What next? (learning Spanish, maintaining German, random dabbling...)

[kraemder]

Excellent post regarding the language school. I will be checking back to see if you're able to overcome the circumlocution fallback that I haven't been able to overcome in any language. In German I was very happy with circumlocution but beating it would really be something.

[gsbod]

It's been over a month since my language holiday and after coming back to the UK with a new found sense of confidence and a suitcase full of German materials I proceeded to do...not much. Or at least, not much study. I'm suffering from a big bout of indecision when it comes to what exactly I should do to study German right now.

To put the focus back on the positives, I have watched a few episodes of Tatort, Der Tatortreiniger and Neo Magazin Royale. I also finished reading Drei für Moskau which I picked up several months ago in Foyles because I liked the premise - two friends from West Berlin and a random hitchhiker make a road trip to Moscow to sell windscreen wipers in the early 90s. Unfortunately, the author could have done so much more with such a premise than they actually achieved. It was a fluffy read and really nothing special.

I think I understand now why B2 is considered by many to be such an important milestone. My listening and reading skills are at a stage where they are self-sustaining. When it comes to productive skills, I am confident that if I need to do something in German I can - even if I haven't touched it for a few days.

I also understand why a lot of people get to B2 and don't really get any further. With my skills at this level, and no need to use German professionally, it is easy to be complacent. What's more, my two biggest weaknesses now are grammatical accuracy (especially getting details right when speaking) and range of active vocabulary (that is, being able to be as precise as possible and with a good sense of nuance). It is going to take some time, patience and hard work to make a sustainable improvement in either of those areas.

The good news is I have been able to enroll on a C1 evening class. Once a week is not going to have anywhere near the impact of my intensive summer course, but at least I have something to challenge me to study every week which helps to overcome my indecision when it comes to self study.

[gsbod]

I've finished off another book, Ich will es doch auch by Ellen Berg. It's not a normal genre for me and for the first few chapters I was quite tempted to give up but I'm glad I stuck with it because in the end I found it quite enjoyable, just so long as I made sure to suspend all disbelief and not take it seriously at all.

I'm also starting to settle into a plan for where to focus my German studies over the next few weeks:

1. Turn up to class, do my homework, learn new vocabulary
2. Review my notes from my two weeks at the language school, create word lists and flashcards for all useful or interesting vocabulary which hasn't sunk in naturally over the last 2 months
3. Restart working with the Übungsgrammatik für die Mittelstufe for extra grammar practice
4. Having listened to most of the podcasts from http://funkkolleg-sicherheit.de/ (apart from those where I fell asleep in the middle) I plan to go back to the beginning and study the material in more depth - including relistening to the podcasts (this time at a time of day when I won't fall asleep), reading through/listening to the Zusatzmaterial on the website where it is still available, reading the accompanying book, and noting interesting vocabulary/expressions as I go along.

Having written this out now, I can see it is quite a project. Item no. 4 is a big project in and of itself, but I can keep working on it when I have the time for as long as it takes (or until I get bored and move on to something else). The only downside is that the excellent Zusatzmaterial quite often features links to radio and TV shows which are often only available on a time limited basis.

The Funkkolleg for 2017/18 has just started up, the theme for this year is Biologie und Ethik, which is certainly important but is not something I am quite so interested in. In the spirit of keeping up to date and pushing my boundaries I listened to the first podcast, which I found challenging. I then watched this video which was linked to in the Zusatzmaterial which promised a simple explanation, and confirmed to me that I am better off sticking to the realm of security, something I can at least relate to my everyday experience and understanding in English: https://www.mpg.de/10766665/crispr-cas9

[Stelle]

It's been over a month since my language holiday and after coming back to the UK with a new found sense of confidence and a suitcase full of German materials I proceeded to do...not much. Or at least, not much study. I'm suffering from a big bout of indecision when it comes to what exactly I should do to study German right now.

I had the same experience with Spanish after spending six months in Central America. I learned so much, then came home and did...well...nothing, really. I think that for me part of the issue was a sense of reverse culture shock and existential ennui. My life as an immersion student was so exciting and fun and self-directed. Everything was new. And then I came home and fell right back into my regular old life. I don't know if I expected things to be different, but everything was the same. I don't know if you're feeling something similar, but if you are, I'm happy to tell you that it does get better!

[gsbod]

I had the same experience with Spanish after spending six months in Central America. I learned so much, then came home and did...well...nothing, really. I think that for me part of the issue was a sense of reverse culture shock and existential ennui. My life as an immersion student was so exciting and fun and self-directed. Everything was new. And then I came home and fell right back into my regular old life. I don't know if I expected things to be different, but everything was the same. I don't know if you're feeling something similar, but if you are, I'm happy to tell you that it does get better!

One of the thoughts that has been going around my head is that maybe I should take some kind of sabbatical and spend six months learning German in Germany, but your post confirms that would only be postponing the problem, not solving it! I was only in the language school for two weeks, so reverse culture shock was never going to be an issue and I think the existential ennui is unavoidable whatever I do. However, my experience studying German full time for the first time ever still tapped into a reserve of enthusiasm and wonder that I didn't know I had and I wish I could have extended the experience. That being said, I suppose any period of language study is time limited and inevitably ends with the question "so what next?"

[Brun Ugle]

I think there is a lot of “what next?” at B2 level. It just stops being so obvious what you should do next. In terms of grammar, you know all the basics and it’s only the small subtleties left. You still need more vocabulary, of course, but the words you learn are less frequently used and so don’t seem to have much impact. You can study and study and not notice any change, so you constantly wonder if you’re studying the right things in the right way or if you should be doing something completely different.

[gsbod]

Well my "what next" was a far more fundamental question - not so much about what to study, as how to live my life, balancing the need to earn my keep doing something fulfilling with my desire to have as much German as possible!

I do think that German is something of a special case, for me. The way you describe the frustrations at B2 corresponds exactly to the way I felt with Japanese - it just seemed like I had a mountain of vocabulary to get through and no matter what I did I was barely chipping around the edges. It reached that point where I felt it was no longer worth the effort and eventually I stopped making the effort. With German, the vocabulary mountain is still there, but it is far less oppressive. There are still plenty of occasions when I will learn a word or expression in one place, and it crops up the next day in another. What is more, I still feel a really strong drive to learn stuff. German vocab is not the soul destroying exercise that Japanese vocab became. It is both useful and interesting in its own right. For me.

So I am still motivated to do what it takes to get my German to C1 and beyond. But now I wonder whether I could love any other language enough to get it beyond B2.

[coldrainwater]

That we get the option of being able to choose the what next is both a pleasure and a burden. Best I can tell, having a plan at the outset doesn't seem to make the question that much easier to answer when the time comes to put the wheels in motion. For what it is worth, I aim to lay the groundwork a good year or more in advance hitting that wall if possible (in fact, I am tackling the very same question now and it is all but easy to flesh out the details). I think it is worth creating a sense of anticipation and knowing that when you have the language where you want/need it, you can put something pretty amazing into play. Quiet time to reflect and make calls like this may be an undervalued component of language learning. The order of how we deploy [planning, doing, studying, reflecting] often matters a great deal. As has been mentioned for sure, sometimes what we decide on may lie many borders away or we may already have it right where we stand, possibly without knowing it. Tough to say without taking a step back.

[gsbod]

I should really stop making study plans, or at least announcing them.

After my last post I managed to do something to my back, which only gets worse if I sit at my desk with a notepad, pen and burning desire to learn more German.

The good news is it isn't preventing me from watching Tatort.

[gsbod]

Since my last update I have managed to finish off four German books.

Tschick by Wolfgang Herrndorf was a surprisingly satisfying read. It is told from the perspective of a teenager called Maik, who is the unpopular kid at school, who makes an unlikely friendship with the other unpopular kid in his class, a boy called Tschick with an immigrant background, and they end up going on a road trip through the German countryside in a stolen car. I liked Maik. I liked the contrast between his total naivety about some things and clear insight into others, which I think is a pretty good representation of how it is to be an adolescent. Because the story is told by Maik, the writing is very colloquial, so if you are not able to tell the difference between the style of the book and standard German it might be better to leave it until your German has improved a bit. Otherwise you might end up starting main clauses with "Weil,..."

Spinner by Benedict Wells was less satisfying. I think when a book is written about an a struggling writer, this should be a red flag straight away.

Schneewittchen muss sterben by Nele Neuhaus delivered as expected. It's trashy but easy to read and, if you lower expectations accordingly, quite enjoyable. I enjoyed it a lot more than the last novel in the series, which had too many characters and threads to the story. This story held together a lot better.

Dies ist kein Liebeslied by Karen Duve was like a smack in the face. Karen Duve seems to enjoy writing about deeply flawed women who end up driving taxis on the night shift in Hamburg in the 1980s. The main character, Anne, is not a likeable character, but through her story she reveals so many truths about how it is to be a woman, how you are brought up to judge your self worth according to your appearance and your weight and how damaging this is.