CarlyD's 2020/2021 German Log

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CarlyD
Blue Belt
Posts: 608
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:44 pm
Location: California, USA
Languages: English (N), Spanish--A2, German--now studying, A2
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Re: CarlyD's 2020/2021 German Log

Postby CarlyD » Fri Jan 01, 2021 8:28 pm

A new year. A better year? We'll see.

Changes for me for 2021:

1. The 30-minutes a day for the 365 Challenge is an emergency total. Like when desperately ill or something. My basic minimum is now 60 minutes and my daily goal is 3 hours. According to FSI, this will get me fluent (if used wisely) in 1.25 years. Since I already have some German, and I'm not trying for total fluency, this should work.

2. Tuesdays and Thursdays will continue to be my "short" days, due to my work schedule. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays will be my long days, with 3 hours minimum.

3. Yes, I will read every day. Bilingual, German only, my puzzle books. Doesn't matter.

4. I keep dancing around this idea of using German in my daily life--which I should have been doing from Day 1. All the books/websites seem to consider "daily life" as meeting friends in cafes and ordering in restaurants. Apparently, I'm super boring, because my daily life centers around financial analysis, hobbies and my dogs. So I need to make to make scripts of what I really talk about. How many times have I said that? 12 million. I have a deadline of this Sunday for my first 3 scripts.

5. USE IT. Stop reading Facebook posts and thinking--"I could answer that." Actually answer that. If I get it wrong--well, people with native English post horribly spelled, no-actual-grammar posts every day on Facebook and no one bats an eye. Post. Get laughed at. Move on. Make 2 posts by Sunday, then figure out a goal.

Enough for now. I'll see how it's shaking out on Sunday.
8 x
2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

User avatar
CarlyD
Blue Belt
Posts: 608
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:44 pm
Location: California, USA
Languages: English (N), Spanish--A2, German--now studying, A2
x 1325

Re: CarlyD's 2020/2021 German Log

Postby CarlyD » Sat May 01, 2021 6:08 pm

I broke.

I was doing well during January and February--not amazing, but making progress. We had a horrible storm in late February with no power for days. I sat and reviewed my textbook with a flashlight. Then the power came back on and the reality of losing my 437 or so day streaks on Memrise and Clozemaster hit. It shouldn't have been that important, but, sadly, it turned out to be.

I lost my momentum. I lost my motivation. I did bits and pieces--review only, no new learning--off and on, a total of 26 days in March and April. I even thought about packing up all my German books and storing them away.

A few days ago, a girl from my genealogy group that has helped me a lot in the past was trying to find some German records. She was looking for records that had been copied and were stored on U.S. sites, with English (the only site she could find was to view the records in person.) I spent three hours online, looking through German websites, archives, museum holdings, etc. for a copy of the records available online. And I found an archive that had the records and sent her the link--and translated it so she could see what to click.

One of my initial goals to learn German was to use it in genealogical research. Have I met that goal? Hmmm.....a couple of years ago I could never have searched all those sites with the ease that I did. Yes, I had some Google Translate help, but not anywhere near as much as I would have.

So maybe my never-going-to-learn-German is just some thing in my head. Because obviously I know some--or enough to get done what I truly want to get done.

So I'm back. I made a chart of what I want to accomplish by the end of the year. Will it get me to the exalted level of B1 that I claim I need to have? I don't have a clue. Maybe I should just worry about getting to where I can use German for what I want to use it for, regardless of the level.

For right now, I guess it's good enough that I'm back. I'm doing the 6 week challenge, and will stick to my chart and see where it takes me.
3 x
2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000


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