AroAro's log (languages, books, certificates)

[AroAro]

Hi AroAro, I always recommend Die Frage as an incredible German podcast: https://plus.rtl.de/podcast/die-frage-4c4452vhzch3u
I listened to a lot of the episodes in 2019, when they were taking a few years off. There are now quite a lot more episodes available on this particular site, while other sites either don't have the older or the newer ones.

Thank you, I'm adding it to my list of podcasts!

I can work my way thruough a slog in Polish, English or French but a bad book in my other languages does feel like a waste of time so I have to be careful about my reading choices.

Interesting, I'm somewhat the opposite. Reading a bad book in one of my weaker languages, my mind is still stimulated by the relative novelty of the language, i.e. more unknown words and expressions. But with stronger languages, that novelty is not there, so the badness of the book just stares back at me in all its unsightliness.

I guess that in my case the reading speed plays the crucial role - I can finish a bad book in Polish or English relatively quickly but it takes forever in Russian or Romanian, and even upon finishing it I'm left with a sense of frustration rather than fulfillment

[AroAro]

German – I finished reading the first collection of texts for advanced learners and will work with “Sprachbausteine Deutsch C1” by Sasha Schmidt. I think that I will have to focus on the “Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen” as well, I guess they expect a C1 candidate to use them freely at this level.

Czech – lesson 8 from “Mluvíte česky”

Clozemaster/Memrise
#Hebrew from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 4915, mastered 4748 out of 19999 sentences
#Czech from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 885, mastered 566 out of 8474 sentences
#Memrise Dutch Course – learned 179 words
#Memrise Corso di Portoghese (Portogallo) – learned 31 words

Reading – I’m haflway through of “The Crimson Petal and The White”

[AroAro]

German – “Sprachbausteine Deutsch C1” contains 11 tests (each with 16 multiple choice questions testing grammar and vocabulary) – my average score is 78.4% which is not great, I hope to improve before the exam. However, I checked this task in C1 preparation books and it seems this part should not be so difficult in the real exam. I’m now busy reading that second graded reader for C1 level I mentioned earlier (and then will do another book that focuses on “Sprachbausteine”).

Listening to a lot of German podcasts and reading “Der Spiegel” – page 110/122

Czech – lesson 18 from “Mluvíte česky”. I didn’t expect much from a book published some 50 years ago, even though some of the language courses by this publisher are really good – sadly it’s not the case for Czech. By lesson 7, you’ve learned names of trees but not how to say hello or goodbye… Language learning just looks differently nowadays! Two more lessons to go and then I will dabble a little bit in Dutch – I know it’s crazy but I think it would be nice to complement my Memrise course with something more serious (I will use a course for Polish learners, its title translates as “Dutch step by step”). There is also an external motivation that plays a role here – my company offers free language courses in a couple of languages with the caveat that you have to be at least at A2 level. I planned to study Dutch more in-depth after my German exam but doing some basics now shouldn’t hurt? And it would be interesting to see if I can reach A2 level by September – that’s when a tutor will evaluate my level via telephone and assign me to a group (that is, provided I’m at least A2!). Well, there are my variables here but it’s kind of liberating to do just what I want to do, focusing on any language I want to. Anyway, I’m not putting Czech on hold, my intention is to rotate between the two languages in my study plan.

Clozemaster/Memrise
#Hebrew from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 4960, mastered 4804 out of 19999 sentences
#Czech from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 930, mastered 612 out of 8474 sentences
#Memrise Dutch Course – learned 201 words
#Memrise Corso di Portoghese (Portogallo) – learned 62 words

Reading – so I read “The Crimson Petal and The White” and yes, it was really good, or to put in other words – the first 200 pages were not so good but I’m glad I continued reading because then the book became better and the last 200 pages or so were excellent. The book is 833 pages long, though in reality it’s even longer because the pages were densely filled with small font letters but it was worth reading, even though the editor or the publisher could have trimmed the book a little bit! This victorian tale is quite different from Faber’s other books about aliens and it just proves his talent, sadly he announced 10 years ago he won’t ever publish any new book. What’s next? Coeztee’s “Waiting For The Barbarians” and a book in Romanian – after reading “Rendezvous with Rama” in Bulgarian, I thought it might be a good idea to read bestsellers in my other languages such as Russian, Bulgarian or Romanian, whose literary traditions I don’t find that much exciting. That’s why I will read Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” in Romanian (“Problema celor trei corpuri”). I think I’m also hooked by that “first contact with aliens” subgenre after all.

[AroAro]

German – I did the exercises from “Sprachbausteine C1” by Sinisa Lukic and my overall score is 87.92%. I think that this book concentrates more on prepositions usage rather than on collocations (like the one I worked with before) but still it’s good to practice this part of German grammar as well. I’ve been working with “200 Fragen zu Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen” by Sascha Schmidt and it’s not only a great collection of such phrases (one could probably find something for free in Internet) but there are also exercises to practice them. Once finished, I will finally start working with a preparation book for the new C1 exam – “Klett Mit Erfolg zum Goethe C1. Ubungsbuch”.

And in the meantime, I started working on my speaking skills. I have that book for Polish learners called “Argumentieren ohne Probleme” that has a list of around 60 topics with pro- and contra- arguments. I read a topic and then I try to summarize it aloud and I add my personal thoughts on a given subject. The topics are rather B2-ish but that’s fine, there will be time for C1 topics later on. What’s most important for me at the moment is to get over the fear of speaking German. In April, I’m going to contact some tutors that focus on exam preparation and sign up for some lessons.

I also finished reading “Der Spiegel” and will make my way through “Der Spiegel. Wissen” – the issue I bought is all about “Selbstfürsorge, Seele, Stress” so not so much about hard science sadly.

Dutch – I did 4 first lessons from “Dutch step by step” – if I hadn’t learned German before, I would find the learning curve very steep. I remember being very frustrated when I started learning German because it was so different from any other language I knew (not that there were many of those back then!) but fortunately things start making sense in Dutch much faster.

Clozemaster/Memrise
#Hebrew from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 5000, mastered 4864 out of 19999 sentences – so I’ve played exactly 25% of phrases in the Hebrew collection and after 604 days streak I’m going to put it on hold. First, I just can’t give so much attention to this language at this moment and anyway, I tended to mark as mastered many phrases that seemed too difficult or of no use for me, so these stats don’t really reflect my level in Hebrew. I hope to do something in the language once a week for example but I realize I won’t make any spectacular progress, and that’s fine, I’m just drawn to other languages right now.
#Czech from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 975, mastered 656 out of 8474 sentences
#Memrise Dutch Course – learned 229 words
#Memrise Corso di Portoghese (Portogallo) – learned 97 words

Reading – still reading “Problema celor trei corpuri” – I was afraid I would get lost in all the scientific descriptions (and surely, that’s the case sometimes) but the book is quite engaging and not overly difficult.

[AroAro]

German – I did the two sample tests from “Klett Mit Erfolg zum Goethe C1. Ubungsbuch” and my scores are 22/30 and 23/30 for reading, 24/30 and 29/30 for listening. It’s not catastrophic but not that good either, I’d like to score consistently at least 25/30 to get that feeling of safety. I knew that taking a C1 exam was never going to be a walk in the park but the difference between B2 and C1 is real and I can definitely see it. In reading, I lose many points in the exercise where you have to insert missing phrases, and in listening part the excerpts are overfilled with details, especially the last part (listening to a lecture). I don’t have much trouble following this podcast for example but in the exam it’s as if a 25 minute episode were condensed into 4 minutes excerpt so there are a lot of details for my brain to process while reading the possible answers and trying not to get “tricked” by false ones at the same time. So I need to face the reality and accept the fact that it will probably be the toughest of all the exams I’ve taken so far. However, I truly enjoy learning German so I’ll just let myself enjoy the time I will spend on improving the language.

Dutch – I finished lesson 7 in “Dutch step by step”, still 4 to go

Clozemaster/Memrise
#Czech from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 1025, mastered 708 out of 8474 sentences
#Memrise Dutch Course – learned 261 words
#Memrise Corso di Portoghese (Portogallo) – learned 122 words

Reading – I finished “Problema celor trei corpuri” and will read two books in French – Jean-Christophe Rufin’s “Immortelle randonée” and Delphine de Vigan’s “Un soir de décembre”.

[lichtrausch]

Reading – I finished “Problema celor trei corpuri”

Are you going to read the rest of the series in Romanian too? The second book is excellent: the vexed preparations for the arrival of the invading alien fleet, and then how it all actually unfolds... one of the most memorable sequence of events I've ever read.

[AroAro]

Reading – I finished “Problema celor trei corpuri”

Are you going to read the rest of the series in Romanian too? The second book is excellent: the vexed preparations for the arrival of the invading alien fleet, and then how it all actually unfolds... one of the most memorable sequence of events I've ever read.

Yes, I will read the rest of the series as well (I bought the whole trilogy in paper format), probably some time in summer. The second part sounds very intriguing!

[DaveAgain]

Reading – I finished “Problema celor trei corpuri”

Are you going to read the rest of the series in Romanian too? The second book is excellent: the vexed preparations for the arrival of the invading alien fleet, and then how it all actually unfolds... one of the most memorable sequence of events I've ever read.

Yes, I will read the rest of the series as well (I bought the whole trilogy in paper format), probably some time in summer. The second part sounds very intriguing!

ARD have a German radio adaptation.

[AroAro]

ARD have a German radio adaptation.

Thank you, that sounds amazing!

German – I forgot to mention in my last update what I was going to do in the next 10 days. So, I went through the second part of “200 Fragen zu Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen” by Sascha Schmidt and then, I did 3 sample tests from “Goethe-Zertifikat C1. Prufungstraining” (Cornelsen). For reading, my scores are: 26/30, 20/30 and 26/30, and for listening: 23/30, 22/30 and 27/30. These scores are still not wholly satisfactory, but the good news is that I didn’t make a single mistake while inserting missing phrases – which means though that I lost all the points in other parts that shouldn’t be so challenging I guess the only thing I can do now is to continue reading in German and listening in German as much as possible. I will work with the third and last part of “200 Fragen zu Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen” and practice my listening skills with “Training Hörverstehen UNI? SICHER! 2 (B2-C1-C2)”.

Yesterday, I had my first lesson with a tutor (it was rather a “consultation”, we talked about my goals and how we can achieve them together). The tutor has quite a lot of experience preparing people for Goethe exams, she has passed a C2 herself and she participated in trainings organized by Goethe Institut so she knows how these exams are rated. She also says that the new C1 exam is like 20% harder than the previous version – it’s very science leaning so some people may find its nature rather challenging. I thought that only my sample tests were all about climate change, artificial intelligence, brain functions and sustainability but real life papers this year are just about the same topics. We’ll continue to meet once a week and we’ll practice together speaking and writing parts, that means a lot of work to do on my side.

I’ve been reading “Der Spiegel. Wissen” – I’m at the page 79/130.

And here’s my Romanian C1 certificate – hoping to get the same for German one day… By the way, I'm still waiting for my CELI4 certificate and I took that exam 5 months ago.

Rom1111.png

Rom22.png

Dutch – I almost finished the last lesson from “Dutch step by step”, my next coursebook is also aimed at Polish speakers and its title translates as “Dutch doesn’t bite”. This publisher has published similar courses for around 30-40 languages but the quality can differ from one language to another. The courses for Italian or Romanian are really bad but the ones for Dutch, Czech or Lithuanian seem to be ok. The CEFR level is A2.

Clozemaster/Memrise
#Czech from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 1070, mastered 754 out of 8474 sentences
#Memrise Dutch Course – learned 289 words
#Memrise Corso di Portoghese (Portogallo) – learned 149 words

Reading – I finished reading the two books in French (nothing memorable but I’m glad I continue clearing my book pile). My next book is going to be Elena Ferrante’s “Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta”.

[AroAro]

German – I finished the third part of “200 Fragen zu Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen” and I really think it’s an amazing resource, I wrote down may of these collocations and will review them systematically till the day of the exam. I was supposed to practice my listening skills with “Training Hörverstehen UNI? SICHER! 2 (B2-C1-C2)” but finally gave up on it. I still think it would be great to improve my listening skills with this book but the exam is in two months’ time and I haven’t even started preparing for the writing part, so I should rather do something about it. I did however 4 sample tests from “Mit Erfolg zum Goethe-Zertifikat C1. Klett” and my score for reading is anywhere between 22 and 27 points but it’s more consistent for listening - between 24 and 26 points.

I had my first conversation practice with the tutor and it went quite well, I managed to answer her questions and I even used some of those “Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen” but I still lack this flow when speaking that I have when I speak French or even Italian. We did the speaking part from the first sample test from “Werkstatt C1” and my pronunciation is good and I correctly decline nouns and adjectives but I get lost when I want to say long phrases with separable verbs. She said that in the next two months we’ll improve my speaking skills but it should be totally fine on the exam day. At the same time, she said that yes, passing a C1 exam is very nice but using the language in real life or even during a job interview is something different that needs working on as well – couldn’t agree more, but we’ll focus purely on exam scenarios.

“Der Spiegel. Wissen” – I’m at the page 110/130.

I also stumbled upon this reddit thread about the new C1 exam.

Dutch – going through “Dutch doesn’t bite”

Clozemaster/Memrise
#Czech from English (Fluency Fast Track) => playing 1115, mastered 799 out of 8474 sentences
#Memrise Dutch Course – learned 323 words
#Memrise Corso di Portoghese (Portogallo) – learned 168 words

Reading – I finished reading “Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta” and I didn’t like it as much as the previous books in the series. All those political discussions were borderline cringe (was the communist movement really so popular in Western Europe? For someone like me who was born in a communist country, it seems shocking and naïve at the same time). The friendship between the two main characters has become farfetched at this point, it’s hard to believe they still keep in touch when in fact they don’t really like each other that much? Don’t know, I hope the last part of the series will be better. The book finished with a cliffhanger though so I admit I’m curious to see what will happen next.

Last week, I mentioned that I was still waiting for the Italian certificate and here it is! The exam center sent me it a few days ago and I honestly have no idea why it took them so long because the CELI certificates are now in pdf format only. I miss the Perugia University’s seal on the paper certificate that you could feel under your fingers, on the other hand one can print as many copies as necessary for work or education purposes – though I’m yet to show any of my certificates to anyone

CELI4nov.png