German: Second Half of the Marathon

[sabotai]

So it's been a while.

Posted on the old HTLAL forum, here for a bit (under a different name I've long since forgotten) when it started up. I haven't done much language learning over the last several years. I would pick it up for a few months and then stop, but I've got time now to get back into it regularly.

I feel like I'm still about half way to my goals for German. When I read a bit of a book like Charlotte's Web or Percy Jackson, I understand things clearly for a paragraph, then get completely lost for a few, then get the general gist for a bit, and repeat a variation of that pattern as I go. I did study German a bit last year and I'm going to pick up right where I left off.

Here's my study/acquisition plan:

1) 2-4 15 minute sessions of Scriptorium.

I take example sentences and exercises from grammar books, workbooks, FSI etc. and use the Scriptorium method from Prof. Arguelles. I keep track of the date and where I get the sentences in a spreadsheet. After a week, I go back and write them out again if I feel I need to. Then 2 weeks and do it again (so 3 times over 3 weeks). I can usually do both review sections in one 15 minute session because I usually skip ("pass" if these were flashcards) at least half of them.

2) Various reading and listening methods for novels

I did a variation of this for French a few years ago and thought it worked very well.

a) Read a chapter in German, using the English to help.
b) LR the last 3 chapters (so after I read chapter 5, I'll LR chapters 3-5, then read chapter 6, LR 4-6, etc.)
c) After getting through the entire book, listen to and read the German version a few times.

Unfortunately when I did this for French, I only got through one book before I had to once again drop language learning for awhile. But I really felt like it gave my French a good boost along with the scriptorium I did.

Tentative reading order is: Wilbur und Charlotte (did chapter 7 today), Percy Jackson 1-5, The Hunger Games 1-3

I'll probably be well into 2023 when I finish that list, but after Percy Jackson, I'm going to pull back on the LR repetitions, and after The Hunger Games just be listening and reading to the German for a novel once (good old extensive reading and listening). After The Hunger Games, I plan to move to novels/series like It, the Mistborn series, Perry Phodan, Inkheart trilogy, etc. I'll probably stop the scriptorium at that point too and go purely extensive.

I'll also be doing some extensive listening and intensive reading of news articles and whatnot here and there.

Anyway, that's my best laid plan.

[sabotai]

Well, I've already lied. Normally, I repeat sentences I scriptorium a few times as described above because, normally, the resources I use don't have all that many sentences. But the resource I'm using for scriptorium in German is FSI, which repeats words and sentence patterns a lot over a ton of sentences. No need to repeat them. I'm just plowing through.

I also have a lifetime subscription to Speakly, and while I don't really like the main cloze-deletion style lessons, I do like the live situations and listening exercises, so I might start working through that again if I have time.

Anki and Maintenance of other Languages

I was debating on including this or not, but what the hell, I'll log everything. I don't like to use Anki for languages I'm actively learning. Reviews build up, I feel compelled to do a few dozen new cards and soon I'm doing Anki reps and little else. But for languages that I'm just trying to maintain my (admittedly low) level, a few new cards a day, if that, is just fine. Plus, I like to learn writing systems, even if I never get to their language(s).

So I have decks set up for Korean, Japanese and French, as well as Russian (Cyrillic script). But I since I just started back up, they have nothing in them for now. I learned the Russian alphabet several years ago but have forgotten most of it. After that...I dunno. Perhaps I'll just pick a new writing system out of a hat. I kinda want to learn them all.

July 10th

I left off in the middle of FSI Unit 8 last year, so that's where I begin. Wrote out the second half of the Vocab section and first half of the Translation section. (39 sentences) (~30 minutes total)

I read chapter 8 of Wilbur und Charlotte and LR'ed chapters 6-8. (~35 minutes total).

Also watched a German Youtubers for 45 minutes of extensive listening.

[sabotai]

So I probably picked the worst week to get all motivated to jump back into language learning. I spent all weekend at a wedding and didn't spend much of the week reading like I wanted to, nor did I do any language learning over the weekend. (Great wedding, though)

Week 1 - Maintenance / Other Languages Stats

Anki Stats

Russian
Script Deck: 60 Young Cards
Time: 21 minutes

French
Sentences: 35 Young Cards
Audio Sentences: 6 Young Cards
Time: 6 Minutes

Japanese
Kanji Deck: 37 Young, 26 Mature
Sentences: 45 Young Cards
Time: 6 Minutes

Korean
Sentences: 55 Young Cards
Time: 8 Minutes

To keep these manageable, I'm only doing 5 new cards a day per deck, and I set the graduating interval to 7 days (instead of 1). I don't want to spend more then 5-10 minutes per day per language doing this.

German

Scriptorium: 2h 15m
Reading: 1h 40m
LR: 1h 10m

Only got in 2 more chapters of Wilbur und Charlotte last week (read on 2 days). Managed to squeeze Scriptorium in on the busy days but not on the weekend.

[sabotai]

So where was I...

Following the wedding I went to back in July, I got very sick. Wasn't even COVID, I got a nasty case of bronchitis and pink eye and I spent a week in bed doing nothing. Then two weeks of slowly getting over the leftover congestion and just general feeling of tiredness. Worst sickness of my life (so far).

Then it took me awhile to get back into my routine. I changed it up some and here is what I've been doing:

DL Reading, same as before. But I wait until I'm done the book to do any LRing. And I do 30-45 minutes of both per day (well I try to - I've fallen behind on the LRing some).

Currently Reading
DL Reading: Percy Jackson 1 (~35% done)
LR: Wilbur und Charlotte (~80% done first pass of three).

So the routine is: DL Read a book. When I'm done, DL Read the next book on my list while I LR the previous book 3x. After I LR 3x, then I switch to listening and reading in German until I finish DL reading and move to the next book.

Scriptorium: Unit 13 of FSI

As far as maintenance languages, I haven't been doing that. I have tried to find some time to do some actual French study, but after the reading and scriptorium for German, I don't have much time leftover most days.

[TopDog_IK]

Currently Reading
LR: Wilbur und Charlotte (~80% done first pass of three).

Wilbur und Charlotte was good in German. Easy book. Have you tried the first chronological book in the Narnia series, "Das Wunder von Narnia"? It's beautifully written and translated and the easiest book in the series.

Are you watching German TV shows?

[sabotai]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been looking for another series to mix into my list. I know I'll get burned out on Percy Jackson if I read all 5 books in a row, so mixing Narnia books into the rotation sounds like a great idea.

As for TV, I don't watch regularly. I'll put on German Youtubers, or put on a German show when I have pockets of time, but I don't have much free time (after I've spent 2+ hours on German study and reading) most days. I've tried watching shows like Tartort, Dark and Babylon Berlin, but I'm still not understanding much of them yet. My listening comprehension is way behind my reading, and I know I need to find time to listen a lot more, but only so many hours in the day.

[TopDog_IK]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been looking for another series to mix into my list. I know I'll get burned out on Percy Jackson if I read all 5 books in a row, so mixing Narnia books into the rotation sounds like a great idea.

As for TV, I don't watch regularly. I'll put on German Youtubers, or put on a German show when I have pockets of time, but I don't have much free time (after I've spent 2+ hours on German study and reading) most days. I've tried watching shows like Tartort, Dark and Babylon Berlin, but I'm still not understanding much of them yet. My listening comprehension is way behind my reading, and I know I need to find time to listen a lot more, but only so many hours in the day.

Have you tried any German anime dubs? German anime dubs are among the best in the world. If you can get into anime, there are thousands of hours of shows available for immersion. I've found German anime dubs to be a god-send.

[sabotai]

Sept 19th - 25th

(Started tracking on Wednesday, the 21st)
Scriptorium: 2:45
Anki: 0:08 - testing out some cloze deletion cards
DL Reading: 0:30
L2-R1: 1:05 ("LR": listening to German while reading English)

Total: 4:28

DL Reading: Percy Jackson 1 (41%)
L2R1: Wilbur un Charlotte (finished)


Busy week for me, so not as much reading as I'd like. I did a lot of reading at the beginning of the week before I started tracking my time again, but today (Sunday) I barely had any time to read. I finished my first (and maybe only) pass of L2R1 of Wilbur und Charlotte. Just been through Wilbur und Charlotte twice, so I'm going to let it sit awhile before I go through it again (if I do). I have a ton of books in both German and English along with the audiobooks. Still deciding how much repetition I want to do.

Next up, I'm going to start DL Reading "Krabat" by Otfried Preußler while continuing to read Percy Jackson. Ideally 45-60 minutes a day for each, but I'll see how it goes. Shouldn't be too busy anymore for the near future.

[Nogon]

Next up, I'm going to start DL Reading "Krabat" by Otfried Preußler

"Krabat" is one of the very best German books for children. I absolutely loved it when I was young, and even bought a new copy a few years ago (unfortunately I didn't keep my children's books) and read it again -> still love it! Hope you'll like it too!

[sabotai]

Good week of reading, and I decided this week will be my last 'studying' German and I'm just going to spend more time reading, listening to audiobooks and doing extensive listening. Doing scriptorium on the FSI sentences helped. It had been awhile since I spent a meaningful amount of time with German, so several weeks really helped me get refreshed, but now that I am refreshed, the FSI sentences are quite easy and I'm just going to devote more time to reading.

Sept. 26th - Oct. 2nd

Scriptorium: 2:38
Anki (Clozed Deletion): 0:21
DL Reading: 7:10

Percy Jackson 1: 286 of 448 pages (+80)
Krabat: 79 of 350 pages (+79)

Next Week's Plan

DL Reading: Continue reading Krabat and Percy Jackson, another 150+ page week.
Audiobook Reading: Der Kleine Prinz and Wilbur und Charlotte.

The long term plan is to go through these short children's and young adult books several times (once DL reading the books, several times with the audiobook) to get that sweet, sweet repetition. Once the books get longer, though, the number of repetitions will have to drop and eventually just go through them once when I get to audiobooks that are 20+ hours long.