Stuck at an A1 Level - German

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jeffers
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Re: Stuck at an A1 Level - German

Postby jeffers » Thu May 25, 2017 11:39 am

keepcalm1 wrote:I would say when i do think of how to say things in German, the vocabulary is there mostly but the word order is not correct which puzzles me how its that bad.


keepcalm1 wrote:I agree that the solution is to speak more, however lack of vocabulary isn't the problem, it is forming sentences and past the basics (usually found in textbooks) I find it difficult to prepare my reply in a meaningful conversation D:


You understand the language, you have the vocabulary, but you just can't get it out in the right way when you try to speak? I'm going to go against the general opinion here and say take a short break from trying to speak. Instead focus on writing skills for a while. Set a personal challenge to write a short and simple paragraph regularly, and perhaps submit it on Lang-8 to get it checked. When writing you can take more time to think about word order, look things up, find model sentences to use, etc. As you improve at writing your ability to form sentences for speaking should improve as well.

Building on that, you can use Boris Shekhtman's technique he calls "language islands". Write a couple paragraphs about a topic you want to speak about and then memorize those paragraphs. Then when you get into a conversation about the topic and you find you're struggling, you can switch to a chunk you've memorized to give yourself a bit of confidence and a break from "swimming in the open waters".

EDIT: I can't believe I left this out, but shadowing will also be very effective in loosening your tongue. It should help you because you don't have to worry about forming the sentences for yourself at this point. I was not a fan of shadowing, but I was surprised how much easier it was for me to speak Hindi after I spent a month or so shadowing Assimil lessons before a trip to India.
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Re: Stuck at an A1 Level - German

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu May 25, 2017 2:39 pm

I'm in the same place with my German at the moment. I understand quite a bit and have a pretty good vocabulary thanks to its similarity to Norwegian, but I haven't yet learned to speak. I was in a similar place in Spanish too, but I've been working on it the past few months and I've been making such good progress that I plan to try the same thing in German this summer.

With Spanish, I signed up for the Output Challenge in order to force myself to work on my output. It requires writing 50 000 words and recording 50 hours of speech over the course of the year. I'm way behind, but even the little that I've done has made a big difference. Lately, I've been working on it almost every day. I write about 200 words and then I record myself speaking spontaneously for about 10-15 minutes. Frequently, the writing portion and the speaking portion cover a lot of the same topics which means that I have a bit of time while writing to look up words and think how to express things. However, I don't record myself reading what I wrote, nor do I look at it while I speak and since 10 minutes or so of speech usually covers a lot more than 200 words, I end up going into more detail in the spoken part.

At first, it took a long time to write 200 words and the recordings were full of pauses and ums, but I've noticed a big difference in my fluency and in the ease with which I speak and write. Even though I don't have anyone to correct me, I find that I get better at self-correcting as I go on. The process has been somewhat unpleasant and I hated recording myself at first. I was just so bad at speaking when I started. But after only a little over 6 hours of recorded speech, I can already say that it really works.
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Re: Stuck at an A1 Level - German

Postby blaurebell » Thu May 25, 2017 3:43 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:At first, it took a long time to write 200 words and the recordings were full of pauses and ums, but I've noticed a big difference in my fluency and in the ease with which I speak and write. Even though I don't have anyone to correct me, I find that I get better at self-correcting as I go on. The process has been somewhat unpleasant and I hated recording myself at first. I was just so bad at speaking when I started. But after only a little over 6 hours of recorded speech, I can already say that it really works.


Cool! That's such a nice strategy, I think I'll put in some of the same as soon as I'm through my GdUdE + FSI grammar mission! Really interesting to hear that you're making such fast progress! If you're already noticing a pronounced improvement after 6 hours, it will be interesting to see the progress after 50h! And you even have a proper record of your progress where you can compare your first video with the last one in the challenge! Thanks for describing the process!
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Re: Stuck at an A1 Level - German

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu May 25, 2017 4:06 pm

blaurebell wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:At first, it took a long time to write 200 words and the recordings were full of pauses and ums, but I've noticed a big difference in my fluency and in the ease with which I speak and write. Even though I don't have anyone to correct me, I find that I get better at self-correcting as I go on. The process has been somewhat unpleasant and I hated recording myself at first. I was just so bad at speaking when I started. But after only a little over 6 hours of recorded speech, I can already say that it really works.


Cool! That's such a nice strategy, I think I'll put in some of the same as soon as I'm through my GdUdE + FSI grammar mission! Really interesting to hear that you're making such fast progress! If you're already noticing a pronounced improvement after 6 hours, it will be interesting to see the progress after 50h! And you even have a proper record of your progress where you can compare your first video with the last one in the challenge! Thanks for describing the process!

Well, part of the progress is also due to getting used to recording myself. I was probably worse in those first few recordings than I should have been based just on my level. It's rather intimidating to speak into a microphone and record yourself if you aren't used to it, but now that I've gotten used to it, it's actually kind of fun. Of course, the rapid improvement makes it even more fun. Anyway, I think most of my improvement is real improvement, but part was just getting used to the recording process.

Doing recordings also kind of therapeutic because a lot of it is like writing a diary. I talk about what I've been doing, what my plans are, what I'm worried about, etc. So part of the improvement is also due to the repetition. But I also talk about things that have happened in the news and sometimes I read an article or watch a video about something and then try to explain it in my own words. Now that I've gotten better at doing recordings and talking about everyday things, I'm going to start doing more topic-based recordings. I want to eventually learn to sound reasonably intelligent, so I have to start moving on from small talk.

I'm actually a bit shocked by how much it helps. Of course, it isn't the only thing I'm doing. I get tons of input, and combining input and output is very helpful because sometimes I'll say something rather awkwardly on the recording and then I'll hear something later on TV and think, "That's how I should have said that." Attacking the language from all angles creates a kind of synergy. The work you do on one skill helps the others too.

I should mention that I also do some iTalki lessons, and that helps a lot as well, but at the moment I seem to be getting as much or more out of talking to myself as I do from talking to another person. Talking to real people is exhausting for me, so I don't get as much out of it as I might. And recording myself means I can talk whenever I feel for it and don't have to schedule it. That's very convenient for me since I never really know ahead of time when I'll have energy to talk to someone.
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Re: Stuck at an A1 Level - German

Postby Tristano » Mon Jun 05, 2017 10:54 pm

Maybe what I'm going to propose you is a bit extreme but it can be of help if you really want to overcome your plateau.
You wrote that you have a b2 passive understanding, which is fantastic, but perhaps you didn't internalized the language, however, you can understand it, which allows you to immerge yourself for long time in the language while not feeling easily overwhelmed.

The German month challenge.

For one month all your entertainment will be exclusively in German. Reading only in German, series, movies, youtube videos only in German. Participate in German forums about topics you find interesting. Take at least 20h of lessons on Italki or similar platform. After this month just do 1h per week of lessons but continue to use the language in your daily life.
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