perfectionnement Allemand was basically just the poem of the Lore-Ley by Heinrich Heine and a few exercises (as usual), with the goal being to memorise the poem. Lucky for me, I don't find memorising poems to be a great chore. I still remember, after almost 20 years, some poems I memorised from an old Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat (back when they occasionally produced a content rich book instead of now where they mainly seem to be non-threatening, but pointlessly dumbed down to the point of being completely useless):
Mala kucha kamena,
sa tri mala prozora,
zheleni im kapci,
i krov sav od plamena,
a na krovu, vrapci.
(Apologies to any Serbian or Croatian readers for any mistakes - it was 20 years ago!)
I can also still remember mostly what it means. This isn't an accident, poems are designed to stick in your head. They have an internal rhythm (and often rhyming endings in european literature) that mean the memory of one phrase supports another. Well-written music is often like this, although probably more for ballads than other types of song, or at least, I've found ballads and poetic-style lyrics to be the easiest to remember. I know it sounds crazy, but I really feel like Rammstein's lyrics are quite poetic, even in their harshest songs. I guess you just have to find something you like!
I found the time yesterday to do a couple of the kiddie word puzzles I posted about yesterday. I built up my confidence with foods and animals puzzles first. I did pretty well - just one or two things that I didn't know or remember. The puzzles were incredibly easy though :-) I'm now working on a simple crossword of the more traditional style with across and down clues and no pre-filled letters. I would really like to find more simple/kids crosswords, ones without too many references to German actors and sportstars from the 70's and 80's :-)
If any readers know of any good, free sources for a variety of levels of crosswords, please let us all know in the comments!
Now on to lesson 12.
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
die Lore-Ley getan..."
Lesson 11 in Perfectionnement Allemand was basically just the poem of the Lore-Ley by Heinrich Heine and a few exercises (as usual), with the goal being to memorise the poem. Lucky for me, I don't find memorising poems to be a great chore. I still remember, after almost 20 years, some poems I memorised from an old Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat (back when they occasionally produced a content rich book instead of now where they mainly seem to be non-threatening, but pointlessly dumbed down to the point of being completely useless):
Mala kucha kamena,
sa tri mala prozora,
zheleni im kapci,
i krov sav od plamena,
a na krovu, vrapci.
(Apologies to any Serbian or Croatian readers for any mistakes - it was 20 years ago!)
I can also still remember mostly what it means. This isn't an accident, poems are designed to stick in your head. They have an internal rhythm (and often rhyming endings in european literature) that mean the memory of one phrase supports another. Well-written music is often like this, although probably more for ballads than other types of song, or at least, I've found ballads and poetic-style lyrics to be the easiest to remember. I know it sounds crazy, but I really feel like Rammstein's lyrics are quite poetic, even in their harshest songs. I guess you just have to find something you like!
I found the time yesterday to do a couple of the kiddie word puzzles I posted about yesterday. I built up my confidence with foods and animals puzzles first. I did pretty well - just one or two things that I didn't know or remember. The puzzles were incredibly easy though :-) I'm now working on a simple crossword of the more traditional style with across and down clues and no pre-filled letters. I would really like to find more simple/kids crosswords, ones without too many references to German actors and sportstars from the 70's and 80's :-)
If any readers know of any good, free sources for a variety of levels of crosswords, please let us all know in the comments!
Now on to lesson 12.
Kreuzworträtseln und so weiter...
Just when I should be accelerating, I see that all my posts talk about "slow progress". Well, I don't want to break the mold yet, so here's another one on the same theme :-)
I finished lesson 10 in Perfectionnement Allemand yesterday and started listening to lesson 11, which is Heinrich Heine's poem "Loreley". This is something that I've really been looking forward to - some original texts in German by famous authors. I've flicked through the advanced Assimil courses for Spanish and French and they both seem to have more samples of famous authors than I see on a flick through the advanced German course, but at least the lessons have been pretty funny so far. That's as opposed to "New German With Ease" which is a lot of good things, but funny it ain't ("Haben Sie den von der Erbsen, Mohren und Tomaten gehört?").
I have had a go at some more fill-in-the-blanks style B2 exam questions, and they haven't gone well. This probably shows a few things - that I rely a lot on context, for example, to understand what's happening, but there's also a problem that even when I understood all the vocabulary in the sentence, and I knew the word that was the answer, it just didn't come to me.
So, two problems. The first I will work on by continuing my vocabulary work, but perhaps also by working on more composition in German - after all, the problem is one of finding a word to fill a need, which is somewhat similar to some parts of composition. The second problem will be helped by more composition (i.e., writing in German :-) ) but to supplement this I've decided to do some word puzzles in German, specifically crosswords - Kreuzworträtsel. Here is a website that has a daily crossword as well as others by category and more. And if you're looking for some nice easy ones to build up your confidence first (as I am!), there are ones targeted at children here. This one seems to be a nice example!
I wasted my opportunity at the Eurovision party turned. I did talk to Germans, but they said (to another non-native German speaker) that they wouldn't speak German because we wouldn't understand them, and I let that put me off. Waste! Anyway, maybe I'll meet them again.
I have done more writing in German lately to my Austrian friends as well as to a new Austrian person at my work who I will meet up with for lunch next week. There is also another native German speaker in the office that I'll seek out soon and try to spread my poor German around so that no one person has to suffer to great a burden :-)
Anyone else who has done the B2 exam or later (or anyone else!) who has other suggestions for how to prepare for fill-in-the-blanks questions, please leave them in the comments!
I finished lesson 10 in Perfectionnement Allemand yesterday and started listening to lesson 11, which is Heinrich Heine's poem "Loreley". This is something that I've really been looking forward to - some original texts in German by famous authors. I've flicked through the advanced Assimil courses for Spanish and French and they both seem to have more samples of famous authors than I see on a flick through the advanced German course, but at least the lessons have been pretty funny so far. That's as opposed to "New German With Ease" which is a lot of good things, but funny it ain't ("Haben Sie den von der Erbsen, Mohren und Tomaten gehört?").
I have had a go at some more fill-in-the-blanks style B2 exam questions, and they haven't gone well. This probably shows a few things - that I rely a lot on context, for example, to understand what's happening, but there's also a problem that even when I understood all the vocabulary in the sentence, and I knew the word that was the answer, it just didn't come to me.
So, two problems. The first I will work on by continuing my vocabulary work, but perhaps also by working on more composition in German - after all, the problem is one of finding a word to fill a need, which is somewhat similar to some parts of composition. The second problem will be helped by more composition (i.e., writing in German :-) ) but to supplement this I've decided to do some word puzzles in German, specifically crosswords - Kreuzworträtsel. Here is a website that has a daily crossword as well as others by category and more. And if you're looking for some nice easy ones to build up your confidence first (as I am!), there are ones targeted at children here. This one seems to be a nice example!
I wasted my opportunity at the Eurovision party turned. I did talk to Germans, but they said (to another non-native German speaker) that they wouldn't speak German because we wouldn't understand them, and I let that put me off. Waste! Anyway, maybe I'll meet them again.
I have done more writing in German lately to my Austrian friends as well as to a new Austrian person at my work who I will meet up with for lunch next week. There is also another native German speaker in the office that I'll seek out soon and try to spread my poor German around so that no one person has to suffer to great a burden :-)
Anyone else who has done the B2 exam or later (or anyone else!) who has other suggestions for how to prepare for fill-in-the-blanks questions, please leave them in the comments!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Tempis fugit...
and all that...
I do finally have some progress to report, but not much. Pretty bad considering what I need to be able to do in just over 2 months. Today I finished lesson 9 in Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand. Pretty slow pace so far! I could blame Mother's Day, and all sorts of other things, but the fact is that I just need to get more done, and find the time for it.
I did have a short conversation in German yesterday with a work colleague whose wife is Austrian and so speaks German - not like a native speaker, but still pretty good to have at work! This weekend I'll be going to his house for a Eurovision party, so I'll get a chance to meet his wife and speak with a native speaker for a while. And no, no one is seriously going for the music - the purpose is, of course, to take the piss out of it :-)
I've also heard that my work has a list of speakers of different languages... I'll have to take advantage of that and see if I can't find some native speakers to sprechen mit a bit!
Enough babbling - got to do some study...
I do finally have some progress to report, but not much. Pretty bad considering what I need to be able to do in just over 2 months. Today I finished lesson 9 in Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand. Pretty slow pace so far! I could blame Mother's Day, and all sorts of other things, but the fact is that I just need to get more done, and find the time for it.
I did have a short conversation in German yesterday with a work colleague whose wife is Austrian and so speaks German - not like a native speaker, but still pretty good to have at work! This weekend I'll be going to his house for a Eurovision party, so I'll get a chance to meet his wife and speak with a native speaker for a while. And no, no one is seriously going for the music - the purpose is, of course, to take the piss out of it :-)
I've also heard that my work has a list of speakers of different languages... I'll have to take advantage of that and see if I can't find some native speakers to sprechen mit a bit!
Enough babbling - got to do some study...
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
A brief summary of the "Fluent in 3 Months" method
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!
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!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
An Open Letter to Deutsche Welle Radio!
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!
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!
Friday, April 22, 2011
Rained out BBQ...
But we'll still be meeting up with our Austrian friends, and some of their friends, who are a mixed group of German and English speakers, so the opportunity will not be wasted!
Today has been a good day. I finally listened to and repeated Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand lesson 4 enough to call it finished and then I ended up with enough time to do all of lesson 5 in one half hour session. I haven't had the chance to do that for so long! I can't even remember the last time I managed to finish a whole lesson in a day given a morning and an evening commute, and time over breakfast (which I used to have before my daughter was born :-) ). So, quite a buzz.
I've also been keeping up with my Anki reviews each day, which are very easy to slip in between other things. Learning lists of words has its problems, but because it fits in so well with other tasks in the day, in tiny little 20-30 seconds chunks sometimes, then it's a great way to use time that otherwise would not really be usable at all.
Since this "aspirational goal" thing worked so well last time, I'm going to do the same again. I'll aim to finish Perfectionnement Allemand lesson 6 by tomorrow night, and hopefully get all the words that bothered me from Aufgabe 3 in Lesetraining B2 into my Anki list. With other family events and going out today, that's probably good enough, but I'll squeeze in the "aspirational" goal of doing Aufgabe 4 as well. Why the hell not!
Now, off to speak some German :-)
Since my last post, I've also managed to do another lesson from Lesetraining B2 and I got the correct answers, although, again, I didn't go somewhere quiet to do it, and I was quite tired so it took more time than it has to if I'm going to pass the Goethe B2 exam! I really feel that the book is helping me to prepare for the "bookish" parts of the test, because I am learning the style of questions they will ask. It sometimes seems quite artificial to me - but that's because this time in learning a language, I've taken a different path. I did have formal courses, but I think I knew everything that the classes covered already because my workplace in Germany (who were, after all, paying for the course!) insisted that I do the beginner's class. People who have taken formal classes all the way up to B2 level will have had a lot more practice at the kinds of fill-in-the-blanks exercises that tend to make up a big part of formal exams.
The example from Aufgabe 3 in Lesetraining B2 was that there was a given question, and you had to state whether the young people who had written about "leaving childhood" saw it as positive, negative or mixed. The first part was a simple multiple choice between these three options. Then there were two columns labelled "+" and "-" in which you had to write the key phrases that they said that were positive or negative. I misunderstood and thought the people who had a bet both ways should be left out, although in hindsight it's obvious that I needed to split up their statements to find one positive and one negative. Still, in an exam situation, I probably would have stuffed that up, so it's definitely worth practicing, for both the vocabulary and exactly this sort of question-style issue.
Today has been a good day. I finally listened to and repeated Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand lesson 4 enough to call it finished and then I ended up with enough time to do all of lesson 5 in one half hour session. I haven't had the chance to do that for so long! I can't even remember the last time I managed to finish a whole lesson in a day given a morning and an evening commute, and time over breakfast (which I used to have before my daughter was born :-) ). So, quite a buzz.
I've also been keeping up with my Anki reviews each day, which are very easy to slip in between other things. Learning lists of words has its problems, but because it fits in so well with other tasks in the day, in tiny little 20-30 seconds chunks sometimes, then it's a great way to use time that otherwise would not really be usable at all.
Since this "aspirational goal" thing worked so well last time, I'm going to do the same again. I'll aim to finish Perfectionnement Allemand lesson 6 by tomorrow night, and hopefully get all the words that bothered me from Aufgabe 3 in Lesetraining B2 into my Anki list. With other family events and going out today, that's probably good enough, but I'll squeeze in the "aspirational" goal of doing Aufgabe 4 as well. Why the hell not!
Now, off to speak some German :-)
Since my last post, I've also managed to do another lesson from Lesetraining B2 and I got the correct answers, although, again, I didn't go somewhere quiet to do it, and I was quite tired so it took more time than it has to if I'm going to pass the Goethe B2 exam! I really feel that the book is helping me to prepare for the "bookish" parts of the test, because I am learning the style of questions they will ask. It sometimes seems quite artificial to me - but that's because this time in learning a language, I've taken a different path. I did have formal courses, but I think I knew everything that the classes covered already because my workplace in Germany (who were, after all, paying for the course!) insisted that I do the beginner's class. People who have taken formal classes all the way up to B2 level will have had a lot more practice at the kinds of fill-in-the-blanks exercises that tend to make up a big part of formal exams.
The example from Aufgabe 3 in Lesetraining B2 was that there was a given question, and you had to state whether the young people who had written about "leaving childhood" saw it as positive, negative or mixed. The first part was a simple multiple choice between these three options. Then there were two columns labelled "+" and "-" in which you had to write the key phrases that they said that were positive or negative. I misunderstood and thought the people who had a bet both ways should be left out, although in hindsight it's obvious that I needed to split up their statements to find one positive and one negative. Still, in an exam situation, I probably would have stuffed that up, so it's definitely worth practicing, for both the vocabulary and exactly this sort of question-style issue.
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