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

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

Postby CarlyD » Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:09 pm

(NOTE) The 400 Day Challenge is 11/27/2022 through 12/31/2023 and the posts start midway on page 2.

New year, new log. Ok, it's nearly May, but I couldn't even find my old log, so there you go.

I've decided that I'm "going Gault" for the rest of the year. (This refers to a book about a guy named Gault that withdrew from the mess of society. No, I never read the book, but someone mentioned it on the internet, so that's the same as reading it, right?)

The rest of the year will be dedicated to only three things:
* German, with joining all the challenges and having clear goals
* The 1950 U.S. Census, which was recently released and needs to be indexed by hand to be accurate. I did the 1940 too.
* My Facebook knitting and crochet groups, which oddly, are mostly made up from people from the U.K. The groups from the U.S. seem to need to inject politics, "woke" and every other thing into making a fricking sweater, so there you go. So now I'm a British knitter. :D

I've just finished a project with going through all my German resources, textbooks, fiction books, etc. and donating those I won't use and setting up a plan to use the ones I have left. Plus weeding through all my online resources and all the websites I've signed up for. In the meantime, I'm just using my super-basics of German Step-by-Step textbook, Memrise, Clozemaster, and Rocket German. I'll add more or weed out once I get back in the habit of daily German.

I've signed up for Lyndsey William's Languathon 2022 that will be May 6th to May 8th this year. It's just a free thing to throw yourself at anything language related for the whole 3-day weekend. She mentioned that one year she set up a language lesson (like italki) for every single language that she'd studied--all on the same day. I'm just going for language immersion for the weekend, since I have nothing else going on then.

I've set my official all-German-for-the-rest-of-the-year to start on Tuesday, April 26th. Partly because it's 250 days exactly to the end of the year, and partly because my house is being repainted now and my dogs are barking constantly and I can't see a lot of learning and concentrating going on until it's done.
Last edited by CarlyD on Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sat Apr 23, 2022 8:25 pm

I was just over at Memrise and was looking at the offerings for German. (I'm currently taking German 3 and a course that matches Duolingo).

I'm seeing small courses available for a number of books that I have--both textbook type and fiction books. I'd known about the courses for Cafe in Berlin and Arme Anna, but I'm seeing more and more being added. So then the question becomes--is it better to do a Memrise course before you start the book or should you just start and look up words individually? I can see a benefit for both ways. I'll have to think about that.

Now to debate whether I want to take the huge list of German books that I have--even after getting rid of a ton of them--and see how many have courses available. :P
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:08 pm

I finished my scroll-through of nearly all the Memrise courses available in German right now. I know some can be pitiful, but I've found many in the past (in Spanish) that were wonderful and I've been doing A Journey to Germany for awhile now and it's been great. I'm leaving a list here so I can find it later.

Online--other than Duolingo that has a good 15 courses by various people.
Deutsch Welle--Nicos Weg. Courses labeled 1, A2, B1. Courses show both Nico's and Nicos, so need to search both.
Warum nicht--Series 2
Harry gefangen in der Zeit

Textbooks
An absolute ton of school textbooks, with each course being one chapter. Consolidate, people!!
(Teach Yourself) Perfect Your German
Willkommen!
German Demystified

Fiction Books
Jeder ist Kauflich--A2/B1
Der Besuch der alten Damen
Hilde und Gunter 1--The case of the stolen watch
Der Passagier--B1
Fast stirbt er
Für S. (Angelina Bohn) I think B1
Immer Wieder Sascha
Emil und die Detektive (yellow cover)
The Little Pianist
Tatort: Krankenhause A2/B1
Tod in der Opera A2/B1
Der Letzte Kuss A2/B1

I have a few of these fiction books already, but now I'm thinking about getting the higher level ones and taking the Memrise course first.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Apr 24, 2022 9:40 pm

CarlyD wrote:Fiction Books
Jeder ist Kauflich--A2/B1
Der Besuch der alten Damen
Hilde und Gunter 1--The case of the stolen watch
Der Passagier--B1
Fast stirbt er
Für S. (Angelina Bohn) I think B1
Immer Wieder Sascha
Emil und die Detektive (yellow cover)
The Little Pianist
Tatort: Krankenhause A2/B1
Tod in der Opera A2/B1
Der Letzte Kuss A2/B1

I have a few of these fiction books already, but now I'm thinking about getting the higher level ones and taking the Memrise course first.
Of the books you list, I've read and didn't much like Der Besuch der alten Damen, so if you've not bought it yet, I wouldn't recommend it. :-)

Two I did like were Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer, and Damals bei uns daheim.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Mon Apr 25, 2022 5:41 am

DaveAgain wrote:Of the books you list, I've read and didn't much like Der Besuch der alten Damen, so if you've not bought it yet, I wouldn't recommend it. :-)

Two I did like were Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer, and Damals bei uns daheim.


I thought the Der Besuch one looked like a classic--I don't even read classics in English. Thanks for the info.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Apr 25, 2022 5:51 am

CarlyD wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:Of the books you list, I've read and didn't much like Der Besuch der alten Damen, so if you've not bought it yet, I wouldn't recommend it. :-)

Two I did like were Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer, and Damals bei uns daheim.


I thought the Der Besuch one looked like a classic--I don't even read classics in English. Thanks for the info.
It is, in some ways its a comedy too, but its a ghastly comedy with a very ugly story within in.

EDIT
If you search YouTube, I think you'll be able to find a stage performance or film version.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Mon Apr 25, 2022 8:25 pm

DaveAgain wrote:It is, in some ways its a comedy too, but its a ghastly comedy with a very ugly story within in.

EDIT
If you search YouTube, I think you'll be able to find a stage performance or film version.


Thanks, but I think I'll just skip over that one. Some years ago, I'd found a set of easy readers in Spanish that looked like they were very good stories. It turned out they were scaled down versions of Spanish classics and horrendously dark and depressing. I made it through one, started another, and then gave them all away.

I figure if I wouldn't want to read it in English, I'm not going to struggle to read it in German or Spanish.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sun May 01, 2022 6:51 pm

Ah, the magic of the first day of the 6 Week Challenge:

1. My house remodel is no where near done. "We'll be done by April 1st" has turned into "we'll show up whenever we have nothing better to do" quickly followed by "it's gonna cost more than we said." So hammering, banging and dogs barking while I'm trying to do German. Assuming they show up.
2. Clozemaster is being weird. It's giving me the exact same sentences to review every day. Every day they go from 75% learned to 100% learned, then they're back at 75% the next day. I sent them a message.
3. Memrise keeps going "website not responding." I can hit Google, then go back to Memrise and it's ok for a few minutes.

Sigh. I'm doomed.

At least I've picked out some fiction books to read, and the two textbooks I'm going through are going good.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Wed May 04, 2022 4:29 pm

So now I'm telling myself--just survive this week.

The contractors are going to be here every day this week--and then will hopefully be done. I'm getting up early to do what German I can, then it's back to hammering, sudden crashes, dogs going insane--except for the little one that shakes and cries--and not being able to concentrate. By the time they finally leave, I'm just flat tired.

I'm in an (other interest) Facebook group and someone was talking about keeping an up-to-date inventory and linked a basic teacher's attendance book, which was perfect for inventory. Then I was looking around and found a teacher's planning book. It goes by week/month/quarter, with room for 6 or more subjects and I thought--this would work perfectly for language planning. Both for goals, for exactly what I want to do that day, week or month. Very reasonably priced. They had much fancier ones for actual teachers, but this will be perfect. It's arriving today so I'm going to try it out while I'm in no-concentration mode from the noise.

Currently in use:
Textbooks:
Bild für Bild
Deutsch ganz leicht
Online:
Memrise
Clozemaster
DeutschWelle Nicos Weg

On hold, pending getting my life/house/quiet back:
Rocket German
German Uncovered (from Ollie Richards' I Can Teach You a Language website)
Busuu

The Langathon is this Friday/Saturday/Sunday. My plan is to throw myself into everything German, even speaking only German all three days. I'm probably going to miss the Thursday morning online meet due to builder noise, but I'm hopeful I can get some solid hours in over the three days.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sat May 07, 2022 7:58 pm

Okay, throwing everything into learning German for three solid days is hard. It's only half-way over, and I'm tired.

I did Benny Lewis' webinar yesterday--21 Language Hacks or something like that. It was great. Some stuff I'd heard before, some I hadn't, all pulled together into one 45-minute talk. And he didn't push the "let's talk to everyone we can" agenda that he used to always do. I think he's realized that not everyone is as social as he is. Lots of ideas for speaking practice, study plans and habits, goal setting. One I really liked was building your own Language Vault. This is a phrasebook of what's important in your life--your hobbies, your interests, etc. I started to do this a long time ago, looking for phrases I could use with my dogs, and never continued. I have a lot of knitting patterns in German, but don't have a good vocabulary list for them either. Also making up fake conversations of what you might need to say before you get there, along with a list of possible responses you might hear. That would take a lot of stress out of any situation.

I started back into Busuu today. They've changed it. First, I'd already finished Level 1, which was around 71 sections. It's now 96 sections and they threw me back to section 66. Plus, they now push Live Lessons, either group or private, one lesson every 2 to 5 sections. On the plus side, the teacher is working from the exact same material as you, no casting around looking for subjects. The private lessons are $10 for 45-minutes if you buy 5 at a time. It doesn't give a price for the group lessons. I'm not sure if I want to do that or not. Or if that's even a good price.

I also went and looked at Duolingo again. They've changed that also. I was just going to spend a few minutes reviewing to fix my "broken" crowns and they're seriously pushing some upper level for each crown--that you have to pay for. The sentences are still strange and mostly not useful, so I'm fading on that again. Totally don't see how people are finding that helpful.
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