I also managed to call my work and sort out some relatively complicated administrative stuff in German, so that was nice. I was close to deciding just to do it in English but I'm glad I went through with doing it in German, I did have to ask the admin lady what she meant by one phrase but other than that I managed to resolve the issue without much struggle (it helped that we had previously exchanged e-mails in German so I already had some context before going into the interaction).
Here's my study routine now:
- Reading novels where I underline most unkown words and add them to Quizlet; I don't have any goals as to how long I should read, but I guess it's at least ~80-120 pages per week. I find that if I read much more I neglect explicit vocabulary study.
- Extensive listening to easy-ish material (some YouTube, one short podcast, dubbed cartoons for older children/teenagers) where I for the most part don't look anything up. I find this has a more direct effect on my speaking skills than reading does.
- 1-2 sets of 120-word (including collocations and short phrases) Quizlet decks per week that I revise once or twice. These words mostly come from novels, occasionally from audio material or my class.
My goal with reading is to actively expand my vocabulary, whereas with listening I fall back and let the language wash over me so I can have better automaticity while speaking and reinforce my intermediate knowledge. I find this is a good combination where I take advantage of the strengths of each medium; I just have to make sure I can understand what I'm listening to and don't zone out too much.
Saim wrote:I also find that in Quizlet it's much easier to start with recognition cards and then move onto recall, as you just have to flip on the "writing" switch in the settings. I tend to do "flashcard" recognition (German > English) until the cards are in the "still learning" pile, then once they're there I do "writing".
Both were recall, just one with writing and one with flashcards. Not sure what I was talking about here.
I don't really believe in recognition cards any more; I think doing them for a while made me a better language learner because I found recall too hard and tiring to train, but they definitely overstayed their welcome and you learn much more from recall cards. Part of the reason I resisted practicing recall for so long, besides the fact that I was spreading myself too thin and found it too tiring, was the superstitious idea that you need to learn words naturalistically and not create 1-1 correspondences with words in your native language, but I find establishing a 1-1 correspondence through translating individual words can create good initial scaffolding that is then reinforced through real language use and exposure.
And then I just forget about them for the most part. I remember experimenting with doing both recognition and recall in Anki back in the day, but I find it too confusing and unwieldy to have multiple cards associated with the same "note".
I've decided instead to group my cards into decks of 120 and then revise them once or twice when I feel like it. I think this is a good middle point between the digital equivalent of chaotic scribbling in notebooks where you forget everything and anal hyper-Ankiing where you do endless revision.
I've also deleted my YouTube app on my phone and switched over to Apple Podcasts.
I've brought back YouTube, there are too many interesting ~10 minute videos, some of which I even enjoy relistening, for me to not to take advantage of them. I think I just needed to take a break to sort out my addiction to short clickbait content in English.
I've also started watching dubbed German material on Netflix; I watched the last season of The Dragon Prince and am now going through Avatar: The Last Airbender, mostly just listening without watching (I watched the Italian dub many years ago). On Apple Podcasts I only listen to Psychologie To Go in German; keeping up with multiple programmes was too much of a headache.
