Dave's log, (German and French)

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DaveAgain
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Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Feb 09, 2020 3:27 pm

slowmoon wrote:What does Dialang tell you now?
I'll take the test again when I reach my pages target, but at the moment my reading is still poor.

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39. Im Alleingang by Roald Dahl, 220 pages. Running total: (2 * 220) + 8,429 = 8,869 pages.

I read each chapter first in German, then in English, then in German again. I read the book twice.

I bought a copy of the German text (ISBN: 9783499236815), and I was able to borrow the English text from my local library (title: Going Solo).

In one story Mr Dahl tells us how he learnt Swahili (he already spoke English and Norwegian, and would have had some education in French and Latin):
The first thing you had to do when you came to work in Dar es Salaam was to learn Swahili.

Swahili is a relatively simple language, and with the help of a Swahili-English dictionary and a grammar book plus some hard work in the evenings, you could become pretty fluent in a couple of months. Then you took an exam and if you passed it, the Shell Company gave you a bonus of a hundred pounds, which was a lot of money in those days.
That was in 1938, Archive.org have three pre 1938 Swahili grammars.

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TV
I've watched episodes of a 30 minute documentary series called Nordreportage, and a 50 minute comedy-drama called Rentnercops.

French
I watched a film called Grabuge chez les veuves that was pretty good.
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DaveAgain
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Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:08 am

40. Le Horla by Guy de Maupassant, 50 pages. Running total: (3 * 50) + 8,869 = 9,019 pages

I've read this before.

Librivox splits this into four parts. I read and listened to each part first in German (Audio | text), then read it in French, then read and listened in German again. I read the story three times.

TV
I've watched episodes of a 30 documentary series called Nordreportage, a 60 minute history documentary on arte.tv/de and 90 minute police-drama / comedy-drama episodes of Tatort.

Sprachkalender / wikipedia
My Harenberg sprachkalender includes a mention of famous people who were born this day. I pick a francophone/germanophone and read their wikipedia article on de.wikipedia.org. I use the Chrome web browser and readlang.com's Web reader extention for this.

Chung mentioned a children's wikipedia style site called klexikon that I may use from now on too.
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DaveAgain
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Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:24 pm

41. Hornblower in Westindien by CS Forester, 355 pages. Running total: 355 + 9,019 = 9,374 pages.

I read through the text, passing over any unknown words, but I've read the book before in English.

42. Der Kleine Nick by Goscinny & Sempé, 170 pages. Running total: 170 + 9,374 = 9,544 pages

I've read this before. I read each story first without looking up any unknown words, and then again looking up all unknown words. I used deepl.com as a dictionary.

Sprachkalender/ articles.
I've kept on with my Harenberg sprachkalender, after reading that day's entry I usually then read a wikipedia article, and possibly also one from Spiegel and Stern. I use the chrome web browser and readlang's web reader extension to look up any unknown words.

I got my first recipe from the sprachkalender, which looks an easy one to follow:
Einfaches Rezept für Zitronenkuchen

Zutaten:
    1 Rolle Mübeteig
    1 unbehandelte Zitrone
    2 Eier
    80g Butter
    125g Puderzucker

Den Backofen auf 200 celcius vorheizen. Die Schale der Zitrone entfernen und in gaz kleine Stück schneiden; den Saft auspressen.
Die Kuchenform buttern und mit Mürbeteig auslegen. Eiweiß vom Eigelb trennen. Eiweiß zu Schnee schlangen. Die Butter zerlassen. In einer Schüssel Eigelb mit dem Zucker vermengen. Saft und Zitronenschale, Butter und Eischnee hinzufügen. Das Ganze über den Mürbeteig geben und etwa 30 minuten im Ofen backen. Den Leckermäulern guten Appetit!


TV
I've watched episodes of Xenius: a 30 minute pop-science programme, Rentnercops: a 50 minute comedy-drama, and Adelheid und ihre Mörder: a 50 minute comedy-drama.

French
I usually watch 30 minutes of a film. In Babette s'en va-t-en guerre Brigitte Bardot uses Assimil's l'anglais sans peine course.

The success Assimil have had in embedding their english course in french pop culture is mind-boggling. It must make life very difficult for their competitors.
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DaveAgain
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Dave's log, French & German.

Postby DaveAgain » Sun May 03, 2020 2:43 pm

43. Catherine die Kleine Tänzerin by Patrick Modiano and Jean-Jaques Sempé

This is a children's book (french title: Catherine Certitude). I bought the German text after seeing it advertised in the back of my copy of Der Kleine Nick, which was also illustrated by Mr Sempé.

I read through the text once without looking up unknown words, I started to go through a second time looking up all unknown words, didn't get very far with it.

I hadn't heard of Mr Modiano before reading this, but I looked him up, and he's a biggish cheese in the French book world, having been awarded a Nobel Prize for literature.

La grand librairie: spéciale Modiano
Une vie, une oeuvre: Modiano

Culturetheque.com have two of Mr Modiano's books.

44. Mont Oriol by Guy de Maupassant.

I read each chapter first in German, then in French, then again in German.

Arletty, (real name Léonie Bathiat) decided she needed a professional name when she started working as a painter's model, she took the name Arlette from Mont Oriol (Arlette is the baby daughter of Christiane). When she took to the stage she was encouraged to change it to Arletty. I think she said in the past this sounded more English, and the English were in fashion at the time (the piece she auditioned with was It's a long way to Tipperary).

There seem to be two biographies of Arletty, one by David Alliot, and one by Denis Demonpion.

NB The heroine of Mary Norton's The Borrowers is Arietty!

45. Der Verdacht by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

This was mentioned in the German: Improving Reading Skills thread, and included in the Krimi Forum's classic Krimi list which was mentioned in the German Resources thread.

The text I used (ISBN: 9780174398080) was intended for language learners, there's a 'skeleten vocabulary' at the back of the book, and some notes about the text, indicated by asterisk in the body of the text, these are usually translations of words/phrases.

I read each chapter first without looking up any unknown words, and then again looking up all unknown words. I used dict.leo.org and deepl.com as dictionaries.

The text I used was in a series called Modern world literature series published by Nelson / Harrap. A web search produced an archived search on worldcat.org giving the following book list:
    Sansibar oder der letzte Grund by Andersch
    Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum by Böll
    Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen and other stories by Böll
    Draussen vor der tür by Borchert
    Der richter und sein henker by Dürrenmatt
    Der Verdacht by Dürrenmatt
    Das Versprechen : Requiem auf den Kriminalroman by Dürrenmatt
    Nun singen sie wieder : Versuch eines Requiems by Max Frisch
    Irrlicht und Feuer by M von der Grun
    Was dir nicht angehört by Hausmann
    Das heilige Experiment : Schauspiel in fünf Aufzügen by Hochwälder
    Italienische Nacht. by Horvath
    Jugend ohne Gott by Horvath
    Der letze sommer by Huch
    Die DDR erzählt nine stories from the German Democratic Republic by Hutchinson
    Als ich ein kleiner Junge war by Kästner
    Zeit der Schuldlosen. by Siegfried Lenz
    Die neuen Leiden des Jungen W. by Plenzdorf
    Litauische Geschichten : Die Reise nach Tilsit, Miks Bumbullis by Sudermann
    Des Teufels General by Zuckmayer
    Vier Novellen by Zweig

French
Some films I've watched recently are: Les grands manoeuvres, trois jours à vivre, une parisienne and Maxime.

===========

I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(

I'm doing a mixture of intensive and extensive reading so I'm not sure what to change. Perhaps I just need more time at it?

EDIT
There was a talk at the polyglot gathering 2017 called 'the way of the peaceful bookworm', given by a man called Ivan Kupka. He described what he called 'sandwich reading', he reads one chapter in the target language, then the same chapter in a known language. If I recall correctly he said he read the same book 5 or 6 times, and after having read 5 or 6 books, he knew the target language.

When I was learning french, I read around 35 books, targeting 10,000 words. The first few books I read in french, I read as parallel texts. When I started German I found I mapping English/French to German when reading parallel texts very difficult to do, perhaps due to word order, so I thought I might try sandwich reading, and map chapters instead. :-)

I'm making the assumption that the common factor of 10,000 words is the magic ingredient, and that I can read 35 different books, rather that the repeated 5 or 6 books Mr Kupka recommended.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 30#p147496

My assumption that repeated reading was unimportant, that the amount of reading all, was wrong.
Last edited by DaveAgain on Tue May 12, 2020 5:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby tungemål » Sun May 03, 2020 3:04 pm

Are you at 10.000 pages? Congratulations! You forgot to update your page count. I have never read that much in a short period, but I tend to look up words as I read. I don't know if I trust the theory "learn words from context".
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Cenwalh
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Re: Dave's log, French & German.

Postby Cenwalh » Sun May 03, 2020 3:26 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(

I'm doing a mixture of intensive and extensive reading so I'm not sure what to change. Perhaps I just need more time at it?


Perhaps a disappointing result given the effort you've put in.

Do you feel you've improved? If you reread some of the texts you read at the start is it easier? Have you tried other tests?
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Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

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Re: Dave's log, French & German.

Postby Arnaud » Sun May 03, 2020 5:03 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(
Don't worry about the test, I'm sure you've made progresses. Reading 10000 pages in your TL is simply amazing. Congratulations.
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Gustav Aschenbach
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Re: Dave's log, French & German.

Postby Gustav Aschenbach » Sun May 03, 2020 6:11 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(


I wouldn't worry too much, either. I know the test and the problem is that one wrong answer can decide if you're B1 or A2 for example. I took the test for French and it said I have B1 in grammar (which is impossible; I don't say I'm perfect but I have a very thorough knowledge of French grammar). I tried again and then I had C1 (only one wrong answer! Had I got it right, I would have had C2, I guess; in listening and reading I had C2, in vocabulary C1, so B1 in grammar wouldn't have made any sense ... long story short I wouldn't rely too much on the outcomes of such online tests).

I'm sure you're better than A2 after 10,000 pages! I would rather rely on the descriptions of the CEFR levels than taking any kind of tests.

I'm doing a mixture of intensive and extensive reading so I'm not sure what to change. Perhaps I just need more time at it?


That's perfect actually. But I really wouldn't neglect intensive reading, it's really important. After a certain level it's too easy to just ignore things you don't fully understand, which leads to the famous "eternal B2" plateau. Same for listening.
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Re: Dave's log, French & German.

Postby smallwhite » Mon May 04, 2020 3:40 am

DaveAgain wrote:12 Jul 2019
Dialang tells me my German reading is A2, I'm going to try to read 10,000 pages of German, and see where that takes me.

DaveAgain wrote:03 May 2020
I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(

I'm doing a mixture of intensive and extensive reading so I'm not sure what to change. Perhaps I just need more time at it?


Very diligent and systematic way of studying. Bravo!

I just did the first 13 Dialang reading questions to see what they're like. Do you remember how you scored in them?
Last edited by smallwhite on Mon May 04, 2020 7:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Dialang or it didn't happen.

Gustav Aschenbach
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Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby Gustav Aschenbach » Mon May 04, 2020 7:17 am

I just wanted to tell you that I took the Dialang listening test for English, just to see what it is. I scored B1, but I'm sure I have a listening comprehension level that is much higher (at least C1 -- in 2012 I took the IELTS exam and I had full points in the listening section which equates to C2, but even without this result I know I have a high level of comprehension because I simply understand the language very well). You see, the Dialang test might be okay in itself, but it doesn't really say much about your actual skills. It's only a small fraction of the language and the result also depends on your mood, ability to concentrate at the time you're taking the test etc. So... I wouldn't really worry and think you haven't made any progress after 10,000 pages. Of course you have.
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