I finished lesson 3 in Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand and started listening to lesson 4, and I've read a bit. I also did my Anki review for the first 2 questions from Lesetraining B2 and some review from my general intermediate-to-advanced German word list. I like doing the Anki reviews, even though sometimes it's hard to get words to stick out of context. While I recognise this weakness, I know that I have had words introduced to me for the first time via Anki and then later heard them on the radio or whatever, so it is useful for a relatively modest time-investment that can be done whenever it's convenient.
I'm not sure how much I'll get done today since I'm working from home (no commute) and we have a family get-together tonight. My goal is to finish the reading side of lesson 4 so I can just focus on getting the shadowing right, and doing my Anki reviews for today. An aspirational goal would be to read another question from Lesetraining B2.
And just as a random musing, I think I need to do one of the practice B2 tests available online sometime soon to get a good guage on where I'm going next.
This Saturday I'm hoping to meet up with our Austrian friends with a group of their friends to a BBQ. I think most of their other friends will be english-speakers, but I'll try to speak German whenever I can :-)
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Lesetraining fortsetzung...
I haven't progressed past lesson 3 in Perfectionnement Allemand. I think I was shadowing the audio pretty well last night driving home and I was planning to do it just once more to call it "done". That hasn't happened yet. I'm just being too much of a perfectionist! Well, writing this has inspired me to do it pretty soon and call it done :-)
There was some better news when I did the second question of Lesetraining B2 (if you'll recall, the first question I tried didn't go very well for me). I was able to read it pretty well without needing to look up and words and I could answer all the questions pretty easily. I didn't know every word, but I was able to work out any gaps pretty easily, and there weren't many. This might be indicative of the type of question. The first question required you only to match up a short description of a group of students with a list of ads for plays. Perhaps this is deemed easier than the second style of question, which had a few different parts and is probably deemed to need more discernment to answer rather than just matching keywords. And that may be true. It is also possibly the case that I found it much easier because I was already quite familiar with the content about Ötzi the frozen mummy from the copper age. In any case, I plan to add the few words I didn't know to my Anki list and then try the next question. Perhaps not in front of the TV this time :-)
Speaking of that book, I just noticed that the link above has a link to sample pages and listening samples, but when I opened it up I discovered, to my great joy, that it is a PDF of all the answers! How awesome is that! Here I was, thinking I could never know the answers, and they were out there all along. This is going to make the book much more useful! I marked my first two questions and I got all the answers correct, so I'm off to a good start (if I ignore the fact that I wasn't sure/didn't know at all 80 words from the first reading question!).
And just to make it easy for anyone searching the internet for these answers, I'll repeat myself. This link contains ALL THE ANSWERS for Lesetraining B2: Leseverstehen in Progression bis zum Goethe-Zertifikat B2.
One final note - I recently received a long email from my former German teacher in Frankfurt. We correspond semi-regularly, and she has been very helpful, completely out of the kindness of her heart, which I must say I greatly appreciate considering that it's something she normally gets paid for! This letter was quite long, and on a variety of topics, and I look forward to replying to it. One thing she did to be helpful for underline words and phrases that she probably considers to be at the next level I need to learn to progress towards my goal of completing the Goethe-Zertifikat B2 exam, or maybe just more generally to be able to interact in German competently. How nice is that! And all this at a time when her website she uses to sell her children's books, and language learning books, has been hacked by a human from the other end of the spectrum of human kindness. Hopefully she'll get it back online soon, and perhaps some of the readers of this blog will buy some of her entertaining children's books (or any of the other books she sells on her site), to help them get off the ground in German, or to read to their children, etc. Check it out over at Khorshid Verlag (not an affiliate link or anything, and currently still offline due to the hack) and see if anything appeals :-)
There was some better news when I did the second question of Lesetraining B2 (if you'll recall, the first question I tried didn't go very well for me). I was able to read it pretty well without needing to look up and words and I could answer all the questions pretty easily. I didn't know every word, but I was able to work out any gaps pretty easily, and there weren't many. This might be indicative of the type of question. The first question required you only to match up a short description of a group of students with a list of ads for plays. Perhaps this is deemed easier than the second style of question, which had a few different parts and is probably deemed to need more discernment to answer rather than just matching keywords. And that may be true. It is also possibly the case that I found it much easier because I was already quite familiar with the content about Ötzi the frozen mummy from the copper age. In any case, I plan to add the few words I didn't know to my Anki list and then try the next question. Perhaps not in front of the TV this time :-)
Speaking of that book, I just noticed that the link above has a link to sample pages and listening samples, but when I opened it up I discovered, to my great joy, that it is a PDF of all the answers! How awesome is that! Here I was, thinking I could never know the answers, and they were out there all along. This is going to make the book much more useful! I marked my first two questions and I got all the answers correct, so I'm off to a good start (if I ignore the fact that I wasn't sure/didn't know at all 80 words from the first reading question!).
And just to make it easy for anyone searching the internet for these answers, I'll repeat myself. This link contains ALL THE ANSWERS for Lesetraining B2: Leseverstehen in Progression bis zum Goethe-Zertifikat B2.
One final note - I recently received a long email from my former German teacher in Frankfurt. We correspond semi-regularly, and she has been very helpful, completely out of the kindness of her heart, which I must say I greatly appreciate considering that it's something she normally gets paid for! This letter was quite long, and on a variety of topics, and I look forward to replying to it. One thing she did to be helpful for underline words and phrases that she probably considers to be at the next level I need to learn to progress towards my goal of completing the Goethe-Zertifikat B2 exam, or maybe just more generally to be able to interact in German competently. How nice is that! And all this at a time when her website she uses to sell her children's books, and language learning books, has been hacked by a human from the other end of the spectrum of human kindness. Hopefully she'll get it back online soon, and perhaps some of the readers of this blog will buy some of her entertaining children's books (or any of the other books she sells on her site), to help them get off the ground in German, or to read to their children, etc. Check it out over at Khorshid Verlag (not an affiliate link or anything, and currently still offline due to the hack) and see if anything appeals :-)
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Three months to go...
It's really not much time!
My "book-learning" update: I've done the first two lessons of Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand (Advanced German). I'm glad I know a bit of French otherwise I would probably spend a lot of time just looking up words. So, current status is that I'm on the third lesson. One minor disappointment with Perfectionnement Allemand is that it is the new edition. What's wrong with that? Just a few minor gripes with the actual format of the book. The slightly older versions (same edition in terms of content I believe) were compact, with semi-hard covers and a red-string bookmark. I can't stress how useful I found this older format. Hard-wearing thanks to the semi-hard cover and quality binding meant that my copy of "New German With Ease" has lasted a lot of abuse extremely well. It doesn't have a lot of reference material at the end, but that has just helped by keeping the size down so that it fits into just about any pocket I have, including my pants pocket, which can make it remarkably accessible. And the red-string bookmark means convenient, instant access to the page you're up to. It doesn't bulk up the book like most bookmarks, and because it's attached it saves a little time every time you want to access it. Considering that sometimes all I might have is 20 seconds at a traffic light to look up a phrase I had difficulty with, this quick access can really add up.
Still, I have to say that even just in the first few lessons the quality and quantity of dialog, extra information and new vocabulary seems excellent, as ever. By the third lesson it definitely seems to be beyond the end of New German With Ease. Very impressive stuff.
My other book is Lesetraining B2: Leseverstehen in Progression bis zum Goethe-Zertifikat B2. I haven't done a lot from this book yet. I started reading the first test question and realised that what my former German teacher told me via email about the B2 exam was definitely going to be true for me:
"Im "echten" Test gibt es natürlich Aufgaben zu Hör-/Leseverstehen, zum mündlichen und schriftlichen ausdruck - das ist auf B2-Niveau nicht mehr nur Grammatik. Man braucht einen entsprechenden Wortschatz. Und eine Menge Motivation."
Here was the very first test question and already there felt like a lot of words I didn't know! A lot of motivation would definitely be needed!
Not to worry, though. This was the point, after all. I expected to need to learn a lot of vocabulary, and it doesn't seem the book will disappoint in that respect :-) All good preparation for the test then! The method I've chosen to deal with this is to note down all the words I don't understand (partially or fully) on a piece of paper and then look them up using Linguee to add into a new Anki list. Since I finished doing this, I've reviewed the list a couple of times, and then re-read the question. It's like a whole new world! Now I can come up with answers and feel fairly confident that they're correct (remember that the book has NO ANSWERS!) [EDIT: The answers have been found! See this post for details]. Now I just need to do that for every question in the book and hopefully I'll have covered a whole bunch of vocabulary that I need for the exam but am current missing :-) That might not be easy however - I looked up about 80 words and phrases for the first question alone!
And just three months to go...
My "book-learning" update: I've done the first two lessons of Assimil's Perfectionnement Allemand (Advanced German). I'm glad I know a bit of French otherwise I would probably spend a lot of time just looking up words. So, current status is that I'm on the third lesson. One minor disappointment with Perfectionnement Allemand is that it is the new edition. What's wrong with that? Just a few minor gripes with the actual format of the book. The slightly older versions (same edition in terms of content I believe) were compact, with semi-hard covers and a red-string bookmark. I can't stress how useful I found this older format. Hard-wearing thanks to the semi-hard cover and quality binding meant that my copy of "New German With Ease" has lasted a lot of abuse extremely well. It doesn't have a lot of reference material at the end, but that has just helped by keeping the size down so that it fits into just about any pocket I have, including my pants pocket, which can make it remarkably accessible. And the red-string bookmark means convenient, instant access to the page you're up to. It doesn't bulk up the book like most bookmarks, and because it's attached it saves a little time every time you want to access it. Considering that sometimes all I might have is 20 seconds at a traffic light to look up a phrase I had difficulty with, this quick access can really add up.
Still, I have to say that even just in the first few lessons the quality and quantity of dialog, extra information and new vocabulary seems excellent, as ever. By the third lesson it definitely seems to be beyond the end of New German With Ease. Very impressive stuff.
My other book is Lesetraining B2: Leseverstehen in Progression bis zum Goethe-Zertifikat B2. I haven't done a lot from this book yet. I started reading the first test question and realised that what my former German teacher told me via email about the B2 exam was definitely going to be true for me:
"Im "echten" Test gibt es natürlich Aufgaben zu Hör-/Leseverstehen, zum mündlichen und schriftlichen ausdruck - das ist auf B2-Niveau nicht mehr nur Grammatik. Man braucht einen entsprechenden Wortschatz. Und eine Menge Motivation."
Here was the very first test question and already there felt like a lot of words I didn't know! A lot of motivation would definitely be needed!
Not to worry, though. This was the point, after all. I expected to need to learn a lot of vocabulary, and it doesn't seem the book will disappoint in that respect :-) All good preparation for the test then! The method I've chosen to deal with this is to note down all the words I don't understand (partially or fully) on a piece of paper and then look them up using Linguee to add into a new Anki list. Since I finished doing this, I've reviewed the list a couple of times, and then re-read the question. It's like a whole new world! Now I can come up with answers and feel fairly confident that they're correct (remember that the book has NO ANSWERS!) [EDIT: The answers have been found! See this post for details]. Now I just need to do that for every question in the book and hopefully I'll have covered a whole bunch of vocabulary that I need for the exam but am current missing :-) That might not be easy however - I looked up about 80 words and phrases for the first question alone!
And just three months to go...
Saturday, April 9, 2011
A couple of new arrivals...
Recently the two books I ordered to finish off my preparation for the Goethe Institute B2 exam from bookdepository.co.uk - Lesetraining B2 and Assimil's "Perfectionnement Allemand" (Assimil's advanced German course which is only available for French speakers) arrived. I also recently had a job interview for a job in Paris (I currently live in Sydney, after having moved back from Germany mid last year, so it would require another big move in a very short space of time) and I didn't focus on my German studies so much in the meantime. With these new books, and the time I have to dedicate to the task, I've decided to "mothball" Assimil's German with Ease for at, having completed the whole passive phase and lesson 58 active phase. My original idea was to continue with Perfectionnement Allemand as though it was just a continuation of the one book - do the new lessons as passive phase, and continue with the active phase. The problem is really just time, so I'll just focus on doing the passive phase for Perfectionnement Allemand and the practice exercises in Lesetraining which is designed to help prepare for the written comprehension section of the B2 exam.
One big warning for anyone else looking for a book like Lesetraining B2 - it doesn't have any answers!! I can't find any, but I keep hoping I'm just missing them somehow! Unbelievable... [EDIT: The answers have been found! See this post for details] It'll still be useful though - I've decided to add vocabulary that I don't know to a new Anki list. The logic here is that although the vocabulary used in the B2 exam must be quite large, there is almost certainly a reasonably finite set of what they're able to use in any exam because it has to be fair and consistent to all past and future exam entrants. Actually, now that I've written that it seems both self-evident and nonsensical at the same time. Well, it makes sense to me!
As for "Perfectionnement Allemand", it looks and sounds great. I've listened to the first two lessons, but I haven't gone through with the text. I understood them all pretty much, but I need to read the notes, etc. As I mentioned right at the start, my French isn't great, but I think it'll do the trick, along with some amount of help from Google Translate, Linguee and perhaps some help from the forums on How To Learn Any Language where I've seen someone posting about using this course even though they speak no French. This is possible because the audio is ALL in the target language, though of course it helps massively if you can't understand the parallel translation :-)
One final note - I made a comment on someone's review of Assimil's "German With Ease" and they read my comment and actually amended their review to add an extra star! The reason I felt the need to comment was not that I think this book is the only way to learn German, but my experience with it has just been so positive compared to previous attempts (along with some very simple and very good advice from Benny the Irish Polyglot) that I just feel the need to share what I've learnt along the way. Here is what the original reviewer added to his review in response to my comments:
"April 2011 -
After having tried other German learning techniques, I believe the Assimil approach is one of the best. This method (like all methods) does require perseverance and patience, something I did not really appreciate when I first wrote this review. My comments about timing, etc. still stand, but can be overcome using things like an iPod (which makes it easier to pause and restart), or actually speaking over the audio after you have reviewed it or heard it a few times (see comments to this post from "Crno Srce", they are valuable)."
One big warning for anyone else looking for a book like Lesetraining B2 - it doesn't have any answers!! I can't find any, but I keep hoping I'm just missing them somehow! Unbelievable... [EDIT: The answers have been found! See this post for details] It'll still be useful though - I've decided to add vocabulary that I don't know to a new Anki list. The logic here is that although the vocabulary used in the B2 exam must be quite large, there is almost certainly a reasonably finite set of what they're able to use in any exam because it has to be fair and consistent to all past and future exam entrants. Actually, now that I've written that it seems both self-evident and nonsensical at the same time. Well, it makes sense to me!
As for "Perfectionnement Allemand", it looks and sounds great. I've listened to the first two lessons, but I haven't gone through with the text. I understood them all pretty much, but I need to read the notes, etc. As I mentioned right at the start, my French isn't great, but I think it'll do the trick, along with some amount of help from Google Translate, Linguee and perhaps some help from the forums on How To Learn Any Language where I've seen someone posting about using this course even though they speak no French. This is possible because the audio is ALL in the target language, though of course it helps massively if you can't understand the parallel translation :-)
One final note - I made a comment on someone's review of Assimil's "German With Ease" and they read my comment and actually amended their review to add an extra star! The reason I felt the need to comment was not that I think this book is the only way to learn German, but my experience with it has just been so positive compared to previous attempts (along with some very simple and very good advice from Benny the Irish Polyglot) that I just feel the need to share what I've learnt along the way. Here is what the original reviewer added to his review in response to my comments:
"April 2011 -
After having tried other German learning techniques, I believe the Assimil approach is one of the best. This method (like all methods) does require perseverance and patience, something I did not really appreciate when I first wrote this review. My comments about timing, etc. still stand, but can be overcome using things like an iPod (which makes it easier to pause and restart), or actually speaking over the audio after you have reviewed it or heard it a few times (see comments to this post from "Crno Srce", they are valuable)."
Since I now know that at least one other person in the world found the advice useful, I've reproduced the main part of it here:
***
I do have some specific advice to address your issues. Definitely, listen to the audio. My "ideal" day (the way I was able to practice at the start) is to listen to the new lesson several times, trying to understand it as best I can, and guessing at the meanings of new words. Then I read the lesson + the translations several times while having breakfast, and also read it a few times out loud in German only. After that I would listen to the lesson on repeat on my mobile phone for my whole commute. I used to take public transport, so I would often be able to read along with the audio quite a lot, but I felt too self-conscious to repeat the lessons out loud. Now I have to commute by car, so I just listen to the audio on repeat and steal a few moments here and there at traffic lights to check what I'm hearing, or remind myself of the translation. The most important thing I do is that, after a few initial listenings, I repeat along with the actors at their speed. I start speaking just after they start, and I have to keep up, while also listening to the next few words. Of course, by this stage I know the lesson reasonably well from having read it and listened to it a fair bit, but it still requires being able to hear different words to what you're repeating. Still, it is VERY doable. The lessons get faster and more complex as you go along, but as long as I make sure I can repeat the lesson along with the actors without making mistakes, I never feel that I'm getting lost in later lessons. If you use a digital music player, you will probably find it easier to repeat specific sections of the text, which I sometimes do to practice a passage I find particularly difficult.
As for pronunciation, I basically never used the pronunciation guides for each lesson. Then again, because the text uses bold to indicate the stressed syllable, and German is so easy to pronounce once you know the writing rules and have heard the sounds a few times, you should be able to get a decent pronunciation just from reading. Of course, there's no substitute for listening to the audio and trying constantly to correct your pronunciation to match that of the actors (in particular, you won't know which vowel sounds are long and which are short just from reading the text). Also, listening to the current lesson on repeat allows you to use time when you can't read (driving, exercising, washing the dishes :-), etc).
As for pronunciation, I basically never used the pronunciation guides for each lesson. Then again, because the text uses bold to indicate the stressed syllable, and German is so easy to pronounce once you know the writing rules and have heard the sounds a few times, you should be able to get a decent pronunciation just from reading. Of course, there's no substitute for listening to the audio and trying constantly to correct your pronunciation to match that of the actors (in particular, you won't know which vowel sounds are long and which are short just from reading the text). Also, listening to the current lesson on repeat allows you to use time when you can't read (driving, exercising, washing the dishes :-), etc).
***
More updates to come, in German in the future...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Keeping myself honest...
So, bad progress lately in terms of my active lessons of Assimil. Still working on lesson 57, which shows I just haven't put in enough focussed time on the task. I still listen to SBS' German programme on my morning commutes, and Deutsche-Welle. And I've been listening to Rammstein more lately. It's funny how now I pick up more of the songs, I'm starting to really get into songs that perhaps never really did it for me before. The songs are often so insane that I find myself intrigued to figure them out :-)
I have at least written to a few of my German acquaintances, and got replies. Interestingly I got back a review of the subject of my last post on the website SlowGerman. My former German teacher from back in the Vaterland had a somewhat mixed impression of the content and the site. She seemed to think some of it was a little too confusing for beginners, or that some of the content itself had errors, but that overall it was a very good idea and that she planned to write to the website author to say so. She also has plans to share it with her students I think.
I think what I liked about the site was mainly that I understood enough of the vocabulary that I could either work out the meaning of words I didn't know, or I could look those few words up without feeling like it was just becoming a tedium of incomprehensibility.
In other good news, my new Austrian friends are keen to meet up again to do "something typically Australian". Maybe I'm not a typical Australian enough to know what that should be :-) I would think a barbecue with a game of backyard cricket would be in order, but neither of us has a backyard or a barbecue. I think I'll take them up into the Blue Mountains for the day because, without a car, it can be a pain to get to and from. Not impossible of course - at least it has a train line (unlike much of Sydney).
I also recently discovered that a new work colleague has a German wife and seems to speak fluent German, so we will be chatting a little over lunch some days. Maybe I'll be able to get some practice in twice a week. Not a native speaker, but better than me, which is the main thing :-)
At least I've got some positive news to report, despite the lack of apparent progress in German - I did NOT come last in the 1km swim at Cronulla last Sunday (I beat 25% of entrants, which just shows that a lot of real amateurs like myself go in this event), and I've done a bit of exercise each night since to keep up my momentum - a run that was approaching my old pace, and a fast walk pushing my daughter up the hills in my local area. Tonight I'll get out for something too - I just need to make sure I find the time to advance my German as well.
Only 3 months to go till the B2 exam!
I have at least written to a few of my German acquaintances, and got replies. Interestingly I got back a review of the subject of my last post on the website SlowGerman. My former German teacher from back in the Vaterland had a somewhat mixed impression of the content and the site. She seemed to think some of it was a little too confusing for beginners, or that some of the content itself had errors, but that overall it was a very good idea and that she planned to write to the website author to say so. She also has plans to share it with her students I think.
I think what I liked about the site was mainly that I understood enough of the vocabulary that I could either work out the meaning of words I didn't know, or I could look those few words up without feeling like it was just becoming a tedium of incomprehensibility.
In other good news, my new Austrian friends are keen to meet up again to do "something typically Australian". Maybe I'm not a typical Australian enough to know what that should be :-) I would think a barbecue with a game of backyard cricket would be in order, but neither of us has a backyard or a barbecue. I think I'll take them up into the Blue Mountains for the day because, without a car, it can be a pain to get to and from. Not impossible of course - at least it has a train line (unlike much of Sydney).
I also recently discovered that a new work colleague has a German wife and seems to speak fluent German, so we will be chatting a little over lunch some days. Maybe I'll be able to get some practice in twice a week. Not a native speaker, but better than me, which is the main thing :-)
At least I've got some positive news to report, despite the lack of apparent progress in German - I did NOT come last in the 1km swim at Cronulla last Sunday (I beat 25% of entrants, which just shows that a lot of real amateurs like myself go in this event), and I've done a bit of exercise each night since to keep up my momentum - a run that was approaching my old pace, and a fast walk pushing my daughter up the hills in my local area. Tonight I'll get out for something too - I just need to make sure I find the time to advance my German as well.
Only 3 months to go till the B2 exam!
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Great website for German learners!
Just the other day I came across a really well put-together website called "Slow German". It has lots of articles on topics about German culture and living in Germany, all written in a clear writing style, and each with an accompanying audio file with the text read in (what else) "slow German", i.e., slowly-spoken German. It's all free except for the accompanying study material which is also available to download for 1 euro per article. I don't know what that material is like, but the free material is really good anyway. Everything on the site is in German apart from the site name itself, and the three articles for absolute beginners (top left of homepage), and really that's all you need.
People might worry about listening to slowly-spoken material, but I think there are two ways in which it is useful for the learner. For beginners there is the obvious problem that you may understand nothing of normal speed text, so you will need bridges into the faster pace. I actually found this transition quite short myself as I listened to Deutsche-Welle news in both the slow version and the normal speed version. At first I couldn't believe I was listening to the slow version, it seemed insanely fast! But after a few sessions of listening to the same 2 or 3 news reports in both the slow and the fast versions, spread over a few weeks, I found that I was very comfortable with the fast version. The amount of actual time spent on it was only small really, so it was a great boost to my confidence! Now I listen to the news at full speed and am hardly ever lost, often understanding almost everything. There's still more work to do, of course, but I really think that the use of the bridge of the slow version of the news followed by the fast version, and having the text to read occasionally, made all the difference.
I plan on doing some more of this sort of work in the near future - not just the news reports, but with other articles that Deutsche-Welle makes available with text and audio. I'll have to do the translations myself of course, and when I do I'll post them here. This is to help expand my vocabulary beyond the limited set of what appears in most newsflash style updates. That's not to say I don't understand any other articles on DW - generally, I understand most of them to a greater or lesser extent, but it's something that needs work.
My current "book" learning update is that I've just finished lesson 56 (active phase) of Assimil's New German with Ease. Certainly not the two-per-day pace I said I would achieve, but better than my usual. I've also managed to slip in several kilometres of laps in the pool to prepare for this weekend's Shark Island Ocean Swim down at Cronulla Beach (just one of Sydney's many great beaches). Considering I haven't done much dedicated swimming really since early 2008, I've got into the groove again pretty quickly. Luckily, my mate only wanted to do the 1km swim (in the ocean, that's more like 1.5km at least of pool swimming), so it's all I had to commit to as well :-)
People might worry about listening to slowly-spoken material, but I think there are two ways in which it is useful for the learner. For beginners there is the obvious problem that you may understand nothing of normal speed text, so you will need bridges into the faster pace. I actually found this transition quite short myself as I listened to Deutsche-Welle news in both the slow version and the normal speed version. At first I couldn't believe I was listening to the slow version, it seemed insanely fast! But after a few sessions of listening to the same 2 or 3 news reports in both the slow and the fast versions, spread over a few weeks, I found that I was very comfortable with the fast version. The amount of actual time spent on it was only small really, so it was a great boost to my confidence! Now I listen to the news at full speed and am hardly ever lost, often understanding almost everything. There's still more work to do, of course, but I really think that the use of the bridge of the slow version of the news followed by the fast version, and having the text to read occasionally, made all the difference.
I plan on doing some more of this sort of work in the near future - not just the news reports, but with other articles that Deutsche-Welle makes available with text and audio. I'll have to do the translations myself of course, and when I do I'll post them here. This is to help expand my vocabulary beyond the limited set of what appears in most newsflash style updates. That's not to say I don't understand any other articles on DW - generally, I understand most of them to a greater or lesser extent, but it's something that needs work.
My current "book" learning update is that I've just finished lesson 56 (active phase) of Assimil's New German with Ease. Certainly not the two-per-day pace I said I would achieve, but better than my usual. I've also managed to slip in several kilometres of laps in the pool to prepare for this weekend's Shark Island Ocean Swim down at Cronulla Beach (just one of Sydney's many great beaches). Considering I haven't done much dedicated swimming really since early 2008, I've got into the groove again pretty quickly. Luckily, my mate only wanted to do the 1km swim (in the ocean, that's more like 1.5km at least of pool swimming), so it's all I had to commit to as well :-)
Saturday, March 19, 2011
A spanner in the works...
So, last night something strange happened to me. A native French ex-colleague with whom I used to work in the UK, wrote to me from his new job in Paris... To say that his company was desperately looking for a skilled PS3 programmer. Before moving back to Sydney due to the imminent arrival of our first child, games programming had been the focus of my career for the better part of 8 years, including working mainly on the PS3 for the last 3 years. In Sydney there are no real games jobs, so I've ended up doing something else.
Now, I'm not devoted to the games industry - it has LOTS of problems. High pressure, not great rewards financially for the hours, erratic workplaces, lots of instability. It also has plenty of rewards... Coupled with the prospect of a job in a city I would love to live in (Paris) - it is certainly very attractive.
This has thrown a little spanner into the works, so to speak. Especially for my German studies, as you can imagine. I wonder if I should bring forward my plans for studying French Assimil-style instead. I'm not even sure I'm seriously consider the possibility of a job overseas again - we just finished setting up back in Sydney! What if we don't like it there? We would just be ping-ponging across the world, and my job prospects outside of games will only get worse as a result.
Well... To hell with it all :-) I've decided that, in the absence of better information, the best course of action is to push on with my original plan, at full speed!
What am I doing now? Well, I've done lessons 51 and 52 active phase of Assimil's German with Ease. It feels as if I should be able to do 2 of these lessons a day without breaking too much of a sweat. Perhaps once I get into the higher lessons it will slow down again (the sentences get longer, and the constructions a bit more involved) but for now I should be aiming for 2 per day.
I have now ordered "Using German" - well, the French-language version (all that's current it appears) called "Perfectionnement Allemand". I shouldn't have too much trouble following it given my knowledge of German and French, but I'm sure some idioms will escape me. I'm not worried though - if you think you will encounter a problem, chances are someone before you has already encountered it and posted about it on the internet :-) In this case, because Assimil doesn't appear to sell an English version of the advanced German course (and it sounds like they never did), people have been forced to make do with the French version regardless of the fact that they don't speak French. That's how good Assimil is! If someone who doesn't speak French at all didn't let that put him off advancing his German knowledge, then neither should !
Once it arrives, I'll mix doing a passive phase lesson from the advance book with an active phase lesson from the beginner's book, as though it were just a direct continuation. I'll report on how that goes once I start it.
The only other book I ordered is one for reading practice in German specifically for the B2 test. I figure this is one of the main parts where they test out your vocabulary and understanding more than many other sections (as far as I can tell, at B2 level, the listening comprehension tests, and speaking tests, are more forgiving in terms of actual complexity of the material) and I really don't want to stress about this, especially given the time limits. It's definitely something you can just sit with a book and practice, so I will soon be doing just that - if I can find the time!
As for speaking German, no upcoming plans to meet up with more native speakers, but I will definitely need to find more time for this. Not sure how! This week I'll be doing some complete last minute training for a 1km ocean swim event which a friend just rang me up about today. I've swum about 3 or 4 times in the ocean since returning to Australia in July last year, each time about 800+m. Despite that, I'm sure I can do it. I just also want to make sure that I make some sort of decent effort to prepare in the 6 days I have available to me :-) I REFUSE TO COME LAST!
Now if only I could somehow practice German while swimming. Hmmmm...
Now, I'm not devoted to the games industry - it has LOTS of problems. High pressure, not great rewards financially for the hours, erratic workplaces, lots of instability. It also has plenty of rewards... Coupled with the prospect of a job in a city I would love to live in (Paris) - it is certainly very attractive.
This has thrown a little spanner into the works, so to speak. Especially for my German studies, as you can imagine. I wonder if I should bring forward my plans for studying French Assimil-style instead. I'm not even sure I'm seriously consider the possibility of a job overseas again - we just finished setting up back in Sydney! What if we don't like it there? We would just be ping-ponging across the world, and my job prospects outside of games will only get worse as a result.
Well... To hell with it all :-) I've decided that, in the absence of better information, the best course of action is to push on with my original plan, at full speed!
What am I doing now? Well, I've done lessons 51 and 52 active phase of Assimil's German with Ease. It feels as if I should be able to do 2 of these lessons a day without breaking too much of a sweat. Perhaps once I get into the higher lessons it will slow down again (the sentences get longer, and the constructions a bit more involved) but for now I should be aiming for 2 per day.
I have now ordered "Using German" - well, the French-language version (all that's current it appears) called "Perfectionnement Allemand". I shouldn't have too much trouble following it given my knowledge of German and French, but I'm sure some idioms will escape me. I'm not worried though - if you think you will encounter a problem, chances are someone before you has already encountered it and posted about it on the internet :-) In this case, because Assimil doesn't appear to sell an English version of the advanced German course (and it sounds like they never did), people have been forced to make do with the French version regardless of the fact that they don't speak French. That's how good Assimil is! If someone who doesn't speak French at all didn't let that put him off advancing his German knowledge, then neither should !
Once it arrives, I'll mix doing a passive phase lesson from the advance book with an active phase lesson from the beginner's book, as though it were just a direct continuation. I'll report on how that goes once I start it.
The only other book I ordered is one for reading practice in German specifically for the B2 test. I figure this is one of the main parts where they test out your vocabulary and understanding more than many other sections (as far as I can tell, at B2 level, the listening comprehension tests, and speaking tests, are more forgiving in terms of actual complexity of the material) and I really don't want to stress about this, especially given the time limits. It's definitely something you can just sit with a book and practice, so I will soon be doing just that - if I can find the time!
As for speaking German, no upcoming plans to meet up with more native speakers, but I will definitely need to find more time for this. Not sure how! This week I'll be doing some complete last minute training for a 1km ocean swim event which a friend just rang me up about today. I've swum about 3 or 4 times in the ocean since returning to Australia in July last year, each time about 800+m. Despite that, I'm sure I can do it. I just also want to make sure that I make some sort of decent effort to prepare in the 6 days I have available to me :-) I REFUSE TO COME LAST!
Now if only I could somehow practice German while swimming. Hmmmm...
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