garyb wrote:I've had a slight dip in motivation since the excitement last week. I suppose the initial honeymoon period is over and it's just back to the reality of beginner level: yes, the zero-to-basics stage is much shorter than the basics-to-good stage, but it's also less fun and more arduous since you can't understand or produce very much and even if the basic language comes up everywhere it still feels like it takes an age to stick. I'll still maintain (and remind myself) that the answer to basically every beginner question is just "keep studying", but it's another reminder to empathise more with people in that position. At some point I'd like to hit up the German person from that party for a little practice but it still feels like it'll be several months before I feel anywhere near ready to attempt a conversation.
I'm using the 1987 edition of Assimil, which covers a lot of good language and has a certain dated charm with currencies in DM, references to the Bundesrepublik, questionable uses of "fräulein", and the odd suggestive lesson title about little sausages, but the pace is extremely quick and it throws a lot of new vocabulary and grammar at the learner in each increasingly-long lesson. Some more hardcore language learners prefer the Assimils from that period and call the more recent editions "dumbed down", and as a not-real-beginner I loved the Italian course from back then, but for a genuinely new language it is a bit much. I'm still keeping up with it (only missed one day last week!) but am not worrying too much about fully understanding and learning every point and am seeing it more as a quick introduction to things that I'll then pick up and study properly over time.
I'm working through it using the same interpretation of Luca's method that I used for Spanish and Italian (translate L2 to L1 after a week, L1 to L2 after two weeks, and make Anki cards for anything that I struggled with in the L1 to L2 part and seems worth learning) but I can see that becoming unsustainable and it might make more sense to just do the traditional passive wave now and active wave later, using another resource like the Nicos Weg lessons for more active study in the meantime.
I've watched six episodes of Dark and I'm getting into it. Despite it being a little hard to take seriously with the cheesy presentation using every "supernatural" cliché in the book (and this is coming from someone who's not even particularly into the genre or TV in general), it does have quite a complicated and clever plot. I might come back for a second watch at a later point when my comprehension is better to get more benefit and understand the story better. It does put me off Germany a little since apparently it rains constantly there!
In Italian I've finished Il processo (another quite clever plot) and started Luna nera, and just finished a re-read of Ammaniti's Il momento è delicato of which I had barely remembered a lot of the stories. I should be meeting up with an Italian friend and conversing sometime this week. In Spanish I'm managing about ten minutes of Elite per week but my work is now giving out free Headspace subscriptions and I've been using that in Spanish.
Interesting takes on Assimil, and great progress with German. Your sentiments of beginning a language (the hard slog, keep pushing, can't say much) all remind me of my recent experience with Norwegian. It's somewhat relieving to read another experienced language learner having the same sentiments.
Dark - I loved it, as did my wife. I'd rate it as the most riveting series I have watched on Netflix (I couldn't wait for the next episode!). Obviously I contain a lot of cheese myself as I really didn't notice the clichés... Here's hoping you bring some credibility back to me after you get through it and hold the series in as high regard as myself.
garyb wrote:I watched a few episodes of Fokus Deutch yesterday and so far I have to say that despite being for learners it's actually more difficult than Dark! Less slang of course, but more dialogue on a much wider variety of subjects. It's probably a good thing that it doesn't make too many concessions for beginners, but it's maybe better left for once I know more basics. The A1 part of Nicos Weg might be more appropriate at my level...
I own the
Fokus Deutsch course and I am a huge fan of both
French in Action and in particular,
Destinos, which I feel is the best course ever made. I once had high aspirations of using perhaps another super cool well rounded full-bodied complete course for German, that would be the FD course... However, esteemed and respected serial reviewer and
collector of all things courses (especially German courses) from many an era, and fellow LLorg member, speakeasy, felt that
Fokus Deutsch was so poorly constructed that he concluded that the best place for it was actually in the rubbish bin!
I'd be really interested to see what your take on this course is, as well as Dark, when you get back to it! Keep up the progress!