I don't know how, but somehow I missed this a long time ago - I made a parallel translation of "Der Erlkönig" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe which I did in April last year. I also found some free audio of it. Here they are:
My own loose parallel translation
The audio on youtube
To get the audio as an mp3, I just use RealPlayer. It has a plugin that lets you download streamed videos from youtube and you can then extract the mp3. Easy :-)
I didn't put much effort into the translation so don't base your exam preparation on my vocabulary choices! Comment below if you find any issues.
My preparations for what I plan to do in trying to achieve the C2 level exam by the start of next year have not really got started very well. I know I really need to speak German every day, but that certainly hasn't happened yet and the year is almost 1 month down. I have a few plans of attack on this problem which I will discuss more in my future posts.
I'm currently reading a new German book after reading one of the several books in English which I got for my birthday and Christmas (both around the same time). This book was lent to me by my Austrian friend at work. Called das größere Wunder, it is written by an Austrian author but set all over the world. I've had it for a couple of weeks and am about 10% of the way through it. I'll try to pick up the pace a bit! I'll write some more thoughts about it soon as it was a bit of a shock to me in some ways and a great test for my current abilities helping to show me the way to some improvements.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The piano speaks!
An interesting little video article in German about an art display that shows that a mechanically-played piano but sound like it's speaking, sort of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4
The kid they based it on seems to have a funny accent or a minor speech impediment, which surely doesn't help the comprehensibility of the final result. To train your understanding, ignore/close the onscreen translations as they appear.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4
The kid they based it on seems to have a funny accent or a minor speech impediment, which surely doesn't help the comprehensibility of the final result. To train your understanding, ignore/close the onscreen translations as they appear.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Examples of the spoken section (Mündlicher Teil) of various Goethe-Zertifikat test levels
Just a short one to share some links I found recently of examples of candidates sitting various levels of the Goethe Zertifikat exams. The exams are probably pretty similar for TestDaF, so these should be a good guide. As I found while I was preparing for the B2 exam, there are no examples available for the B2 or C1 exams. I wrote to Goethe at the time and they just basically replied to say "there's no such thing available". Basically, they were just fobbing me off :-) So please, if you're preparing for either of those exams, or even just if you're curious to see what those levels look like when done well, write to Goethe and request that they make more recordings available. Maybe we can start a groundswell :-)
Anyway, without further ado, here are the examples I've found for the various levels:
A1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGNd-6pDkEI
A2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o87rLPbbHc
B1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khf1PF-jsHY
B2: MISSING!
C1: MISSING!
C2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VN2keDjzk
There's also this video for B1 level that's an example of the kind of introductions you need to be able to do at that level.
What I noticed is that A1 is not a complete doddle but it's clearly very formulaic. It would probably be fairly easy to pass it with just a bit of drilling for the exam itself. Although that may not be the best Einführung into the German language, it would make the task of passing the exam easier if that's all you want to do.
Tschau for now!
Anyway, without further ado, here are the examples I've found for the various levels:
A1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGNd-6pDkEI
A2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o87rLPbbHc
B1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khf1PF-jsHY
B2: MISSING!
C1: MISSING!
C2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VN2keDjzk
There's also this video for B1 level that's an example of the kind of introductions you need to be able to do at that level.
What I noticed is that A1 is not a complete doddle but it's clearly very formulaic. It would probably be fairly easy to pass it with just a bit of drilling for the exam itself. Although that may not be the best Einführung into the German language, it would make the task of passing the exam easier if that's all you want to do.
Tschau for now!
Monday, January 6, 2014
Extract from DRadio Wissen's Lernen to Talk Show episode
I wrote a post about an interesting discovery called "The Lernen to Talk Show" way back last year (so, a few weeks ago). It's a youtube show created by +Mickey Mangan . All the background is explained or linked there. The main thing I wanted to talk about today is that, contrary to my better judgement, I did actually end up transcribing a section of an interview Mickey did on DRadio Wissen about a year after he had finished up his year in Germany which was the main content of his web show.
I felt compelled to do so because I found the comments by one of the interviewees, Dr Martina Pinke, to be a little unreasonable. As I wrote in my earlier post, she basically says that if you are 30, you can't really learn a language. She does admit that Mickey himself speaks very good German, but she confuses the issues if you ask me. From my impression of what she says, basically you will never really "speak" a language unless you are essentially flawless with a native accent. Before I comment further, please listen to the interview from when it has about 45:45 mins remaining until about 42 mins remaining. It was enough work just to transcribe this 3.5 mins - sorry, but I ain't doing the whole hour!
Then you can read my transcription and parallel translation here:
Transcription and Parallel Translation
I don't disagree with everything she says. In fact, perhaps what she says about becoming accent-free is true. I know it has been researched but I think it's quite hard to replicate the conditions children learn under in comparison to their parents. I think a lot of the differences might be due to the differences in a child's willingness to immerse themselves (unconsciously) in their new language in comparison to adults. Think about adults moving to a new country with their children. The children go to school and want to do everything they can to fit in with those around them. Peer pressure is never so strong as when you're a child or teenager. We adults see these things more sanguinely. Conformity with those around us is something we care less and less about as we age. However, to get to a higher level in language learning we need to be willing to conform again. We need to conform more to the "standard" accent (which we have to search out because we probably won't be picking up a local native accent from our peers) and we need to conform our phrasing, even our body language and world view, in order to fit in.
Then there's a difference in time available. Children are forcibly immersed by their parents in their new community but their parents will usually just to do enough to get by in their new homeland and then relax with their family, friends and language-speaking community. If you're not married with children then perhaps you can't visualise this very well, but you really just don't have time to "live" the language 24/7. That is, unless your partner wants to do the same and your circle of friends speaks the local language. Some of this is a choice, and some of it is forced upon us.
All I'm saying is that the circumstances for children are vastly different to those for adults.
In terms of accent, some adult learners achieve a much better accent than others. What are the differences? Well, perhaps the other factors she mentions are also as important - input and motivation. She forgot to mention practice, since speaking is a physical task that is improved with constantly exercising the required muscles and coordinating them so that producing the right sounds will literally "just roll off the tongue". While a child is more plastic in terms of accent, etc, an adult can achieve this if they want to. Perhaps one problem is that once an adult achieves a pretty good accent they don't keep torturing themselves to keep getting more and more perfect as their place in society, and how well accepted they are, etc, are already more settled. Children and teenagers are desperate to fit in, and different accents are often mercilessly teased out of youngsters by others. It's not for nothing that we say "kids can be so cruel"!
I've never been very good with producing accents or hearing small differences, which is partially why I've decided to read an introductory book on phonetics. I just recently ordered "A Practical Introduction to Phonetics" by Catford which I hope will help me learn how to recognise and produce the sounds of any language I learn much more accurately. For this year, I hope it will help me with German, of course :-) If I were just a good listener I wouldn't need this, but I found when learning Chinese that I couldn't tell the difference between the consonant sounds represented in Pinyin as "xi" vs "shi" (although those always had a vowel differences to cover up my mistakes :-) ), "qi" vs "chi" and "ji" vs "zhi". Then I found an old book in a university library called "Mandarin Pronunciation" by Raymond Huang (unfortunately out of print) which explains the pronunciation of every single vowel and consonant of Chinese with a diagram showing the position of elements in the mouth and a short descriptive text. Even though I had listened to a fair bit of Chinese I had always been unable to accurately produce a difference between those consonants above in a way that would make sense to Chinese speakers, but after reading the descriptions for just those sounds in the book I found that the few short phrases I tried out got a very enthusiastic reception - much more than ever before! In fact, the team member who judged my accent most harshly actually got very excited and said that it sounded really good, "very standard". So, perhaps as an adult who never had a particularly good ear, this is what I really need to improve my accent. Obviously, producing the sound in one off, concentrated speech is one thing. For German I want to sound much more standard in normal speech. I think my vowels in particular need work, along with the few consonants that are significantly different to English, so we'll see if the book helps. I plan on writing a little more on this topic in the future as I recently learnt something interesting about German pronunciation which I'd like to share, but I digress.
But back to the transcription of the interview with Dr. Penke. I feel as though she might have taken a little offence that Mickey suggested that wanting to learn the language and having fun with it are all you need, even though she says something similar herself in different words. She says you also need "motivation" and "input", and having fun in the language is a great way to get input!
She then goes on to say that you can only really ever learn the language if you're a first-language learner (i.e., you learn it in childhood). Well, what's the metric? She admits that Mickey speaks really good German but that he's immediately recognisable as a non-native speaker, and then she finishes with what I consider to be a massive clanger:
"A: Can anyone manage to learn a language within one year?
B: When… Yes, they could manage it – as a child! Obviously, error-free. Start early!"
Apart from being completely useless advise to adult language learners, it's also complete nonsense. The best a child can hope for is to learn the language roughly to the level of their peers in a year. What Mickey and other adult learners have to do is to try to learn the language to sound like ADULTS in the language. Adults are not forgiven their errors, they have very large vocabularies and can (depending on the person involved) have very detailed conversations. My eldest daughter is 3 years old and I think she's brilliant, but I can tell you that she's only learnt English to the level of a small child (I think a 4 or 5 year old, but I'm biased). I often speak to my young nephews and nieces and note that even 8 year olds are still making very obvious mistakes. And I'm not talking about the very obvious "mistakes" that their parents make in terms of using a different dialect, I mean mistakes as in things that adults don't say but children and language learners say, like using the wrong tense, or the wrong form for an irregular past tense, etc. This is after 8 years of immersion, including three years of immersion *in school*!
No, children do not learn a language flawlessly within a year. We just have lower standards for them, which they reach faster, because the last "10%" is what takes all the time...
I felt compelled to do so because I found the comments by one of the interviewees, Dr Martina Pinke, to be a little unreasonable. As I wrote in my earlier post, she basically says that if you are 30, you can't really learn a language. She does admit that Mickey himself speaks very good German, but she confuses the issues if you ask me. From my impression of what she says, basically you will never really "speak" a language unless you are essentially flawless with a native accent. Before I comment further, please listen to the interview from when it has about 45:45 mins remaining until about 42 mins remaining. It was enough work just to transcribe this 3.5 mins - sorry, but I ain't doing the whole hour!
Then you can read my transcription and parallel translation here:
Transcription and Parallel Translation
I don't disagree with everything she says. In fact, perhaps what she says about becoming accent-free is true. I know it has been researched but I think it's quite hard to replicate the conditions children learn under in comparison to their parents. I think a lot of the differences might be due to the differences in a child's willingness to immerse themselves (unconsciously) in their new language in comparison to adults. Think about adults moving to a new country with their children. The children go to school and want to do everything they can to fit in with those around them. Peer pressure is never so strong as when you're a child or teenager. We adults see these things more sanguinely. Conformity with those around us is something we care less and less about as we age. However, to get to a higher level in language learning we need to be willing to conform again. We need to conform more to the "standard" accent (which we have to search out because we probably won't be picking up a local native accent from our peers) and we need to conform our phrasing, even our body language and world view, in order to fit in.
Then there's a difference in time available. Children are forcibly immersed by their parents in their new community but their parents will usually just to do enough to get by in their new homeland and then relax with their family, friends and language-speaking community. If you're not married with children then perhaps you can't visualise this very well, but you really just don't have time to "live" the language 24/7. That is, unless your partner wants to do the same and your circle of friends speaks the local language. Some of this is a choice, and some of it is forced upon us.
All I'm saying is that the circumstances for children are vastly different to those for adults.
In terms of accent, some adult learners achieve a much better accent than others. What are the differences? Well, perhaps the other factors she mentions are also as important - input and motivation. She forgot to mention practice, since speaking is a physical task that is improved with constantly exercising the required muscles and coordinating them so that producing the right sounds will literally "just roll off the tongue". While a child is more plastic in terms of accent, etc, an adult can achieve this if they want to. Perhaps one problem is that once an adult achieves a pretty good accent they don't keep torturing themselves to keep getting more and more perfect as their place in society, and how well accepted they are, etc, are already more settled. Children and teenagers are desperate to fit in, and different accents are often mercilessly teased out of youngsters by others. It's not for nothing that we say "kids can be so cruel"!
I've never been very good with producing accents or hearing small differences, which is partially why I've decided to read an introductory book on phonetics. I just recently ordered "A Practical Introduction to Phonetics" by Catford which I hope will help me learn how to recognise and produce the sounds of any language I learn much more accurately. For this year, I hope it will help me with German, of course :-) If I were just a good listener I wouldn't need this, but I found when learning Chinese that I couldn't tell the difference between the consonant sounds represented in Pinyin as "xi" vs "shi" (although those always had a vowel differences to cover up my mistakes :-) ), "qi" vs "chi" and "ji" vs "zhi". Then I found an old book in a university library called "Mandarin Pronunciation" by Raymond Huang (unfortunately out of print) which explains the pronunciation of every single vowel and consonant of Chinese with a diagram showing the position of elements in the mouth and a short descriptive text. Even though I had listened to a fair bit of Chinese I had always been unable to accurately produce a difference between those consonants above in a way that would make sense to Chinese speakers, but after reading the descriptions for just those sounds in the book I found that the few short phrases I tried out got a very enthusiastic reception - much more than ever before! In fact, the team member who judged my accent most harshly actually got very excited and said that it sounded really good, "very standard". So, perhaps as an adult who never had a particularly good ear, this is what I really need to improve my accent. Obviously, producing the sound in one off, concentrated speech is one thing. For German I want to sound much more standard in normal speech. I think my vowels in particular need work, along with the few consonants that are significantly different to English, so we'll see if the book helps. I plan on writing a little more on this topic in the future as I recently learnt something interesting about German pronunciation which I'd like to share, but I digress.
But back to the transcription of the interview with Dr. Penke. I feel as though she might have taken a little offence that Mickey suggested that wanting to learn the language and having fun with it are all you need, even though she says something similar herself in different words. She says you also need "motivation" and "input", and having fun in the language is a great way to get input!
She then goes on to say that you can only really ever learn the language if you're a first-language learner (i.e., you learn it in childhood). Well, what's the metric? She admits that Mickey speaks really good German but that he's immediately recognisable as a non-native speaker, and then she finishes with what I consider to be a massive clanger:
"A: Can anyone manage to learn a language within one year?
B: When… Yes, they could manage it – as a child! Obviously, error-free. Start early!"
Apart from being completely useless advise to adult language learners, it's also complete nonsense. The best a child can hope for is to learn the language roughly to the level of their peers in a year. What Mickey and other adult learners have to do is to try to learn the language to sound like ADULTS in the language. Adults are not forgiven their errors, they have very large vocabularies and can (depending on the person involved) have very detailed conversations. My eldest daughter is 3 years old and I think she's brilliant, but I can tell you that she's only learnt English to the level of a small child (I think a 4 or 5 year old, but I'm biased). I often speak to my young nephews and nieces and note that even 8 year olds are still making very obvious mistakes. And I'm not talking about the very obvious "mistakes" that their parents make in terms of using a different dialect, I mean mistakes as in things that adults don't say but children and language learners say, like using the wrong tense, or the wrong form for an irregular past tense, etc. This is after 8 years of immersion, including three years of immersion *in school*!
No, children do not learn a language flawlessly within a year. We just have lower standards for them, which they reach faster, because the last "10%" is what takes all the time...
Monday, December 16, 2013
Wie soll ich weitermachen? Forging ahead with German
Normally people wait until the New Year to make resolutions, but not me. Any time is a good time for a new plan.
Since I successfully completed the Goethe Zertifikat B2, I've been essentially cruising with my German. I did a few parallel translations to help tune my ear more for movie dialogues and although I had fun with those sections of dialogue (from Der Untergang and Mädchen Mädchen 2 in particular), I haven't done much focused work in this area. I've read several books since passing: Das Todeskreuz and Das Parfüm. I've watched some German movies, listened to and watched the German news, and very, very recently discovered that you can get high-quality video from ZDF TV in Germany! Haven't had much of a chance to watch this yet, but I've seen a cop show and Abernteur Forschung already and I'm really glad this is out there and available to watch from outside Germany. The last time I revealed such a source of German TV on this blog the station quickly disabled traffic from outside Germany so I'm really hoping they don't do that again this time!
And of course, I've chatted with my German-speaking friends about once a week which is as fun as ever.
This level of study was really on purpose. For starters, I passed my B2 exam just before learning that my mother had incurable lung cancer. Over the next year from that devastating news there was a lot of stress and personal stuff to deal with. My second daughter was born in that same year, just a few short months before my mother finally passed. That was almost a year ago now and, to be honest, I don't think I've even recovered from the shock of first hearing the news of the illness, let alone everything since.
For this year I initially decided to try something new - learning Chinese (but mainly as a spoken language) and Latin (but mainly as a written language). I thought that because of their different focuses I would be able to work on both just fine, but I actually found it reasonably hard to feel like I was making progress. I got halfway through both books in about 4 months which is actually quite a good effort, but I didn't keep up with making an anki deck like I had wanted to with both. It was just too time consuming, especially for Latin because I had to look up the conjugations. During this time I took on a spare-time programming project and, with 2 small children and a full-time job, this was just all too much. I hadn't planned on the programming project when I started the two languages, so who knows how the year would have turned out without this change of plans.
On the topic of Chinese, I recently borrowed a very old book from a library which shows in pictures along with descriptions the actual physical mechanics of tongue positions, breath force, etc, for every single Chinese sound. Although it may seem strange, there were a few Chinese sounds that I just wasn't able to really distinguish. I couldn't make the sounds distinct, and I couldn't hear the difference consistently. This was most clearly shown to me by the fact that pretty much every Chinese person I tried some phrases out on would look perplexed. I realise now that I was actually pronouncing a bunch of the sounds in the in-between position of English where I actually need to move my tongue to two different extremes to produce them. Since this has been a significant weakness whenever I've tried to speak Chinese, it feels good to finally be able to say something (though I've forgotten much of what I learnt!) and see that Chinese people are now able to understand me. Although I don't plan on actively taking up Chinese again at this stage, I will try to keep working on my pronunciation so that whenever I come back to it more intensively, I can at least start with being able to say the words somewhat properly!
So, with all that other stuff happening, I haven't really thought much again about the future, but recently I came to an important decision - to push on with German and to really try hard to get to a much more comfortable level. I'm currently holding steady at B2, and "advanced" starts at the next CEFR level in theory, so C1, but I've decided to just go the whole hog and aim for the C2 exam. This is to force me to over-prepare but when I get closer to the exam date (sometime in early 2015), I can decide whether I'm risking my money for nothing and choose the C1 exam. Of course, exams are all well and good, but the exam is just a goal to push me to work harder. What I would really like is that German becomes a part of my psyche and that I understand almost everything I hear of movies and the TV and, especially, that I speak German much better and much more frequently. I want to speak it comfortably.
How will I do that? Well, I'm open to suggestions! I'll go over my own ideas in future posts, but for now I want to end with a quick discussion on some possible materials to help me prepare. I would really like some help to pick good stuff because, as a solo learner, I will be relying on the materials I use to help cover those gaps of knowledge that a teacher in a class would probably focus on like crazy.
My first idea is to subscribe to the magazine "Deutsch Perfekt"(electronic version). At the moment the 12 month subscription comes with 6 1-hr audio downloads + workbooks. I have a sample of each (the magazine and the audio) and they seem pretty good. I like reading about Mitteleuropa and the articles come with glossaries which are very helpful. The audio seems reasonable too. Neither is "real" content, but they're both something which I feel helps cover the gaps in my book knowledge. They cover a lot of grammatical concepts entirely in German which is something I've been looking for (surprising though that may sound :-) ).
Speaking of which, there are lots of gaps, I'm sure! That's why I've been looking at a few books, but I'm not yet certain which to get (if any). The two main ones I'm considering are "Mit Erfolg Zum Goethe-Zertifikat C2" and "Fit Furs Goethe Zertifikat C2". I find it hard to pick between them, but I only want to choose one. If I collect too many, I'll start to feel like I'll never get through them all! If you've had any experience of either of these books (or ones in the same series) then please let us all know in the comments below! I'm also considering an extra grammar book because I feel that getting confident in this area will not only score me some easy points in any exam, but bring up my level of grammatical correctness in general conversations as I practice what I learn. That's the theory at least! I've found one call "C-Grammatik" that seems to have some positive reviews, but I'd like to know what the other options are.
Of course, I'll need to have fun too. Youtube and ZDF are great sources of German-language entertainment. I'll read the news on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung more often because it definitely requires a high level of German knowledge, as well as easier German news sites. But some of this isn't all that relaxing. Just recently I read the first Harry Potter book in English. I know, I'm a bit late to the party! I actually really enjoyed it, so I'll read some of the others too, but in order to expose myself to more German for the next year it will obviously have to be in German! So, I'll order "Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens" (the German title for the second book in the series: "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") sometime soon.
However, after picking a few of these purchases, I probably won't be buying anything else for the rest of the year. I'll have enough to focus on with these materials. And besides, I'm a cheapskate who hates spending money :-) In particular, I want to avoid getting a professional German teacher at any stage because, whether here in Australia, or online, German teachers are very expensive. I may break this rule later on next year as I near the target date and I think I could push on to C2 with just a bit of professional help, but I would want to have put in a very big effort myself first before even considering that.
The thing is, I'm entering uncharted territory here a bit. I mean, how many people living outside the country try to learn a language to C2 from B2 in their "spare" time? There's lots of information to get started in any language but I guess that once you get to B2 level you should know how to proceed from there, or you have some sort of teacher helping you. I have some ideas of how to proceed, but they are as yet untested. If you follow along for the next year or so you'll get to see the result at the other end and the process of getting there!
Since I successfully completed the Goethe Zertifikat B2, I've been essentially cruising with my German. I did a few parallel translations to help tune my ear more for movie dialogues and although I had fun with those sections of dialogue (from Der Untergang and Mädchen Mädchen 2 in particular), I haven't done much focused work in this area. I've read several books since passing: Das Todeskreuz and Das Parfüm. I've watched some German movies, listened to and watched the German news, and very, very recently discovered that you can get high-quality video from ZDF TV in Germany! Haven't had much of a chance to watch this yet, but I've seen a cop show and Abernteur Forschung already and I'm really glad this is out there and available to watch from outside Germany. The last time I revealed such a source of German TV on this blog the station quickly disabled traffic from outside Germany so I'm really hoping they don't do that again this time!
And of course, I've chatted with my German-speaking friends about once a week which is as fun as ever.
This level of study was really on purpose. For starters, I passed my B2 exam just before learning that my mother had incurable lung cancer. Over the next year from that devastating news there was a lot of stress and personal stuff to deal with. My second daughter was born in that same year, just a few short months before my mother finally passed. That was almost a year ago now and, to be honest, I don't think I've even recovered from the shock of first hearing the news of the illness, let alone everything since.
For this year I initially decided to try something new - learning Chinese (but mainly as a spoken language) and Latin (but mainly as a written language). I thought that because of their different focuses I would be able to work on both just fine, but I actually found it reasonably hard to feel like I was making progress. I got halfway through both books in about 4 months which is actually quite a good effort, but I didn't keep up with making an anki deck like I had wanted to with both. It was just too time consuming, especially for Latin because I had to look up the conjugations. During this time I took on a spare-time programming project and, with 2 small children and a full-time job, this was just all too much. I hadn't planned on the programming project when I started the two languages, so who knows how the year would have turned out without this change of plans.
On the topic of Chinese, I recently borrowed a very old book from a library which shows in pictures along with descriptions the actual physical mechanics of tongue positions, breath force, etc, for every single Chinese sound. Although it may seem strange, there were a few Chinese sounds that I just wasn't able to really distinguish. I couldn't make the sounds distinct, and I couldn't hear the difference consistently. This was most clearly shown to me by the fact that pretty much every Chinese person I tried some phrases out on would look perplexed. I realise now that I was actually pronouncing a bunch of the sounds in the in-between position of English where I actually need to move my tongue to two different extremes to produce them. Since this has been a significant weakness whenever I've tried to speak Chinese, it feels good to finally be able to say something (though I've forgotten much of what I learnt!) and see that Chinese people are now able to understand me. Although I don't plan on actively taking up Chinese again at this stage, I will try to keep working on my pronunciation so that whenever I come back to it more intensively, I can at least start with being able to say the words somewhat properly!
So, with all that other stuff happening, I haven't really thought much again about the future, but recently I came to an important decision - to push on with German and to really try hard to get to a much more comfortable level. I'm currently holding steady at B2, and "advanced" starts at the next CEFR level in theory, so C1, but I've decided to just go the whole hog and aim for the C2 exam. This is to force me to over-prepare but when I get closer to the exam date (sometime in early 2015), I can decide whether I'm risking my money for nothing and choose the C1 exam. Of course, exams are all well and good, but the exam is just a goal to push me to work harder. What I would really like is that German becomes a part of my psyche and that I understand almost everything I hear of movies and the TV and, especially, that I speak German much better and much more frequently. I want to speak it comfortably.
How will I do that? Well, I'm open to suggestions! I'll go over my own ideas in future posts, but for now I want to end with a quick discussion on some possible materials to help me prepare. I would really like some help to pick good stuff because, as a solo learner, I will be relying on the materials I use to help cover those gaps of knowledge that a teacher in a class would probably focus on like crazy.
My first idea is to subscribe to the magazine "Deutsch Perfekt"(electronic version). At the moment the 12 month subscription comes with 6 1-hr audio downloads + workbooks. I have a sample of each (the magazine and the audio) and they seem pretty good. I like reading about Mitteleuropa and the articles come with glossaries which are very helpful. The audio seems reasonable too. Neither is "real" content, but they're both something which I feel helps cover the gaps in my book knowledge. They cover a lot of grammatical concepts entirely in German which is something I've been looking for (surprising though that may sound :-) ).
Speaking of which, there are lots of gaps, I'm sure! That's why I've been looking at a few books, but I'm not yet certain which to get (if any). The two main ones I'm considering are "Mit Erfolg Zum Goethe-Zertifikat C2" and "Fit Furs Goethe Zertifikat C2". I find it hard to pick between them, but I only want to choose one. If I collect too many, I'll start to feel like I'll never get through them all! If you've had any experience of either of these books (or ones in the same series) then please let us all know in the comments below! I'm also considering an extra grammar book because I feel that getting confident in this area will not only score me some easy points in any exam, but bring up my level of grammatical correctness in general conversations as I practice what I learn. That's the theory at least! I've found one call "C-Grammatik" that seems to have some positive reviews, but I'd like to know what the other options are.
Of course, I'll need to have fun too. Youtube and ZDF are great sources of German-language entertainment. I'll read the news on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung more often because it definitely requires a high level of German knowledge, as well as easier German news sites. But some of this isn't all that relaxing. Just recently I read the first Harry Potter book in English. I know, I'm a bit late to the party! I actually really enjoyed it, so I'll read some of the others too, but in order to expose myself to more German for the next year it will obviously have to be in German! So, I'll order "Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens" (the German title for the second book in the series: "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") sometime soon.
However, after picking a few of these purchases, I probably won't be buying anything else for the rest of the year. I'll have enough to focus on with these materials. And besides, I'm a cheapskate who hates spending money :-) In particular, I want to avoid getting a professional German teacher at any stage because, whether here in Australia, or online, German teachers are very expensive. I may break this rule later on next year as I near the target date and I think I could push on to C2 with just a bit of professional help, but I would want to have put in a very big effort myself first before even considering that.
The thing is, I'm entering uncharted territory here a bit. I mean, how many people living outside the country try to learn a language to C2 from B2 in their "spare" time? There's lots of information to get started in any language but I guess that once you get to B2 level you should know how to proceed from there, or you have some sort of teacher helping you. I have some ideas of how to proceed, but they are as yet untested. If you follow along for the next year or so you'll get to see the result at the other end and the process of getting there!
Friday, December 13, 2013
Lernen to Talk's Mickey Mangan blogging about German learning
Just a quick one - in a previous post I pointed out the Lernen to Talk show as a source of inspiration. Mickey from the show has started blogging about learning German and where you can find some good German media (which, for a language learner, equals input). Check it out and read his advice as he rolls it out. He's only just started and I really hope he finds the time to continue it:
http://blogs.transparent.com/german/
http://blogs.transparent.com/german/
Monday, December 9, 2013
The Seven Keys to Language Learning
Recently I've had/made a few opportunities to use my rusty French abilities. I toyed with the idea of setting a goal to get my French up to C1 in a year (from probably a high B1 to a low B2). I like the French language, I really do, and I already have French-speaking friends. I know my weaknesses already, and getting it to a good level might give me more ammunition to say to my wife that we should move to France for a few years (a nice spot somewhere in the south would do me for a while :-) ). But for some reason which I don't fully understand, I just don't want to. I can't get motivated by the idea just now. Perhaps it's because I did a lot of study in it at Alliance Francaise (not the best use of my time or money however!) and didn't find it as enjoyable as I have with German. If I were to improve my French vocabulary I could make better use of the Assimil courses that have no English equivalent. All very sensible stuff.
Who knows. Maybe I'll get the idea into my head :-)
One of the opportunities I've made to use it recently was to answer an ad looking for a French/English exchange partner in my local area. I met up with a nice bloke called Jerome who really needs some help with his English in order to be able to improve his job chances in Australia. However, currently his English level needs a fair bit of work and so the vast bulk of the conversation, especially when it was important to be understood, was in French. Good for me though! I found that I could handle this kind of one-on-one conversation fairly easily and wasn't too tied for words, although I kept it simple. It felt really positive to be speaking it again after all this time. I really wish I had more time to meet more French speakers. Unfortunately, I am very time poor (which is why I spend time writing this blog!) so it's hard to imagine how to fit it in. I think Skype conversations would work out the best for me. We'll see.
Anyway, another opportunity I made was to read this article on Le Point, where the author opines vigorously about the outrage of a new law in France that allows French universities to offer courses in languages other than French, ostensibly to attract more foreign students. The author goes on to say that learning a new language isn't that hard and that people wanting to study in France should just get on with it and learn the language of Hugo now! Maybe I exaggerate, but the author does describe "Seven Keys to Learning". However, if your French isn't quite good enough yet, don't worry, below you'll find my (heavily abbreviated) summary of the points:
Who knows. Maybe I'll get the idea into my head :-)
One of the opportunities I've made to use it recently was to answer an ad looking for a French/English exchange partner in my local area. I met up with a nice bloke called Jerome who really needs some help with his English in order to be able to improve his job chances in Australia. However, currently his English level needs a fair bit of work and so the vast bulk of the conversation, especially when it was important to be understood, was in French. Good for me though! I found that I could handle this kind of one-on-one conversation fairly easily and wasn't too tied for words, although I kept it simple. It felt really positive to be speaking it again after all this time. I really wish I had more time to meet more French speakers. Unfortunately, I am very time poor (which is why I spend time writing this blog!) so it's hard to imagine how to fit it in. I think Skype conversations would work out the best for me. We'll see.
Anyway, another opportunity I made was to read this article on Le Point, where the author opines vigorously about the outrage of a new law in France that allows French universities to offer courses in languages other than French, ostensibly to attract more foreign students. The author goes on to say that learning a new language isn't that hard and that people wanting to study in France should just get on with it and learn the language of Hugo now! Maybe I exaggerate, but the author does describe "Seven Keys to Learning". However, if your French isn't quite good enough yet, don't worry, below you'll find my (heavily abbreviated) summary of the points:
Francois Kersaudy's Seven Keys to Language Learning
Remember that the following points are taking from the article I mentioned above. I have roughly summarised them as closely as possible without interjecting my own thoughts. I add my own comments further down.
- Mastering a language is easier than mastering Bridge or Chess because rather than relying as heavily on the intellect you get to rely on passive memory and the unconscious reflex of imitation (more on this below).
- Motivation is THE key element to success.
- Language learning is a personal process. It can't really be "taught" to you, you can only really be guided in how to learn it yourself. This has to be done outside the hustle and bustle of the classes themselves. Naturally, there's nothing like perfecting it in a country where it's a native language.
- Regular, focused study for at least 20 minutes per day, every single day.
- Repetition, repetition, repetition. But not just any old rote learning repetition - meeting the same words or phrases in different contexts within a short space of time (over a matter of a few weeks at most) will engrave those words or phrases into your memory.
- Quoting Ferdinand de Saussaure: "You have to learn the grammar through the language, not the language through its grammar." In other words, don't start with a grammar book, start with the above techniques of listening, repeating and trying to use it yourself. Grammar books can come later when/if you really need to refine your abilities.
- Choice of method is important. Here Kersaudy declares (perhaps unsurprisingly given the above points) that the best method is Assimil. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I largely agree with this :-)
I have to say that I largely agree with all his points, although perhaps I think it takes a little more than just passive memory and unconscious reflex to get to a really good level (especially if you have exams to pass!) but definitely what he describes are the foundations of good language learning. There are surely other methods, but the key tenets of frequent exposure, focused attention and practice are absolutely fundamental.
The great thing about language learning is that if you are motivated (point 2 :-) ) then these fundamentals are easy to achieve. All of them can come about by practicing speaking whatever you know with new friends, or old friends in a new language.
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