Coldrainwater's Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
german2k01
Green Belt
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:16 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English, Urdu, and German
x 573

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Wed Aug 25, 2021 8:05 pm

Ok. Wow, I read the whole thing from start to end. The only question now I have is, did you take any online tests to assess your level for both reading and listening? It would be nice to know where you currently stand at the moment.
1 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:56 am

german2k01 wrote:Ok. Wow, I read the whole thing from start to end. The only question now I have is, did you take any online tests to assess your level for both reading and listening? It would be nice to know where you currently stand at the moment.

Thanks for taking the time and interest to read. For German, I haven't taken any online assessments. Part of the reason for that is that I felt I would mainly be assessing at which point on the beginner spectrum I stood, which would not have proportioned any new info. I will make a note to take a Dialang test in the near future and report what results I get after I do it.
2 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Fri Aug 27, 2021 4:00 am

I took the listening portion of the Dialang test tonight and have results to share.

dialangweb.lancaster.ac.uk

Preliminary passive vocabulary - For those that have never taken the test, they provide a 75-word list and have you check the box, true/false, is it a word or not.

Dialang wrote:Ihr Ergebnis: 785
Auf dieser Niveaustufe verfügt man bereits über einen umfangreichen Wortschatz. Man kann alle Situationen sprachlich bewältigen und hat nur geringe Schwierigkeiten, Texte in der Fremdsprache zu lesen. Allerdings kann es noch Probleme geben, gesprochene Sprache zu verstehen.

And here are the listening results:

Dialang test result listening: A2
Identifying main idea: 8/10
Inferencing: 5/12
Listening for detail: 4/8

Observations:

I believe the assessment at A2 is accurate and is the highest I would have hoped to achieve. I took the test in a well-rested state under near-ideal circumstances. Out of 30 questions, I managed to get 17 correct. Trend-wise, despite answering many initial questions incorrectly, I felt more confident and my test-taking skill and perhaps my listening seemed to improve as I moved deeper into the exam. Toward the end, I was getting more questions right than wrong, but still showed many weaknesses, consistent with being an advanced beginning listener. Throughout the exam, I always felt like I had a fighting chance to get an answer right and never felt totally lost, so there is some decent general comprehension. It was worth the time invested (perhaps 30-45 minutes of intense listening work).

The vocabulary prelim went very well, which I expected since I have studied in a way that is very consistent with doing well given how they chose to test word recognition. It likely put me in the right bucket but may have overestimated my actual vocabulary strength since I have very good broad knowledge, but lack depth in most cases. I will take the reading comprehension in another session and will report those results when I have them to share.
11 x

german2k01
Green Belt
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:16 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English, Urdu, and German
x 573

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:30 pm

I do not know how reliable the Dialang test is for assessing listening skills. I am living in Germany. I can tell you for a fact that in day-to-day interactions, people talk in a matter-of-fact way. There is no inference like it is tested here. Also, the quality of recording which is used in the listening test is on the lower side. In real life, people talk slightly louder. That's been my experience interacting with German native speakers.
I will not be surprised if your actual level is on the higher side than A2. Btw, roughly, how many hours have you put in for listening to date?
0 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sat Aug 28, 2021 10:31 pm

german2k01 wrote:I do not know how reliable the Dialang test is for assessing listening skills. I am living in Germany. I can tell you for a fact that in day-to-day interactions, people talk in a matter-of-fact way. There is no inference like it is tested here. Also, the quality of recording which is used in the listening test is on the lower side. In real life, people talk slightly louder. That's been my experience interacting with German native speakers.
I will not be surprised if your actual level is on the higher side than A2. Btw, roughly, how many hours have you put in for listening to date?

All valid points for sure. My impression of the Dialang audio selection is that the quality, clarity, volume and difficulty varied significantly between questions/speakers (a good thing and surely intentional). For weaker listeners, some really sounded crystal clear, well-enunciated and hard to misunderstand. I hate to single out one source, but some of the worst professional audio (albeit in Spanish) that I have come across came directly from Librivox. While I agree with there being issues (elaborated below), Dialang was easier for me to manage (subjectively) and wasn't 'that bad'.

I am glad to hear about your experience living in Germany. It corresponds to my personal experience with Spanish, travelling in Mexico, living in Houston and travelling in Spain. One aspect that stands out has to do with basic audio distortion on virtually any recorded media. Standing in front of someone in close range was always super clear compared to virtually all of my training material.

Testing inference is a serious issue as well. Fortunately for me, I knew they would pull that going in and knew ahead of time that they would be asking for details that I would normally not listen for and that they would ask me inference questions that bordered on academic. My learning plan is far more holistic than detailed and specific. I definitely don't train for tactical attacks on listening nor directly toward that type of exam, which could easily skew the results.

I also think you are right about the assessment. I would be more likely to rate myself as a strong A2 than a weak A2 for sure, looking at it now in hindsight. I am would also equally say adamantly that my listening isn't intermediate. Compared to prior learning (mainly Spanish), I sense too many weaknesses. To muddy the waters, other skills, namely reading and vocabulary are subjectively stronger and those along with many hours of listening exposure, proportion advantages that are hard to capture in a two-digit character, even if those characters are backed by specific guidance.

To answer the question about listening hours, I don't have a perfect estimate, but it is reasonable to say I have been studying for 28 months and at two hours listening per day on average, that would make 1700 hours. Many of those hours were passive/partially attentive as I went about my professional workday or engaged in exercise. I may have clocked more than that in total, but I need to somehow find a way to discount hours that were almost totally passive (which definitely happened as I could be absorbed in doing other things) and a two hour per day estimate is the best I can do. The highest percentage of those hours came from podcasts. The input was comprehensible at least at the gist level for the most part but tended to be at or above my current level.
7 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:58 pm

Here are the test results for the reading portion of Dialang:

DIALANG-Testergebnisse

Ihr Testergebnis zeigt, dass Sie sich im Leseverstehen auf Stufe C1 der Skala des Europarats befinden. Auf dieser Stufe kann man lange, komplexe Fachtexte und literarische Texte verstehen sowie stilistische Unterschiede erkennen. Man kann Fachsprache in Artikeln und technischen Anleitungen verstehen, sogar wenn diese nicht aus dem eigenen Fachgebiet stammen.

Das Wesentliche erfassen 13/15
Schlussfolgerungen ziehen 10/10
Genaues Lesen 5/5

Notes/Observations

The assessment is likely accurate from a comprehension perspective. Under ideal circumstances and with great concentration (today -> quiet Sunday afternoon, me->well-rested with coffee), I can read and understand fairly advanced articles. If rated on fluency, I would give myself at best a B2, not C1. I gas out quickly after reading only a few paragraphs of complex/advanced German text and therefore need to build endurance. I took much longer to complete the reading test, well over an hour. The test also hangs by a thread. One more question fudged and I bet they would have docked a level. I took extra time to ensure that I answered the questions correctly, rather than relying on test-taking skills involving guesswork. The questions I missed were due to the complexity of the material and my lack of comprehension, best I could tell. I can't really blame my errors on test design. A strong B2 might be the best and most conservative way to rate my current reading ability, factoring in fluency and ease along with pure comprehension.

All in all, the test is definitely not perfect. There were several, perhaps two or three questions that would be easy to get wrong in any language. One thing I did like is that they require some subtlety. They might have you type out the word that does not fit stylistically in a sentence with perhaps 30+ words. Counting could involve parsing meaning from subordinating conjunctions with several parts. Content is pulled from a variety of sources. On a number of questions, you very much have to type out the answer and can't just guess with a 1/3 chance of being right.

Going forward and learning from both tests

I see at least a couple of obvious paths to improvement and as of 8/1/2021, I had already made my choice. Turns out my reading is quite a bit stronger than my listening. I expected a slightly narrower gap. With that in mind, it makes sense that I would choose to close the gap a bit with L2->L2 LR. That intuitive choice is also corroborated by noting the weakness in reading endurance. There are many other paths that work also. I could push reading up into a clearly advanced level, then pull listening along. I feel like I owe it to my listening to give it a helping hand at the moment. Furthermore, the LR is likely to help more with reading fluency than simply grinding out harder and harder native German texts due to many factors, so it might be the better choice for reading improvement as well. Those are my thoughts at the moment anyhow.
10 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Wed Sep 08, 2021 6:02 am

Time for a reading update. With the help of L2->L2 LR, I finished the seven books below.
In this instance, about 3k pages corresponded to just over 100 hours of audio. Most remarkable to me is that all seven books were enjoyable and even recommendable. Dracula was worth reading and as you might expect, it has aged...rather well. It is the type of story that I would want to find locked away in a dusty chest, bound as a collection of parchment letters, perhaps with a few fire-burned pages, all under lock and key. 4/5.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is book one of Gentleman Bastards and has been on my reading list for a long time. It is perhaps the best of the bunch if I had to pick a favourite. Excellent story overall and solid start to the series. This one also likely offered the richest overall experience and took a while to get used to at a listening pace. Definitely recommended for language content (good dialogue/diction, helpful at my level). A couple of weeks after finishing it, it still leaves a good taste in my mouth. I wouldn't mind reading the continuation. 4.5/5.

Robin Hobb's first instalment in the Farseer Trilogy was told in first person and was the easiest to follow. The word solid comes repeatedly to mind when I think about how to describe the quality of the writing and book overall. There was more handholding than I would have liked by a long shot, but I think some language learners might find that helpful, especially if using it for initial exposure to the genre. 3.5/5.

Just tonight, I finished listening to the last audiobook in the Totengräbersohn series, so it is freshest on my mind. Feuerbach really enjoys crafting and telling entertaining stories. It is noteworthy that of the three series, this is the one that I happened to read in its entirety. It is native German and available on Kindle Unlimited. 4/5 stars for entertainment value and capacity to keep me interested across volumes. Without giving away the story, I could relate well to one of the sub-themes. Namely, that a look into the future costs us a piece of our past.
10 x

german2k01
Green Belt
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:16 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English, Urdu, and German
x 573

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:31 pm

Nice work. I have a follow-up question. What was your comprehension level like for each book while doing L-R? Could you rank it in %? Thanks
0 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby coldrainwater » Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:15 pm

german2k01 wrote:Nice work. I have a follow-up question. What was your comprehension level like for each book while doing L-R? Could you rank it in %? Thanks


To date I have used L2->L2 LR for about 210 hours total, all in August and September 2021, working my way through a dozen audiobooks. I estimate that the simple LR variant I used with both audio and text in L2, listening only once, elevated my comprehension to greater than 90% for all 12 books, more or less from day one. So it is a direct boost compared to listening only (lower comprehension) or reading only (high comprehension but too slow to get enough exposure). If I divide the 12 books into three buckets and subjectively estimate the easiest (The Stand by Stephen King) to be 98%+, then it is probably reasonable to put the middle group somewhere near 95%+ and the bottom group a bit less. Emphasis on the word subjective.

At the risk of rambling, I will try to add colour to that estimate. The estimate is derived conservatively by considering how often I have to stop Whispersync and visually scan upwards to reread an important passage. I stop the text in a small percentage of cases, definitely much less than 10% of the time. Combining that idea with the fact that I am sufficiently engaged with the material to notice lapses, I get the estimate given. Very rough, but perhaps reasonable. It is important to note that I have only worked with books that are at most moderate difficulty. I could add hard books as well, but I would need to adapt the LR technique, adding more support, making it more encompassing and more similar to the original outline of LR in terms of scope. So I kept it simple and chose moderate books for the time being.

A word or two about vocabulary as it pertains to estimating comprehension: After several hours of LR, I might have highlighted a dozen words to look up later. Therefore vocabulary isn't a major impediment at this stage. Some unknown words are definitely skipped due to the speed of playback, but most are understood directly from context. However, that understanding often lacks nuance and precision and is also sometimes flat wrong. A pattern I have noticed is that I sometimes have to throw in the towel and stop playback if 4-5 or more partially known words are thrown at me in rapid succession. I normally notice a blur of incomprehension like that pretty readily and tend to investigate why that happened on the spot. Several partially known terms combined with cases where content anticipation fails me is often more problematic than the occasional completely unknown word. I am getting a bit better at noticing that the punchline will typically come at the end of the sentence and I can feel myself adapting to that reality, trying to look ahead a bit more often. Thinking along those lines might help me decide just how much support I need from the various LR components and which should be included when crafting a study plan.

Before I started the L2->L2 LR these last two months, I recorded that I read over 18k pages (300 words/page) in parallel text format and engaged in a large amount of direct vocabulary study + plenty of other supporting activities as described in this log. It might be worth mentioning again that if I tried to read at the pace of professional narration without audio, my comprehension estimate would be much lower and I could not maintain the pace. Listening to audiobooks alone without the text simply offers much lower comprehension, largely due to not being able to map the word spoken (which I might not recognize) to its written counterpart (which I am very likely to know). After I fill in that gap, I should be able to listen to these full audiobooks with plenty of comprehension sans text.

Prior to LR, in the audio-only case, I was definitely at something below 90% comprehension for similar moderate audiobooks. One of the reasons I am using this technique now is to directly map my vocabulary and reading ability onto listening so that I recognize all the words when I hear them unaided. I remember when studying Spanish how different it was to listen to podcasts compared to audiobooks and how it was necessary to train both separately. Podcasts handled more colloquial speech, rapid-fire peninsular Spanish and other dialects while audiobooks really helped with listening vocabulary and were more useful for advanced academic and learning-oriented discussion where that vocabulary was needed.

Easiest
The Stand - Das letzte Gefecht

Easy
Der Totengräbersohn Buch 1
Der Totengräbersohn Buch 2
Der Totengräbersohn Buch 3
Der Totengräbersohn Buch 4
Der Adept des Assassinen
635 Tage im Eis

Moderate
Die Schatzinsel
Die Lügen des Locke Lamora
Dracula
Moby Dick
Die geheimnisvolle Insel
9 x

german2k01
Green Belt
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:16 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English, Urdu, and German
x 573

Re: Coldrainwater's German Log

Postby german2k01 » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:59 pm

Thanks. That's one analytical post. Helps me to understand how to approach the rest of the journey in German. I just read 2.4 million words which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. My next goal is to reach the 6 million mark and hopefully reach the C1 level.

Just an aside question - do you have any rough idea how long would it take you to reach the C2 level in reading, 8-10 million mark?
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: gsbod, Kraut and 2 guests