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

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CarlyD
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sun May 08, 2022 8:48 pm

The Langathon was a good push to get my motivation going again, but, otherwise, no. I thought there would a website where we could leave comments thru the weekend about what was going on. It's actually more like a conference call, and somebody has to be sitting there on the line waiting for someone else to dial in. Meh.

But I've fallen in love with Rocket German and Busuu again and found a new textbook that's keeping my interest, so it's all good.
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2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sun May 15, 2022 6:59 pm

I never really thought about it, but Rocket German and GermanPod101 are kind of the same thing.

They both give you a dialog, and then talk about it. And there they part ways.

Rocket German is "learn this dialog or die." Each section takes me 80 minutes to complete, which is hard to do in one sitting. The dialog is explained word by word, and common words or phrases even get discussion, giving you other examples. Then flashcards, pronunciation practice, fill in the blanks, translating from English, typing the word/sentence from hearing it and finally, a test. I haven't finished a section yet that I didn't fully and totally understand every word.

GermanPod101 sections (I'm doing the series) is about 18 minutes each. Dialog said once normal speed, once slow speed, once German/English, a short section on selected vocabulary, then a discussion. The discussion is ok, but often veers off to other subjects. I'm not sure what I'm learning--I've gone back to previous dialogs and they don't even sound familiar. Maybe it's not my style of teaching?

My cheap teacher's weekly lesson plan book has become gold. I set my goals for the week, and outline each day what I want to do. Plenty of room in the 8 boxes per day to list online, textbooks, fiction books to read, whatever. I changed Monday to Sunday, then combined Monday/Tuesday to one column (I work those days and do minimum study) and Remarks/Comments is changed to Saturday so it gives me a full week's coverage. There's enough boxes in the Seating Plan section to list all the things I'm doing and list my weekly goals. I'm not sure why teachers need so many pages of seating plans, but this will take me thru the end of the year. Then there's Overview Planning where I can list bigger goals for each month, but it only gives room for 10 months. As the book was so cheap, I'm thinking about getting several more, as sooner or later everything will be online and they'll probably stop publishing the books.

Goals for this Week:
Daily: Clozemaster, Memrise, and maybe something from GermanPod101.

Textbooks:
Hacking German (Benny Lewis' book) Still on chapter 1, will I stay with this one?
German Self Teaching Guide. Starting Chapter 3--each chapter is huge and take me a couple of weeks to do.
Bild für Bild. Chapter 4. This is an expanded version of a German in 30 days book, but after the same dialog there's a lot of pages of grammar and exercises.
Deutch ganz leicht: Chapters 4 and 5.

Online:
Busuu, Level 1, sections 71 and 72
Rocket German, Level 1, section 2.3
German Uncovered: I'm supposed to be reviewing it all again from chapter 1. Trying again this week.

Reading:
Goal for week is 50 pages. I did 45 pages last week.
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2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Fri May 20, 2022 7:43 pm

I'm so frustrated with Clozemaster. My only option is to do new sentences, one time. I can no longer review because all it does is bring up the 100% mastered sentences, the same ones, every single day. They're set at coming up every 365 days. I've talked to them several times and they keep saying they've referred it to their developers, but still no answers or fix. Aargh.

I'm currently working on German: A Self Teaching Guide, published by Wiley. It's actually really good, although I also really like Bild für Bild, which is mostly German, with a bit of English directions. I'm currently on track to finish both of them by the end of the year, then I'm not sure what I'll be using. Or maybe I'll be fluent by then. :P

I finally found my German/English knitting pattern terms dictionary that I'd found online somewhere. I'd been meaning to start another Hitchhiker Beyond scarf, so I'm going to do it using just the German pattern this time. Hopefully I won't end up with a sock.
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2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby DaveAgain » Fri May 20, 2022 9:00 pm

CarlyD wrote:I finally found my German/English knitting pattern terms dictionary that I'd found online somewhere. I'd been meaning to start another Hitchhiker Beyond scarf, so I'm going to do it using just the German pattern this time. Hopefully I won't end up with a sock.
There's a German YouTuber I've been watching this week who talks about books and knitting, perhaps you'd like to try one of her videos? :-)
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Sun Jun 12, 2022 7:16 pm

I've been saying that I was learning German because it is a heritage language and I needed it to do genealogy. Then of course I discovered that the place my family came from, while German at the time, is now part of Slovenia and all their records and websites are in Slovene. So I stayed with German because I liked it, with no real goals. Or motivation.

Today, a new resource was just released by the guy that runs the Ancestor Hunt for Austrian newspapers. He's provided links to newspapers going back to the late 1700s for what was then the Austrian empire--an amazing resource. I've spent way too long this morning reading the Gottschee Bote newspaper. I don't know where it was published, as it's in German, not Gottscheerisch, and covers both the area of Gottschee and people who've moved to the U.S., but -----

I need to seriously step up my German. I only read 2 pages of one issue, found amazing things, and 9000 probably amazing things that I couldn't read. There was a section on people who'd moved from the area. All I got was the word moved and saw it had people's names. Ditto the birth announcement section.

This is what I seriously want German for. Not how to order twelve kinds of beer or asking people what they're hobbies are. (Sorry to the wonderful publishers.)

I need to re-group. I'm staying with Clozemaster and Memrise to acquire vocabulary. But what will get me where I want to go? Spend a ton of time on reading easier stuff to better move to the more difficult stuff? I do have a textbook called German for Reading Knowledge that doesn't dwell on tourist stuff, so I'll look at that again.

My clear goal--finally--is to be able to read these newspapers not only for my own family genealogy, but to help people in my genealogy groups to find info on their relatives too.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby BeaP » Mon Jun 13, 2022 4:21 am

I think it's possible to learn the vocabulary of a specific topic and read texts with ease only in that area. A very basic grammar knowledge is enough. You can copy the articles you've found into google translate or DeepL and start to take notes of the important things. You can also google things like 'Einwanderung USA Deutschland', 'Einwanderung Österreich USA 1700'. You'll probably find several sites with language options, meaning you can change the language from German to English and back. You can make dual texts about the topic that might help even more. For me this seems to be the quickest way, and later you can still do other things to improve your German comprehension in general.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jun 13, 2022 12:16 pm

Whilst ordering twelve kinds of beer or asking people what their hobbies are might not be your goal, at its base the language used for accomplishing them is more-or-less the same as for reading the newspaper. Same grammar structure into which the vocabulary is slotted and same basic function words.
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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Thu Nov 03, 2022 7:29 pm

Where did I go? I'd like to say a world trip, studying German every day. Sadly, I was immersed in real life boring stuff, and I did no German at all. But now I'm baaaack. :D

I'm doing Clozemaster and Memrise every day right now, trying to catch up on the thousands of words to review since it's been sitting. I went to Busuu and they changed the whole program!! I had just finished A1 and was barely starting A2 and now they've thrown me back to the beginning of A1. It's ok--good review and going super fast and I should be back to the start of A2 in a week or 10 days.

My goal for the 6 Week Challenge--do Clozemaster and Memrise every day. Busuu--finish A1 and maybe half of A2. I need to go through all my resources and see what else I want to do, as I seem to be spinning my wheels, getting to a certain point, fading away, then returning and reviewing.
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2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

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Re: CarlyD's 2022 German Challenge Log

Postby CarlyD » Wed Nov 23, 2022 8:38 pm

While I'm still doing my "regular stuff" during this 6 Week Challenge--and not doing well at all--I've decided to do a bigger challenge.

From this Sunday, Nov. 27th to the end of Dec. 2023 is exactly 400 days. What could I accomplish in that amount of time? If I were one of the regular posters here, probably learn 3 languages. But I'm me, and I'm hoping to break through the dreaded B1 in German finally.

From now until Sunday, I'm going to do my regular daily reviews and work on how this is going to happen.
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2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

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Re: CarlyD's 2022/2023 400 Day Challenge

Postby CarlyD » Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:55 pm

While I'm still working on German every day, I'm also gearing up for my 400 Day, which starts tomorrow. Apparently, if I take the resources I already have, I can probably do 11 hours a day for 400 days without finishing any of my books/programs. Not sure that will last more than 1 day.....

How do people finish Rocket German?? Each section takes anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes and in the first level there's nearly 500 sections. I do like the program, but do I want to do only that and nothing else?

Interesting email from Benny Lewis today. Yes, he was shilling for the Black Friday sale at GermanPod101. But he got into the concept of Active Listening, and listening/understanding is one of my worst skills. Basically, he said take a 2-5 minute clip (from there or anywhere) and:

* Listen to it 3 times, without looking up what it means.
* Look up any new words
* Listen to it a few more times
* Try to say it back out loud.

If you can repeat it, or even better, condense and re-phrase it, it would show that you actually heard and understood it. While this would certainly work at GermanPod, it would also work with the free courses on Deutsche Welle and other places.
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2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000


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