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Deutsch by Weihnachten (Rätsel TAC’15) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4122 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 1 of 8 31 December 2014 at 5:31pm | IP Logged |
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Deutsch by Weihnachten (Rätsel TAC’15)
Read this log online at http://language.onvagrancy.com Index Page 1: • Study Log: 07 January 2015 Team Rätsel TAC 2015 ---- Motivation While I've dabbled with German for traveling, I've never made a serious study of it, and frankly, I never intended to. Deutsch struck me as.. boring. It's spoken in only few countries, while not an issue for me normally (read: see my Quechua and Albanian studies), the countries it is spoken in are quite similar to my own (USA) in terms of the arbitrary "adventurousness" rating I use to judge these things. Then of course love changed everything (cheeky sarcasm). My current partner speaks a lovely dialect of German from Tirol in Austria, and despite the fact she speaks English fluently, I find myself motivated to learn German to converse with the monolingual members of her family and generally feel less like an outsider when traveling through her Heimat. The fact I've ready and constant access to a native speaker to help my studies has nothing to do with it I'm sure. The goal then is to be conversationally fluent defined as (B2+ to C1) by next Christmas. Not mentioned here as its not relative to TAC, but I'll be continuing my Spanish and Albanian studies, albeit at a slower pace. Specifically: with 10-15 hours study minimum per week I want to be sailing somewhere between B2 and C1 by December 2015 with skills in the order of: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, in that order. Language Background (in brief) I'm a beginner in German with a somewhat mixed history in self-study. German is the first language I'm self-studying where I'm not immersed in the native environment, or taking a class / using a tutor. German has also has a plethora of materials available online and offline, which I predict will be astoundingly helpful. This is compared to Arabic, Spanish, Quechua, and Albanian, which I studied in a native environment, sometimes with a teacher, with whatever resources were available (plenty for Spanish/Arabic, less for Albanian, almost none for Quechua). der Plan (work in progress) I've gathered a venerable cornucopia of resources for German, too many perhaps. Method wise, I'm a huge fan of the multi-track approach, which suits the large buffet of materials I plan to use. The one sentence summary of the multi track approach is to use multiple resources at the same time, both courses and native materials. Materials wise, I prefer electronic materials and tools to dead tree or spinny-disc editions. Mainly because I live+travel by bicycle, and kilos of language learning products just won't fit in my panniers. Generally I prefer EPUB/MOBI versions of books to PDFs, as I love using my Kindle. Courses To begin, for the beginner courses that provide piecemeal introductions to vocab and grammar I'll be using the following coursebooks:
Unusually for me, Assimil is the real deadtree version, I've always wanted to give Assimil a go, and I got it on sale during Christmas in Austria. It along with a small notebook and some loose leaf papers are all the non-electronic resources I'll be using. As for the latter, I'm not sure which of the latter I'll use yet. I might start with all four, then whittle down to the two I like best. Other options are:
Listening The first few months will be quite passive, lots of reading and listening. So daily listening will include the audio from Assimil and whatever other coursebook I choose, plus at some point I'll throw in some more comprehensible input from the following sources:
Admittedly this list is short on real native materials, and I'd rather start being exposed to those sooner rather than later. I'll be on the lookout for suitable A1, A2, B1 native audio resources, so if you know any please share! A list of audio/video links I'll work through:
Reading Intensive reading for the first few months, until I find I'm able to read extensively. The Listening-Reading Method (L-R) is a technique I've always wanted to give a go, but acquiring bilingual texts with accompanying audio was nearly impossible in my previous languages, let alone texts with an interesting subject. If any language has L-R materials available, German should be it. Short stories I would like to avoid, instead favoring longer novels or non-fiction books. I'd rather not read Harry Potter, but it is always a choice, others are:
Books I Want To Read A list of books I'd like to read in German provided I can find Audio and or an Ebook. Given the sorry state of country DRM restrictions, I might have to change my Kindle account to Germany. Full Reading List 
Exercises To reinforce my learning I'll perform several active "exercises": 1. Scriptorum with Assimil and other texts (read, write+read, read) 2. Iverson's Wordlists or Goldlists (unsure which yet) 3. Custom Anki decks Scriptorum technique is well documented, I won't discuss it here. Iverson's Wordlists and Goldlists are two methods I've wanted to experiment with for awhile as it involves a writing component that I find is more useful for me than typing. Advice on which technique to use is welcome. Anki Decks, we likely all know these. 90% of my cards have an audio clip, culled from source material (audio books, coursebook cds), or from a native speaker. I used to input most of the material from courses into Anki, however I now find that quite tedious and only marginally useful. Now I mainly use Anki as a receptacle for language I stumble across in context. Usually this means I hear a phrase, word, or sentence from in real life when not actively studying and want to capture it for study later. For example when ski touring the other day I ran across the following cross. Using my Android phone, I snapped a photo, cropped it into AnkiDroid, had my native-speaking partner read it aloud (into AnkiDroid), and voila! 
Most of my Anki decks are built this way: language used in personal, memorable context. On the Go or The Hidden Moments For those hidden moments (to borrow a phrase from Barry Farber) when I'm not doing anything, I'll have my smartphone handy and I'll cycle through:
Future Resources Depending on time and motivation, I would like to use the following services:
Posting this on New Years Eve 2014, just in time. Here we go! Questions and suggestions are always welcome. Edited by Ramblurr on 08 January 2015 at 12:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4315 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 8 02 January 2015 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
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This looks super impressive. I am looking forward to seeing how your study goes. After Arabic German should be fairly straightforward.
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| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4122 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 3 of 8 02 January 2015 at 2:20pm | IP Logged |
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I find writing for HTLAL to be incredibly frustrating, especially when it involves
formatting. Since I like to liven up my posts with formatting, I'm going to be posting to an external blog and mirroring all the content here. The blog is at http://language.onvagrancy.com and I just updated it with posts for the TAC 2015: here are the relevant posts: TAC 2015 introduction German TAC 2015 Study Plan It is a complementary to my travel/tramping blog On Vagrancy. Again: I will be posting here for those who wish to stay on HTLAL. Edited by Ramblurr on 07 January 2015 at 12:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4122 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 4 of 8 08 January 2015 at 12:07pm | IP Logged |
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Study Log 07 January 2015
Read this online: Study Log 07 January 2015 Yesterday was my first intensive day of German study of 2015 as it was my first full day back from the holiday travels. I was traveling in Tyrol, Austria. There was lots of skiing, hiking, shivering, and of course plenty of German speaking. My goal, if you remember, is to learn enough German by Christmas 2015 to be able to converse proficiently with my partner’s parents and monolingual friends. Getting my passive ability up to the level where I can comfortably read novels and works of non-fiction would be swell as well. It was somewhat unfortunate I hadn’t started my German learning project before I arrived, but the partial immersion was at least a great kick off to my studies. A short summary of my German activities on 07 January 2015. Assimil: 30 minutes, lesson 3 Deutsch im Blick (DiB): 2 hours, chapter 1 Pimsleur: 1 hour, lessons 2 and 3 Anki Reviews: 10 minutes Readlang: 45 minutes, sprechen sie deutsch? from DiB, 50 new words Duolingo: 10 minutes, two lessons (Numbers 4 + 5) Vocab Iverson’s: 50 minutes Vocab Goldlist: 20 minutes --- Total: 5 hours Reflection Assimil is a bit basic for me at this point. I understand the dialogues on the first pass, without reading, but that will soon change once I get past the perfunctory “Hi, hello, I am from, where are you from, goodbye” stage. I was very excited to start Deutsch im Blick, a free textbook produced by the University of Texas, because it has tons of supplementary materials, audio recordings, videos, and a great supporting grammar site, Grim Grammar. Yesterday was my first day with the book, and I’m a bit disappointed. DiB, being a university course, is designed to be used by a teacher in a classroom setting, consequently, most of the exercises (which seem quite fun) require interaction among your classmates. However, I, sitting alone in my living room, have to classmates to run the exercises with. This wouldn’t be such an issue, as I can just skip those exercises. The real problem with DiB is that it lacks an answer key, an oversight of mine I only realized when I was trying to correct my answers to the listening comprehension videos. Being a University textbook, I understand why an answer key isn’t published publicly, University students can be lazy cheating bastards, I know, I was one. Moving forward, we’ll see if I continue to use DiB or not. I’ll likely continue to use it as a source of vocabulary and comprehensible audio/video input. The reason for using DiB is that I want to be working through a textbook alongside Assimil to pick up more grammar and a spattering of vocabulary. Now I’ll probably use german/deutsch-warum-nicht/s-2548">Warum Nicht?, Teach Yourself, or Colloquial German. As for the other tools, Pimsleur, Duolingo, Readlang, and Anki, I’ll write more about them in a later entry. Iverson’s and Goldlist are worth a quick mention however. Yesterday was my first time trying both. They are both admirable methods, but completely different and only time could tell which is more useful. Unfortunately I don’t want to make such a study using different words in each method to see which one is most effective. I’ll continue with them both for a week or two, but already I’m forming an idea about how to continue. Iverson’s wordlists are closely related to Anki/SRS. One problem I’ve had with Anki in the past is not knowing the answers to my cards as I put them in. This results in tons of missed cards, that you never really pick up and demotivation in the long run. Anki is fabulous as a review tool but not for learning fresh material. I think I’ll be using a modified Iverson’s where I omit the second repetition/review stage. Instead I’ll fill out the first three columns with new vocabulary, then enter them into Anki and let it handle repetition using its SRS. Goldlist is interesting, particularly the focus on trying not to remember/cram the words. It doesn’t take much time and it’s enjoyable so I’ll continue it for a few months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4016 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 5 of 8 08 January 2015 at 12:32pm | IP Logged |
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Intensive studying makes wonders. I improved greatly after August' 6WC primarily because only 6WC could
motivate me to sit with textbooks, hehe. So, keep up, don't forget to have some lazy days and your German will grow like a flower in a sunny day :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4315 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 8 08 January 2015 at 2:52pm | IP Logged |
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Have you looked at Readlang? I'm finding it super helpful to generate Anki cards from books.
I also use Firelang, a free extension for Firefox, that also makes generating Anki cards from text really easy. After a lot of screwing around with Anki over the last couple of years, what I have found really helpful is simply to generate a context sentence with word you are interested bolded, and then a rough translation of the word as answer. Don't worry about gender, plural forms, conjugation of verbs etc. What I realized after a long time is that all I need to do is get my passive reading/listening ability up and then everything else will follow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jbadg76421 Groupie United States Joined 4170 days ago 51 posts - 92 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French, Esperanto | Message 7 of 8 09 January 2015 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, your log looks amazing! Stick with Assimil, it's worth it! Those little books really are "magic" (well, MOST of them, there's a few duds, or so I hear...) Viel Spaß!
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| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4122 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 8 of 8 09 January 2015 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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@patrickwilken, yea I'm using readlang already. I quite like it. I also plan to compare similar tools like LWT, Lingq, and lingocracy (is that right?), but for the two texts I've read so far, Readlang has been very useful.
I'm eating through my free phrase translations though :| Your Anki technique is quite similar to mine. I use to spend too much time hand crafting my cards, now I do it a little more free form and spend more time reviewing. Did two Assimil lessons today. It's great so far. I'm ecstatic to finally be studying a language Assimil has with an English base. --- During one of my study breaks today I worked on preparing some aligned texts. Using the Listening-Reading method is one of my goals for German study, and reading texts that interest me is important. That is as opposed to whatever public-domain or commercially available texts there are that may or more likely, won't be so interesting or suitable for my level. After no more than 30 minutes with ebook-convert from calibre, hunalign, and this great blog post I was able to cook up this: 
I was incredibly lucky I think. I had to do zero editing to the text files after conversion except for deleting extraneous front matter (title, dedication, etc). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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