I know it's been a minute since my last post, but here's a short update. There's just over 5 weeks left until I fly to Germany. I'm excited to say that I found a flatshare and will be moving in with two German gals, and from our Skype convos, they're not afraid to speak German to me, despite knowing that their English is better than my German. Before the semester starts, I'll be participating in a 5-week-long intensive course, which I'm hoping will end up pushing me close-ish to B2. From looking through Goethe Institute exams (as well as the framework) I reckon I'm around B1 reading and listening, and A2 writing and speaking. I've decided to say screw it, and take all of my university courses in German.
I'm currently still reading through "Eine kurze Weltgeschichte fuer junge Leser", as well as the Harry Potter series. I don't really need to look anything up anymore, and my brain is adjusted to the structure of the language. I no longer struggle with longer sentences with multiple components, and words that I've studied in Anki are standing out to me while I read, and sticking better. I don't want to say I've had a breakthrough, but it kind of feels like it. I feel like I can read these YA novels for pleasure, which is huge for me. I'm also not bothering to submit the read pages to the Super Challenge until I finish the book, as it's much easier that way. With this increased focus on reading, I haven't watched too much TV or film, but I do have a couple of Tatort episodes waiting for me that I'll probably watch over the weekend.
Once August hits, I'm going to formally go over some of the grammar concepts that I haven't "learned" yet, but still understand and recognise when I see them, in preparation for my course in September. Until then I'm going to continue to devour content and beef up my vocabulary.
Lastly, I've decided to study Russian...in German. I was torn between Russian and Swedish, but ultimately chose Russian because Swedish is not as "useful", and would probably be easy to teach myself later on anyways, once my German is up to snuff!