CarlyD's 2022/2023 400 Day Challenge--DE

[CarlyD]

I am shocked.

Because I still haven't finished my Lingoni A2 homework (Lesson 24 out of 142) on wissen/kennen, I couldn't move on to the next lesson this morning. So just for fun, I took the "test out" to move from A2 to B1.

I passed. 82%.

Ok, there was some guessing, and more than a few words looked up in my dictionary, which push it down from a "real" score, but still. When I tested out from A1 to A2 I only passed with a 64% (60 is the minimum) and I ended up going back and doing the whole A1 course. There ended up being a LOT of good information there, so I'm glad I did. And I'm not just going to drop the A2 and jump to the B1 lessons.

But, still. I actually did it.

So, basically, all the work I've been throwing at German since I started this 400 Day Challenge last November is actually paying off. Who knew that a ton of hours would actually improve your skills? (Ok, yes, every person in this forum.) Now, I'm totally stoked to keep going and get a true B1 by--or before???--the end of this year.

Now I need to go find some chocolate and then buckle down to the German I had planned for this morning. And bask. Lots of basking.

[CarlyD]

I love all the "how to learn a language" books. The first one I ever saw was How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber (if I'm remembering it right.) So old he talked about learning when there were no textbooks or classes available. Just get a newspaper and a dictionary. Both truly scary and opened my eyes to all the possibilities.

I mostly read them for entertainment, as they go through their story of how they did it. Most of the time I read with a sense of "I'd never do that"--like Benny Lewis' book on learning a language in 90 days. Talk to people? From the beginning? One of my favorites is "How to Learn a New Language with a Used Brain" about a couple retiring to France and their journey to fluency. Another one was something like How to Seriously Learn Spanish that was scary--writing and memorizing short scripts that you could use throughout the day--but I think would really work.

I'm sure there's more out there that I haven't read yet. I'm not fond of the ones that want you to draw pictures of words in your head--my head apparently doesn't make pictures and even if I do think of a cow, there's no arrow that points my brain to "Kuh." I'm sure that must work for someone, though, or it wouldn't keep coming up.

I was just listening to Kerstin Cable's talk this morning about keeping a Language Journal and how it would track your progress--I wish I'd done that when I started learning German, but at least I'm starting one this weekend. Not like my tracking journal (i.e. Monday, finish chapter 12), more like what my visions and goals are, funny things I find online, notes, really anything. Then you both have all that miscellaneous stuff in one place instead of losing it forever and you can go back and see where you were months ago.

[CarlyD]

I'm taking a pause for a week, maybe two. I'll still do my 30-minute minimum, more if I can, but I've kind of let too many other things slide and have to do some catch-up. Who knew that "busy learning German" was not a valid reason to postpone filing my taxes?

So bits of Lingoni (probably just units of vocabulary), GermanPod easier podcasts for listening comprehension and my vocabulary cards and sentences should keep me busy every day until I can jump back in to trying for 2 to 3 hours a day.

[CarlyD]

Ok, taxes are done--only cried once. I think my next push is going to be in listening comprehension, which is my worst skill. Ok, I pretty much don't have any beyond understanding the basics, although my reading has gotten a lot better. I picked up both Yabla and FluentU for a year, which I've used in the past but wasn't quite ready for. I also need to find some YouTube stuff in German beyond my cooking people--which I love, but all the instructions are in written German, not speaking. I really want to start watching some of the German tv shows, but I'm not at a level to understand "regular" German yet.

I was looking at a "German through stories" book marked A1/A2 that has vocabulary lists for the bolded words (kind of like the Cafe in Berlin series). But while all the A1/A2 words have definitions at the end, the rest of the words in the sentences are apparently at the C2 level, because I'm having to use a dictionary for every sentence. A couple of times using context worked, but often there were too many words I'd never seen before in the sentence. Not really helpful.

[CarlyD]

I have 37 weeks left of my 400-day challenge. I made a spreadsheet for what I want to accomplish by the end. I'm sure I'll change it as I go, but for right now, these are my goals:

Lingoni--finish almost all of the A2 lessons (119 out of 142). I'll try for more, but some are more difficult than others.
German Pod101--finish the end of Level 1 and all of Level 2.
Rocket German--finish the end of Level 1 and over half of Level 2. Not difficult, just time consuming.
Assimil--finish by Dec. 10th
Berlitz in 30 days--finish by July 9th. No way anyone could do a whole chapter a day. Or at least I can't.
German Self-Study Guide--finish by Oct 22nd.
Bild für Bild--finish by Nov 19th.
GCSE Revision--fun workbook for high school students, puts a LOT of emphasis on word order and phrases--done by July 9th.

I'm not sure right now what to replace the books with as I finish them. I have a really boring Intermediate German Grammar, but not a lot else. I'll probably still be A2 bumping up against B1, so not fully intermediate.

I still need to schedule my fiction books/readers. If I don't name the book, I end up reading pages from 5 different books during the week, so scheduling one after another works best. Probably next weekend's projects--sort them into Books for April, etc. and see how far I can get. I still haven't gotten very far into the Cafe in Berlin series--I have a huge PDF workbook for the first book. I'll have to look around to see if there's resources for some of the others too. Many of the books also have Memrise courses to help you along, but I haven't done any.

So many things scheduled--halfway overwhelming and halfway goal-is-in-reach. Wonder which one will win?

[MorkTheFiddle]

I really want to start watching some of the German tv shows, but I'm not at a level to understand "regular" German yet.

Inspector Rex, IIRC recommended first on this forum by Cavesa, is a clever series, though my German was never adequate for it. Amazon Prime, if you are into that, shows it with subtitles in English. Here is the url for Amazon's Inspector Rex.

[CarlyD]

I really want to start watching some of the German tv shows, but I'm not at a level to understand "regular" German yet.

Inspector Rex, IIRC recommended first on this forum by Cavesa, is a clever series, though my German was never adequate for it. Amazon Prime, if you are into that, shows it with subtitles in English. Here is the url for Amazon's Inspector Rex.

Thank you. I think I watched some episodes years ago dubbed into Spanish on VeMe. I did look at the Amazon link and it says $7.99 a month to subscribe, so I think I'm going to stick with free stuff on YouTube for awhile longer.