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

[gsbod]

I've just tidied up the progress bars in my signature. Since I completed my 10,000 minutes of German audio nearly a year ago, I thought it was time to remove it - and I've replaced it with a fun new challenge to watch 100 episodes of the German crime drama series, Tatort. In terms of time required, it is pretty much the same as the film section of a Super Challenge (each episode is about 90 minutes long), however since I am not a team player I am starting my challenge from last Thursday when I saw an older episode of Thiel and Boerne in Münster, and it will take as long as I need to watch 100 episodes.

This should be fun.

[DaveBee]

I've just tidied up the progress bars in my signature. Since I completed my 10,000 minutes of German audio nearly a year ago, I thought it was time to remove it - and I've replaced it with a fun new challenge to watch 100 episodes of the German crime drama series, Tatort. In terms of time required, it is pretty much the same as the film section of a Super Challenge (each episode is about 90 minutes long), however since I am not a team player I am starting my challenge from last Thursday when I saw an older episode of Thiel and Boerne in Münster, and it will take as long as I need to watch 100 episodes.

This should be fun.

Is it an enjoyable programme to watch?

[gsbod]

Is it an enjoyable programme to watch?

When it is at its best, definitely. Tatort episodes are made by different regional TV companies across Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Each region gets its own team of investigators, so the style can vary considerably depending on the location, characters, and writers involved. The style has also changed over the years as the tastes of TV viewers has changed - although I love that they still have the same opening credits from the 70s!

[neuroascetic]

I've replaced it with a fun new challenge to watch 100 episodes of the German crime drama series, Tatort.

This makes me happy. Whenever I'm in Germany, I try to find a Kneipe on Sunday that is showing Tatort. Someday, I would like to host weekly screenings at my house for the small German-learning community in Portland.

Those opening credits are fantastic.

[AlOlaf]

Wie Sie unschwer erkennen können, handelt es sich hier um eine hervorragende Idee für eine Herausforderung.

[gsbod]

Wie Sie unschwer erkennen können, handelt es sich hier um eine hervorragende Idee für eine Herausforderung.

Eine Tatort-Herausforderung wäre fabelhaft. Jeden Sonntag könnten wir über die neueste Folge diskutieren!

[AlOlaf]

Hört sich gut an!

[gsbod]

I've started working with Using German Vocabulary again, to try and give my German vocab a little more colour and help my reading run more smoothly. On the one hand, Entscheidungen is great for picking up useful expressions for the workplace, on the other hand it is, by its nature, a little one sided. So one complements the other very nicely.

For now I am working through the vocabulary lists for Level 1. Firstly I run through the list, covering the English, to test whether I know what the German words mean. I mark the words I don't know/have totally forgotten/thought they meant something else and put them into an Anki deck to study further. Several months ago I worked through Units 1 and 2 with Quizlet, as a way of testing an alternative to Anki. I haven't used Quizlet for ages, but the results still show, since the number of words I didn't recognise were significantly lower for Units 1 and 2 than they were for Units 3 and 4. Even there, I recognise the overwhelming majority of the words already, which makes the project much more manageable and I feel like I am honing in on a handful of common words that I haven't managed to pick up by other means - especially as they then have a habit of turning up in my reading elsewhere. It takes less than an hour to work through the Unit, write my list of words to learn and throw them into Anki. Then with 10 new cards (i.e. 5 new words) a day I am working through around 1 unit a week which is a really nice, sustainable pace.

I'm also starting to use my Kindle to get German newspapers/weeklies, since the one place in my city that used to carry Der Spiegel and FAZ no longer seems to do so. I would prefer to have a paper version of a newspaper, but a subscription is out of the question as it would provide more content than I have the time to read (a copy of, say, Die Zeit once a month would be perfect!) Anyway, the Kindle is a nice compromise where I am able to pay more attention to the text and get less distracted than looking at news sites on my PC or phone and I get access to all of the articles and not just the dumbed down internet ones!

[Stefan]

I'm also starting to use my Kindle to get German newspapers/weeklies, since the one place in my city that used to carry Der Spiegel and FAZ no longer seems to do so. I would prefer to have a paper version of a newspaper, but a subscription is out of the question as it would provide more content than I have the time to read (a copy of, say, Die Zeit once a month would be perfect!) Anyway, the Kindle is a nice compromise where I am able to pay more attention to the text and get less distracted than looking at news sites on my PC or phone and I get access to all of the articles and not just the dumbed down internet ones!

Are you subscribed to their services?

I tried to subscribe to the print version of F.A.Z. Woche last year but couldn't change country when ordering. So I settled on getting it as PDF for a while to my iPad before giving up due to the hassle. I would love to get German articles on my Kindle but want to avoid yet another expense because I already have a tendency to get more material than I can consume. € 4,10 a week for Der Spiegel is still € 213 a year I could spend on something else.

[gsbod]

Are you subscribed to their services?

I tried to subscribe to the print version of F.A.Z. Woche last year but couldn't change country when ordering. So I settled on getting it as PDF for a while to my iPad before giving up due to the hassle. I would love to get German articles on my Kindle but want to avoid yet another expense because I already have a tendency to get more material than I can consume. € 4,10 a week for Der Spiegel is still € 213 a year I could spend on something else.

I don't have a subscription at the moment - like you, I couldn't get through enough of the material to justify the expense of a weekly subscription. I buy my digital editions from Amazon UK, which still lets you buy the current issue without subscribing (although this option is somewhat hidden under the subscription information).