Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, bits of French)

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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:40 pm

I finished the passive wave of Assimil German! I know that several weeks ago I posted saying that I only had three lessons to go, but sssh!

My German motivation has been pretty low again, and the thought of continuing with the active wave is only reducing it further. I still feel like I'm struggling with the usual stuff like prepositions, but that's not Assimil's fault or anything missing from my studies as much as me just not really caring enough to bother to learn them properly. I have been getting a bit of input with Dark, but the third series isn't really grabbing me the way the first two did. Maybe because the whole parallel universes idea feels a bit weak compared to the previous plot devices, or maybe it's again just my lack of motivation for the language.

I just need a real practical reason to learn a language, especially one with a tough beginner stage, and much of mine was tied to the idea of going to work in Germany. Now that my job here is going pretty well (with the whole interview experience I mentioned in my last post helping me realise that!) and any ideas of moving abroad are postponed indefinitely, I don't have that reason. As I said it's still a possible future option, and I'd love to discover more of the culture and enjoy media in the original language, but these reasons are too vague to compete with all of my more immediate priorities and interests.

Maybe I'll take a break from German, either now or after slogging through the active wave and reaching that milestone, or maybe not. I'll just see how I feel. I could also pause the active wave for now and work through something easier instead like Nicos Weg before coming back to it with a better knowledge of the details, since part of the loss of motivation is from working through quite tough material. I do have some time off work so that might encourage me to keep it up a little longer.

My motivation for other languages hasn't been a whole lot higher either, but I have been steadily increasing my Spanish intake. I still feel that it's a language that's been languishing at intermediate level for years and by now I "should" know it better and be able to claim I can speak it, but I could get to that point if I just kept up a consistent but not particularly arduous effort of plenty input and a little speaking and writing practice for perhaps six months or so. I realise that "I should know it better by now" isn't a very concrete reason either, but Spanish feels a lot closer to home and I encounter many more Spanish speakers than German speakers (or at least did back when social life was a thing...), plus working on a language I already have a solid foundation in takes much less motivation than building a new foundation. I'm journalling in Italian very regularly these days so I might start doing alternate days in Spanish again.

A few days ago I got an email reminding me that I hadn't logged into iTalki for over a year and my credits would expire if I didn't do so soon. I do have a few lessons' worth in there and I should use them at some point, and it could help with the Spanish effort, but especially with all my work videocalls it's one of the last things I feel like doing.

A thought I've been having on a lot of language material: the "advanced trap". One issue is materials that claim to be "advanced" but are really just "not absolute beginner", but a bigger problem is ones that jump too quickly from basic to advanced and skipping over valuable intermediate-level material in order to justify an "advanced" or B2/C1 level. Assimil is an obvious example that I've already discussed on here and in Iguamamon's log recently, but Coffee Break German has also gone that way (a recent lesson I listened to was based on a fairly complicated text on history and literature) and I'm seeing it in Kwiziq Spanish too which doesn't seem to offer much in between basic grammar points that I could answer in my sleep because three of the four choices are egregiously incorrect, and fairly niche things like "Use the most appropriate and formal way to say 'therefore'" (where several answers are correct but it wants the most formal version) and "Use the past tense that can indicate a present action in a literary context" that end up being prompt recall exercises more than language practice ones. I always feel a bit bad criticising Kwiziq since it is an innovative product with a lot of potential and I have learnt a lot from it, but it still has some way to go.

Easy German, on the other hand, seems to have hit the nail on the head for intermediate material and I'm sure it'll remain a big part of my studies if I do keep them up.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Nov 29, 2020 9:07 pm

Needless to say, I haven't reopened my Assimil book since writing that last post. Or any other German learning material aside from a couple of Coffee Break episodes and half-arsing Anki. I would say that I might pick up German again during my time off work for the holidays since I won't have much else on especially with lockdown regulations, but realistically that time will probably be filled with all the other things I've been struggling to fit in and will want to do when I don't have much else on.

I have used my Italian a few times recently, at a dinner with Italian friends and some online chats. It's as imperfect as ever, with as many mistakes I really "shouldn't" be making by now as ever, but recently I'm finding that I don't really care. Sure, I'd love to speak it more accurately and fluently, but for now I'm not willing to put in hundreds or thousands of hours of effort for a relatively small gain with an even smaller payoff. If I were living in Italy or married to an Italian or using Italian in my work, maybe it would be worthwhile, but for a mostly-useless hobby it just doesn't add up, and for the things I do use Italian for like speaking to friends and travelling in Italy (one day I will again!), a few minor errors are the least of my worries in terms of using the language effectively compared to other factors like confidence, speaking clearly, and just being able to relax and "be myself" even within the confines and added difficulties of interacting in a foreign language.

And that last point is something that has been on my mind a lot recently and I'd like to talk about it a little, hopefully without it getting too long, off-topic, personal, ranty, or self-helpy...

One of the most important lessons I've learnt in my thirties is that you don't have to play at life in hard mode all the time. Of course it's great to be ambitious and push yourself to improve, but it's also important to be able to relax and appreciate what you already have sometimes and in fact that is a foundation for real and sustainable growth. You should build your comfort zone before trying to get out of it; you should learn to walk before trying to run.

The joke about the polyglot who can speak five languages but has nothing interesting to say in any of them has always felt a bit too close to home for me. I certainly don't consider myself a boring person, quite the contrary, but I'm aware that I can often seem boring because I've never been very good at opening up and showing my true personality as my default behaviour has always been to hide it. People-pleaser, nice-guy-syndrome, neediness, call it what you will, paired with its symbiotic evil twin of perfectionism. I believe I would have had a much easier time learning languages (as well as everything else I tried to do in my twenties, especially all that is related to people and social life) if I had concentrated on learning how to accept who I am, be myself, relax around people, connect emotionally, express my personality, and speak well in my native language and with people I knew well before trying to do it all in a foreign language and with strangers. I also could've avoided some of the worst traps and vicious circles I fell into: using languages as a means to try to fit in with the "cool crowd" and replacing my original healthy motivations with that; getting more upset than necessary at bad attitudes from native speakers; and placing far too much emphasis on speaking practice.

Of course that's all hindsight and in reality I doubt that anybody truly figures out life in a logical and sensible order. Many things have to be learnt the hard way, and the fact that I've realised all this now means that I've begun to figure it out.

For this reason, the fact that I care less and less about my Italian being imperfect feels like a big success, probably even a bigger one than if I had reached a point of being able to speak it mostly correctly by now. Similarly, these days when I encounter someone who speaks one of my languages I don't feel any particular pressure to prove myself with my knowledge of it or insist on speaking as if not making the most of the "opportunity" made me some kind of failure (or the other side of the same coin: avoiding telling them in case they react negatively); it's just a normal interaction with a person, and the common language doesn't change much apart from perhaps giving us something else to talk about. I am still a bit shy about it, for example recently I could've spoken some Spanish but didn't feel up to it, but hopefully these recent realisations are just the beginning of a journey.

If I were to visit a TL-speaking country now, I'd probably be far less bothered by people responding in English or having bad attitudes than I have been in the past, see it better from their perspective as just trying to help or being taken aback and confused by a foreigner speaking the language, not play the victim, and accept that no matter how much effort I've made it doesn't automatically entitle me to free practice. Putting myself in others' shoes is another life lesson that it took me far too long to learn. But that's speculation and maybe too optimistic so I'll have to wait and see until next time it does happen.

This is maybe another reason for my loss of motivation for German and perhaps even languages in general: in terms of everything I could do to improve my life and develop as a person right now, learning yet another language is very far down on the list. Of course not everything we do needs to be about improvement and development, but even as hobbies go it's quite low in the reward-to-effort ratio and I still have that strange relationship with German where it's become associated with that missed career and life opportunity and the possibility of a similar one in future and that's still part of my motivation and also a mixed feeling that comes up whenever I study it.

I am still watching a reasonable amount of TV and films in my languages and I don't see that changing. I'm finally checking out Maltese - Il romanzo del commissario as well as getting through some Spanish stuff and a little French.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Jan 03, 2021 10:22 pm

In the last month I've done a few more Assimil translations but the active wave really just feels like trying to run before I can walk. I barely know the basics and it's expecting me to translate a lot of decidedly intermediate-level language. I have to look half the words up in the dictionary and/or just cheat and peek at the translation, so it's not a very useful exercise except in the sense that it does get me thinking in German. Which isn't to be understated, and I do find that if I do exercises for a few days in a row I feel like I'm beginning to progress again, but surely there are more productive ways to get the same effect.

I really feel that slow and steady will win the race for this language, since I don't have the related-language background nor the motivation to run through the beginner stage like I did with other ones. So I've dropped the active wave for now but I might come back to it once I've filled in some gaps.

The question is of course: what to replace it with? I still don't think that comprehensible input alone is enough at this point. Maybe a traditional coursebook is the answer, like one of the "advanced" (i.e., advanced-beginner) offerings from Teach Yourself etc. But apps have their place too, and after deciding not to use it out of principle earlier last year I've decided to give Duolingo another shot. I still can't say I like it, and the most recent version has a whole bunch of new and creative ways to interrupt its users' flow and insult their intelligence, like the motivational messages (which can thankfully be turned off) and these silly little token characters (not sure if these can be turned off, sadly) and I can't find the function to practice all skills anymore. They have added the Tips (usage and grammar explanations) to the mobile version at least, though, and despite all its flaws it still seems better than the competition. I tried Clozemaster years ago and hated it, and tried it again recently and still hate it; Memrise is full-on paradox of choice and I've no idea where to even start with it; and Lingodeer just feels like an inferior imitation at least for European languages. I'm still using Anki but it's not really comparable to something that's designed to be comprehensive and cover all of the basics.

I'm surprised that with a language as well-covered as German and at such a low level I'm struggling to find resources that suit me, but maybe it's a combination of unrealistic expectations (because there are so many resources, I think the "right" one must be out there and I'm too fussy), the good stuff being drowned out by the mediocre mainstream stuff, and me making excuses to not just get my head down and work through something since all these materials will cover quite the same things anyway.

Suggestions for materials are welcome!

On the input side, I did finally finish Dark. I didn't rate the third season much, but input is input and I still reckon I'll come back to it later when/if my German is more advanced to get more mileage out of it and understand the story better. I'll look for another series and/or watch some stuff in other languages with German subtitles as I have been doing sometimes.

2020 in review

Yet another unexciting year for my language studies, which are still not the passion they were back when I was in my twenties and probably never will be again but are still a fairly important interest of mine. My attempt at starting German at the beginning of the year might have changed that, but it didn't last and my second shot at it hasn't gone much better. It's definitely the slowest and most unenthusiastic attempt I've made at a language; I wouldn't say it's for lack of interest as much as too many higher-priority competing interests. Plus there were the mixed feelings related to work and the possibility of moving to Germany, and then the pandemic putting any plans for travel or moving on indefinite hold.

Glacial progress in my other languages as usual. I've kept up Spanish and Italian, and even found space for some French input, but no significant breakthroughs. I think I only spoke Spanish twice this year: once with a colleague before the office closed, and once at the first time at a cool and promising new exchange event which would also be the last time because of the lockdown. I've spoken Italian perhaps once or twice per month and had text conversations once or twice per week, and aside from my speaking improving a little as a side-effect of some work on improving my clarity and intonation in English and so paying more attention to it in general I've again got little to report as it's just been a matter of maintenance.

I still really like the idea of learning German and would like to make it a priority for 2021 and come up with a proper plan for reaching an intermediate level, but who knows. I gave up on goals long ago and as much as I'd love to be able to speak German my attempts so far would imply that I'm not fussed enough to really put in the work. I'd also like to make it the year that I finally reach advanced Spanish but that's becoming like the old joke about the year of Linux on the desktop. It'll most likely be a similar year of maintenance, extremely slow progress, and reactive rather than proactive learning: if I do make a serious effort in a language it'll be because of some other life circumstance like travel or relationships or work.

That was perhaps the dullest New Year's post both on my log and the whole forum, but I'm just telling things as they are!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:17 am

garyb wrote:

I'm surprised that with a language as well-covered as German and at such a low level I'm struggling to find resources that suit me, but maybe it's a combination of unrealistic expectations (because there are so many resources, I think the "right" one must be out there and I'm too fussy), the good stuff being drowned out by the mediocre mainstream stuff, and me making excuses to not just get my head down and work through something since all these materials will cover quite the same things anyway.

Suggestions for materials are welcome!
A DW.com course that I liked was Das sagt man so, it's based around German expressions. Lots of them translate directly to English, but there are some new/odd ones too.

Browsing the Goethe institute website I came across a mention of a classic course that now has me intrigued.
The first language courses run by the Goethe-Institut begin in Bad Reichenhall. Due to growing demand, new centres of learning are soon opened in Murnau and Kochel, the focus of selection being on towns which are small and idyllic and which show post-war Germany at its best. Lessons are taught from the first textbook developed by the Goethe-Institut, the now legendary "Schulz-Griesbach".

https://www.goethe.de/en/uun/org/ges.html

This seems to be a two volume course, Deutsche Sprachlehre für Ausländer by Dora Schulz and Heinz Griesbach.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Tue Jan 05, 2021 1:34 pm

DaveAgain wrote:A DW.com course that I liked was Das sagt man so, it's based around German expressions. Lots of them translate directly to English, but there are some new/odd ones too.

Browsing the Goethe institute website I came across a mention of a classic course that now has me intrigued.
The first language courses run by the Goethe-Institut begin in Bad Reichenhall. Due to growing demand, new centres of learning are soon opened in Murnau and Kochel, the focus of selection being on towns which are small and idyllic and which show post-war Germany at its best. Lessons are taught from the first textbook developed by the Goethe-Institut, the now legendary "Schulz-Griesbach".
Thanks for the ideas, although I'm not sure that they're quite right for me at this point. A course on idiomatic expressions sounds like the last thing I need when my current goal is just to learn the basics better, and even at more advanced levels I'm critical of courses or teachers that focus too much on teaching lots of idioms rather than trying to identify and help the student with the more important gaps in their knowledge. That said though, the course you've linked to does look like it has some interesting content and good exercises rather than just rattling off lists of expressions, so it could be one to come back to once I'm at a slightly higher level!

I've not been able to find much info so far on Schulz-Griesbach or what its advantages are over more recent and easier to find courses. I'm usually put off by "classic" courses and prefer more modern materials, but they can have their place and I found FSI Spanish very useful for example.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby gsbod » Tue Jan 05, 2021 2:41 pm

Things really started to fall into place for me with German when I switched to using the Begegnungen textbooks. They might be a touch on the dry side, but they are modern textbooks with plenty of drills, which tackle the grammar in a structured way. They are also pretty cost effective, as you only have to buy a single volume for each CEFR level. They have now apparently been superceded by the Spektrum series, which seems to cover similar ground with a similar pedagogy, but also has full colour photographs.They are all in German, but the level of language used throughout for the instructions etc. is appropriate to each level so this shouldn't be a problem.

I think that for an English speaker, the learning curve for German is a bit different to the Romance languages and places more demands on a beginner (A1-B1), but it is worth sticking with. Once you get to B2, there are no more surprises in terms of grammar, and vocabulary gets a lot easier to deal with due to the nature of German word building.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Tue Jan 12, 2021 11:24 am

gsbod wrote:Things really started to fall into place for me with German when I switched to using the Begegnungen textbooks. They might be a touch on the dry side, but they are modern textbooks with plenty of drills, which tackle the grammar in a structured way. They are also pretty cost effective, as you only have to buy a single volume for each CEFR level. They have now apparently been superceded by the Spektrum series, which seems to cover similar ground with a similar pedagogy, but also has full colour photographs.They are all in German, but the level of language used throughout for the instructions etc. is appropriate to each level so this shouldn't be a problem.

I think that for an English speaker, the learning curve for German is a bit different to the Romance languages and places more demands on a beginner (A1-B1), but it is worth sticking with. Once you get to B2, there are no more surprises in terms of grammar, and vocabulary gets a lot easier to deal with due to the nature of German word building.
Thanks for the recommendation! These textbooks seem like exactly what I'm looking for. In fact I wish I had worked through something like that rather than diving straight into Assimil.

What you say about the learning curve also matches what other people have told me and seems accurate so far based on my experience, although again it's hard to tell objectively since I already had some background for my other languages. There does seem to be a lot of upfront learning needed before things really start to make sense.

I've had a look at the Spektrum A2 book. As expected the language in the exercises and the instructions is a little above my level with lots of unknown words (so much for Assimil's B2 :lol:), but I really don't fancy going through another absolute-beginner resource so would rather skip the A1 and just deal with a slightly steeper curve. Between Duolingo and input I should be getting enough coverage of the A1-level stuff already.

I have been a little more serious about German in the last week. Again I hate to praise Duo, but fitting in a few minutes of it per day does help keep the language in my head and motivate me to do more real study. I've also tried just diving into some proper native input, "easy" stuff like news radio and online documentary videos. Obviously I can't follow it all at this stage but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could understand and it did really get my brain working, so that's something to keep up. As much as I'm quite pro-subtitles, not having them sometimes does force me to pay attention and really focus on the language so can only be a good thing.

I did have a browse of Netflix series too. Freud seemed right up my street, but it had some very strange speech that didn't match the subtitles and I can only assume is Austrian dialect, which really isn't the kind of thing I want to be dealing with just yet. How to sell drugs online (fast) looked fun but it has no German subtitles so it's also a no for now. Plenty other options though, German learners are spoilt for choice on Netflix.

I've also tried to get back into Spanish yet again, with a bit of Kwiziq and some writing. Writing still feels like a struggle and I'm constantly having to look up how to phrase relatively simple things.

Realistically my feeling is that I'll only have time to significantly progress in one language this year, whether that's on getting my German past the basics or my Spanish off the intermediate plateau or perfecting my Italian speaking, and will have to accept the usual very slow movement in the others. For now German seems like the obvious choice since I'll get more bang-for-buck by putting the time into a lower-level language, so I'm trying to make it my priority for the next month or two, but we'll see. It does feel like I have a very solid German learning plan now if I use Begegnungen/Spektrum to fill in the "proper study" gap between Duo and comprehensible input, so I don't have that excuse!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby kanewai » Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:34 pm

garyb wrote:
gsbod wrote:... the Spektrum series, which seems to cover similar ground with a similar pedagogy, but also has full colour photographs.They are all in German, but the level of language used throughout for the instructions etc. is appropriate to each level so this shouldn't be a problem.


These textbooks seem like exactly what I'm looking for. In fact I wish I had worked through something like that rather than diving straight into Assimil.
We seem to have followed a similar track with German. I also wished I had started with a series like Begegnungen / Spektrum. I wasn't able to internalize the grammar with Assimil German the way I had with Italian - I almost feel like Italian was a "freebie" after learning Spanish and French. I had to work at it still, just not as hard.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:20 pm

I've worked through a bit of Spektrum A2. Good impressions overall. It is clearly designed for a classroom rather than a self-learner, and all the instructions being in German does make the learning curve steep at this level (but makes sense for the publishers not to limit the books to English-speakers), but it seems like a sensible mix of vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension exercises on the kind of everyday topics like education, work and hobbies that Assimil didn't cover much.

A friend has just started an online intermediate German course so we might study together and share resources. That might just confuse things more and maybe I'll be better just sticking to my own plan, but it also could be fun and is worth a try. I've never really done the study buddy thing before.

For a series, I've settled on Oktoberfest 1900 for now. I'm not usually into historical drama, but this is historical drama with beer. I am remembering why I don't usually go for that genre, and this one does have every cliché in the book so far: the father resisting the son who wants to take risks and stray away from the traditional path, the women plotting to outsmart the men who don't quite take them seriously, the sex scandals, the very loose interpretation of the events it's supposedly based on... But it's a bit of fun and it seemed like an easier choice than the crime series like Dogs of Berlin that I want to get to eventually.

I've been thinking about my (relative) successes with my other languages and I do think that one of the keys was the curiosity and desire to keep discovering things in and through the language. In my early days with French I was reading books that were way above my level and trying to memorise every new word, finding blogs about my hobbies, painstakingly translating Alcest lyrics, and subjecting other learners to my crappy pronunciation at Meetup events. With Italian I was listening to and trying to join friends' conversations, watching dubbed cartoons, and discovering that Fellini's films weren't my thing.

I'll never claim that these activities contributed much to my learning in general and I'm not about to start making blogs or videos about how you just need to acquire the real language with fun activities like those rather than learn it in the traditional way with dusty old books, and I'm sure that some of them were even counter-productive, but they did play a very important role in keeping me motivated and making the language feel more real to me and their absence in my German attempts so far has been one reason for my low motivation and slow progress. I've tried to be smart about it and stick to the key activities and not waste time with material above my level or speaking before I'm ready, but that has meant losing some of what actually makes learning a language exciting and makes me want to keep working and be able to do these things better. I'd do well to remind myself of the reasons I wanted to learn German in the first place (from long before the whole job offer thing, even if that did prompt me to finally dive in) and find what things about the language and cultures really interest me.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Feb 07, 2021 2:41 pm

I remember some discussions on here a while ago saying that Duolingo is much more useful on a computer than on a phone, so I gave it a try and can only confirm that. You can choose to type answers rather than just putting the words in the right order, which forces you to recall the vocabulary and think about the genders and cases... or in other words, to actually learn and practise! I'm sure that was an option on the mobile app too when I first tried it years ago, but I can't find it now. Plus the ads and gamification crap are much less intrusive. It's a bit of a shame since one the app's appeals is the convenience of being available from anywhere on your phone, but hey, we're in lockdown and I'm at home in front of a computer most of the time anyway.

Between computer-Duo, Spektrum, and a little input (Oktoberfest, Easy German) I feel like I've finally started to make steady progress in the last few weeks. Slow progress, but it's moving and everything is gradually becoming more familiar.

After trying Spektrum I'm wondering if a proper textbook could be the solution to my Spanish plateau too. Maybe something around B2 level. Kwiziq is good at what it does but what it does is a pretty small subset of specific aspects of language usage, so something more general and everyday could help. I certainly remember that when my French had been stuck at a high-intermediate-ish level for a while it was more proper study that pushed me beyond that, not more input or more conversations. I'm too busy with other stuff at the moment to go full pelt on two languages, and German is still my main focus for now, but it's something to think about.
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