Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sun Apr 16, 2017 6:15 pm

I'm giving myself 14 weeks to finish the vocab as that's how many full weeks I have until I go to Germany - conveniently there are also 14 more chapters that I need to finish. This should be doable as some chapters (like chapter 5) will not take a full week.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sat Apr 29, 2017 10:04 pm

Languages that aren't German: I think my current plan is to not study anything other than German between now and the end of September. If I do end up going to France for a weekend while I'm in Europe this summer I'll figure out how to speak enough French to be a nice tourist (which I've done easily in the past), but otherwise it's all German. I will be very tempted by other languages - but I shouldn't bend to those temptations.

German: I spoke to one of the German professors at my school yesterday and was invited to sit in on lectures and other things at Deutsche Sommerschule am Pazifik this summer for the three weeks before I go to Berlin. I need to touch base with one of the other professors and make sure that she's also ok with crashing their party of sorts, but otherwise it'd be really good for me. It's a forced immersion environment, like Middlebury's summer programs (except it's only for intermediate and advanced students), and it just so happens to be a 5-10 minute drive from my house.

Vocab wise I'm still steadily making my way through the Grund und Aufbauwortschatz book. I'm currently a third of the way through chapter six and hope to finish it by tomorrow. I decided that the smartest thing is to just extract the hard/unknown words from each chapter because otherwise I'm just wasting too much time. I've also decided that I need to make some sort of schedule or to-do list for language learning stuff (among other things). I'll test it out this week and see how it goes and what tweaks need to be made.

I bought Klett's Mit Erfolg zum TestDaF for my iPad. I generally prefer hard copy versions of study materials but given that I can play the audio from Klett's iOS app and I can print out some of the exercises, this is a useful format. I also think I'm going to finally bite the bullet and pay for a tutor on iTalki. I need the speaking practice and another person to help keep me accountable. I already have a list of people who have experience in tutoring people for and grading TestDaF or other language exams.

Other stuff: School is still going well but I'm very busy (hence one reason why I can't focus on other languages). I just got a research assistant job which is very exciting and might be getting a second one which will last through next school year. This is a testament to why it's good to foster academic relationships with professors. The one involves me transcribing video/audio data from English language learners and the second will be recording a series of four conversations and potentially transcribing those conversations.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sun Apr 30, 2017 6:27 pm

Turns out my listening skills are in better shape than I thought they were. This morning I listened to an episode of the podcast Einhundert on Deutschlandfunk Nova and understood almost the entire podcast. I listened to an older episode about a son whose mother is German and father is Iraqi (though has been a German citizen for longer than I've been alive) and how he is reconnecting with his father via learning Arabic. I also listened to part of a radio show on ARD called The Radio Feature though I ended up falling back asleep part of the way through.

I found both shows via googling for German podcasts that are like the show This American Life (my favorite radio show/podcast that I don't listen to enough). If anyone has other suggestions please feel free to tell me. While I watch a bunch of German TV, watching TV gives me the crutch (of sorts) of visual content to help with my comprehension of the verbal content. Thus I need to make sure that I'm getting radio stuff too, though it appears things aren't as bad off as I feared they would be in terms of my ability to understand German radio programs/podcasts.

Goals for today:
Finish my syntax homework
Spend two hours transcribing for my research assistant job (it's such a long process)
Read at least one article for my philosophy class (ugh)
Quizlet
Work on the first section of the reading section of my TestDaF book
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 08, 2017 8:51 pm

For my own records - this thread about Goethe B2 test preparation is really useful.

I was finally able to formally start working out of Mit Erfolg zum TestDaF last night. I only had time to finish the first chapter which deals with the first section of the test (which is very similar to the first section of the Goethe B2 reading section). One upside of having the interactive book on my iPad is that you can type some of your answers in and it'll correct them for you (and it'll reset once you exit out of it). The major con is that while you can print some of the pages, it prints most of them in such a way that it's too small to read them. You can highlight within the app but I'd rather do it on a piece of paper. I still think the pros outweigh the cons for me, but it's annoying (and note, I would likely just end up making a photocopy of the stuff i wanted to highlight because I don't write in my books).

I also got two new books from Powells a few days ago. One is about a German woman who grew up in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and the other is about a woman who goes on a gap year (or likely years) between getting her abi and going to uni. She traveled around the world interviewing people her age and then wrote a book about it (if only I had the money to do that...). In total the books were under $14, but I highly doubt I'll have time to even get a quarter of the way through one before the end of the school year, which is in mid June. I figure they'll make for good plane reading on my way to Germany.

I am, not so shockingly, suffering from "too many resources"-itis mixed with "I get really distracted when it comes to language learning." In terms of books that are relevant to the TestDaF, I have Mit Erfolg zum TestDaF, C-Grammatik, the Grund und Aufbauwortschatz book (which goes through B2 vocab), and then the Goethe Institut ebook library has a ton of grammar useful books as well. If I wasn't in school right now/had time then this wouldn't be as big of an issue, but I'm in school, have six concerts in the span of one month (five more left as of today - it could be worse, I'm in choir with someone who has 9 in the same time span), have a research assistant position, have to take care of my knee, and then there's the depression which brings with it anhedonia (among other things). What is good is that just about every show in German that I listen to will be helpful in terms of listening - that's the one thing I'm not super worried about and that I inadvertantly work on all the time. I'm also realizing that I can't focus at coffee shops in such a way that allows for me to work on vocab in any flashcard program. That's probably fine because there are a billion other things that I need to do, but it's annoying.

If I were to take advice from the post that I linked to at the head of this post, It would be smart to really focus on Mit Erfolg zum TestDaF. Work through the book, make a note of the vocab that I don't know, and study that vocabulary. I also really need to re-up my grammar. I should really work on Nomen-Verb-Verbeindungen which I think is going to be a matter of a ton of memorization. In the German thread (which had a proliferation of really good posts yesterday) someone mentioned a rather large list of them in the C-Grammatik book and, low and behold, there's about five and a half pages worth of them with nice example sentences in the back of the book. I might end up just physically writing them out on notecards with the sentences and then maybe creating some sort of Anki deck with them. I just can't totally imagine that digital flashcards will be the best for me in terms of studying these.

So yea - I guess my immediate goals in terms of german should be:
Continue with Mit Erfolg zum TestDaF
Slow down a bit with the vocab book
Start on learning Nomen-Verb-Verbeindungen
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 08, 2017 10:11 pm

It turns out that Marija from Deutsch mit Marija has four videos going over a total of 30 Nomen-Verb-Verbendungen. They can be found here:
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby zenmonkey » Sun May 14, 2017 10:51 am

aokoye wrote:I found both shows via googling for German podcasts that are like the show This American Life (my favorite radio show/podcast that I don't listen to enough). If anyone has other suggestions please feel free to tell me.


I too am looking for German quality podcasts - here is a short list of the ones I'm working my way through:

WDR - Die Sendung mit der Maus
http://www.podcast.de/podcast/4131/
Since the 1970s the WDR has been producing this show for children. The broadcast is broadcast with the mouse in all major national radio stations. Posts from the broadcast with the mouse are broadcasted in nearly one hundred countries.

Kack & Sachgeschichten - Der Podcast mit Klugschiss!
What philosophical approaches represent the figures in Watchmen - and where does Spongebob poop?

The Kack and Sachgeschichte throw an analytical view on pop culture, games, series and pursue a goal: the perfect mix of crap and surplus value.
http://www.podcast.de/podcast/613365/

ARD - Radio Tatort
Goose bumps of criminal podcast. High quality.
http://www.podcast.de/podcast/13063/

WDR 2 - Kabarett Podcast
Comedy and satire from WDR 2
http://www.podcast.de/podcast/4437/

GEO Audio
Background stories, interviews with GEO reporters and experts - travel focused. New podcast every Thursday.
http://www.podcast.de/podcast/2166/

Puls
In depth topics - "No topic, no event or fate is too far off, too slanting or too complex for our reporters and moderators. Expect the unexpected!”
http://www.br-online.de/podcast/mp3-dow ... zial.shtml

... I'm still looking...
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 15, 2017 11:14 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
aokoye wrote:I found both shows via googling for German podcasts that are like the show This American Life (my favorite radio show/podcast that I don't listen to enough). If anyone has other suggestions please feel free to tell me.


I too am looking for German quality podcasts - here is a short list of the ones I'm working my way through:

I keep meaning to respond to this but also keep forgetting - thanks for your list! I will make my way through some of the episodes this week. I've been listening to German radio stations via Deutsche Radio on my phone instead of what I normally listen to (my favorite classical music radio station) for the past week and a half which has been nice. I'll have to listen to one or two of the podcasts tomorrow on my way to and from therapy.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 15, 2017 11:27 pm

I'm so glad that reading has gotten easier for me. I read the first 65 pages of Sabine Kuegler's memoire Dschungelkind over the weekend. I was on vacation at the coast this weekend which meant lots of time for reading.

I'm slowly, or perhaps quickly, coming to realize how little time and energy I have to do anything other than school and physical therapy. I have school five days a week and then do knee specific PT stuff three days a week and bike at least twice a week (during which I'm focused on building quad strength). Lately I've been listening to the news in German while I do PT stuff so that's good at least. I seriously can't wait until school is out and I can actually devote most of my time to German.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sat Jun 10, 2017 3:39 am

School is almost over for the term which means I'll have more time to devote to German and preparing for TestDaF.

I mentioned in the German group that a friend of mine connected me with a German woman who is living in Portland and has experience tutoring people in preparation for TestDaF and DSH. We met up this afternoon and we definitely hit it off! We talked for three hours or so. Three fourth's of it was in German and the rest in English.

We're going to meet once a week for 90 minutes to work specifically on TestDaF prep (her rate is 20 Euros per 90 min). She's also going to create a lesson plan to maximize our time which will include me doing homework. I have a feeling she has a lot of experience with Asian music students who needed to take TestDaF or the DSH in order to study at German universities. She seems to know what trips students up and thus what she will need to work on me with regardless of my level (little, but important, things like how to concentrate during the speaking session). She's also very much a stickler for good grammar.

It seems very clear that she understands the importance of the test and the importance of speaking good German. She was saying that the friend of mine who connected us wants to get a speaking group of four or five people together but that she thinks really what I need is one on one focused preparation for TestDaF.

Needless to say, I got really lucky. Very very lucky. Affordable German lessons in person once a week for the 5 weeks leading up to going to Berlin, with a person who seems experienced and knowledgeable. We also just get along well and seem to have similar interests and ideologies so far. I also was able to understand just about everything she said so yay for listening comprehension! She was speaking Hochdeutsch with me but she also speaks the Berliner dialect. She grew up in Berlin but her parents were both professors who demanded that she speak Hochdeutsch at home.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Wed Jun 14, 2017 4:40 pm

After my finals today I can spend all of my time on German, reading a textbook about multilingualism to prepare for a class next term, and cycling. Wish me luck!
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