TextbooksFollowing my post
here I decided that I would have a go at alternating chapter by chapter between Aspekte Neu B1 Plus and Aspekte Neu B2 to see how I would get on. After finishing off Kapitel 2 in the B1 book on Saturday, I cracked open the B2 book on Sunday and it turns out that the B2 book is actually more suited to my level than I previously thought. The workload in terms of new vocabulary is very similar to the B1 book and the grammar points so far are actually covering things that are both new to me and extremely useful.
So now my dilemma is, of course, whether to go back to the B1 book at all or whether to keep ploughing through B2! I had a browse through the grammar points at the end of each chapter in the B1 book last night to see if there were any gaping holes in my knowledge - but all I really found were a few minor gaps, the biggest one being handling modal verbs in Perfekt, Konjunktiv II and Passiv (but of course, once you can handle them in Perfekt, everything else is perfectly logical). I also learned that Futur I can also be used to express a supposition or a command. Plus there are a couple of prepositions I hadn't met before (außerhalb/innerhalb + genitiv), and some exciting new subordinating conjunctions (sodass, damit).
In any case, my study of the verb lists at the back of the B1 Arbeitsbuch is proving fruitful, so I shall at least continue with that, but it is making more sense to me now to keep pushing through the B2 book, while also doing a separate grammar drill book (I'm still going with Grammatik aktiv) on the side.
Cool stuffI decided that now would be a good time to start to get to grips with German vocabulary and expressions related to my profession. I won't get any of this from a general language textbook, so I bought myself a couple of classic texts relating to my field of work (which I also happen to have in English) along with a couple of books aimed at teaching basic concepts to students. So far I'm really surprised at how straight forward this new reading material is, but maybe I shouldn't be. Using the professional knowledge I already possess in combination with the basic framework of German I have built up over the last couple of years, it's generally quite easy to figure out what the texts are saying. Whether I shall absorb all the right terminology from reading alone remains to be seen.
I am also now hooked on
Verblendung, the German translation of
The girl with the dragon tattoo. Hooked to the point of desperately trying to keep my eyes open long enough to reach the end of the chapter before I go to sleep...