Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:32 am

Took a nice trip to Shanghai recently, where I discovered...the first book store in China I have seen that sells books in German! Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore. Not an amazingly good selection of German books, but definitely better than nothing. They had tons of books in English and Japanese too, and some in a few other languages, all at quite good prices. There was another book store I went to in Shanghai that also sells German books, called "Garden Books", which I have heard a lot of people like, but I was personally...not super impressed. Good to know that I have at least one place I can go to now on the weekend to buy books (I live less than an hour from Shanghai by high speed rail).

Book 2/12 for this year is already done now, too, and in record time: "Der Mann ist das Problem" by Gisa Pauly, 332 pages in only three days. Granted, I spent pretty much all day reading lol, but still. Lots of vocabulary that I can make cards for, but I am definitely starting to read very fast while encountering fewer and fewer unknown words/expressions.

Book was quite good. I originally thought it was just going to be about a woman who leaves her boring life as a housewife and travels throughout Germany/Europe in an RV, meeting a lot of people. It turned out instead that she just decided to move to Italy, where the story...turns into a mystery? Kind of? IDK, it definitely was the kind of book that you want to keep reading, with a nice feel-good ending.
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MaggieMae
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:12 pm

So in looking for my log that I haven't updated in over 2 months, I stumbled across yours. I find it rather amusing that I'm an American, living in Switzerland, trying to finish up my C2 German exams, and decided to pick up Chinese as a brain break from all the German! :lol: It's like our situations are just reversed!

I also know exactly which German book you're using! It's a pretty good book, and really focuses on verbs with specific propositions and Nomen/Verb Verbindungen. I've been using Endstation C2 to prepare for the exams specifically, and it's been a lifesaver. The biggest drawback to that one is you need the teacher's book for the answers, and you have to either buy the CD or search YouTube for the audio files. But Erkundungen is still a highly recommended book in any case. It helps you learn the real language, not just the academic language that the exams ask for.

Viel Erfolg beim lernen! Sie werden sicher Ihr Ziel erreichen!
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Languages: English (N), German (C2), Swiss German (depends on the day), Swedish (A1), Mandarin (beginner)
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sun Feb 26, 2023 11:16 am

Well, speaking of Chinese, I did decide recently that I want to gradually get back into it, if for no other reason than that I can tell I am forgetting quite a large number of words that I don't use in everyday life. So, at a bare minimum, I want to maintain everything I have learned so far, even if I learn very few new words at the moment.

What that means is I have to clear my Anki backlog out, which, as of about a week ago, was at almost 3500 reviews due for Chinese (yikes!). After having done my reviews for today, it's at about 2300, and I have it set for now to show me 0 new cards a day.

And...yeah, I am getting a lot more cards wrong than I am comfortable with, but it's not necessarily the end of the world.

In some cases, it's because I could remember perfectly how to say a given word, but couldn't remember how to write the character by hand. I write every answer on paper while I am doing my reviews, and if even a single component in a character is even slightly wrong, AND I am not very confident that I will remember it next time, then that's a fail.

In some cases, it's because the cards I designed are just crap, lol. I have cards that I made over 3 years ago, when I was still an Anki noob, which just kind of make me cringe. For example, there are cards where the front side is just "synonym for [word]" or "more formal version of [word]". How the hell is that useful???

And in some other cases, the cards themselves are fine, but I have actually gotten a lot more liberal with failing cards over the past couple years. Before, I would make sentence cards, and if I understood the word on the card, then I would pass it. But now I think that in many cases, I was able to understand the word on the card...and ONLY on the card. This is a very important thing I realized after I started focusing on German: it's not a test in school. Your goal is not to earn as many points as possible; it's to learn the words. So, if I feel like I need to see the card again right away, even if I technically got it right, then I fail it.

That being said, this new method, combined with the fact that I am refreshed after such a long time, leads me to believe that I will understand these words better and probably actually remember them a lot better going forward.

As for German, the formal textbook studies have kind of been neglected a little bit, but I'll be sure to get back into that soon. Making very rapid progress in vocabulary acquisition -- at ~3800 Anki cards now, so that I'll probably reach my New Year's goal of 5000 within, probably, just 2 or 3 more months. That would translate to over 3000 new words learned since January 1, which is a pretty huge leap.

I am also very bad about starting books and not finishing them, haha, or at least I was at the start of the year, but I will probably be a 4/12 (again, New Years' Resolution) within a few weeks. Reading "Am Ende des Schweigens" by Charlotte Link, which I received for Christmas last year but somehow lost in a storage room kind of thing (don't ask). Seems to be a very popular author of mystery(ish?) novels, seemingly all of which are inexplicably set in England but with German characters. Just about halfway done now and should be able to finish this week.

This one is quite good, but tbh I could see somebody getting a little annoyed with her writing style. Don't know if it's just me, but Link doesn't exactly seem to be subtle about her themes. I also read "Das Haus der Schwestern" by her last year, which I kind of liked a bit more, because that one was more of a historical(ish?) novel that spanned a long period of time, from the early 1900s up until the 90s, and was less a murder mystery than an...IDK, coming of age novel? Combined with a mystery? It's been a while but IIRC the story was about a German couple who got stranded in rural England (where else?) in a vacation home during a snowstorm, where the wife then discovers manuscripts of the memoir/autobiography of the woman who owned the house before giving it to its current owner. Involved everything from being a suffragette (sp?) who got arrested, to being a nurse at a field hospital during WWI, to them harboring a Nazi pilot who got shot down (I was a little uncomfortable with his portrayal but YMMV). Bulk of the book (i.e. Das Haus der Schwestern) consisted of these memoirs, though the stuff in-between was interesting, too.

Anyway, sorry for rambling about a book I read a year ago, I'll stop now lol.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:26 pm

A few updates:

  • Finished Am Ende des Schweigens. Meh, it was fine.
  • Started Der Schwarm by Frank Schätzing. Heard this book recommended by a lot of people. Have read a little over 25% now according to my Kindle, and it is definitely good, though (and this might be a problem I have even in English tbh) I kind of have trouble keeping track of who everybody is. Seems like the author likes to introduce like five new characters over the span of two pages, lol. Seems a very large percentage (if not the majority?) of unknown words in this book for me are just, well, very specific nouns, especially animals and scientific words. In one particularly embarassing example, after all these years of learning German...I somehow just learned the word "die Garnele(n)" (shrimp) while reading this book. :?
  • Backlog of Chinese Anki cards cleared! At least the text ones. Maybe not in the most efficient way possible (on Sunday in particular, I reviewed over 1000 cards!), but it feels very good to have it cleared. I am, for the time being, going to add zero new cards and just try to keep the number of daily reviews as low as possible. I started a separate Chinese deck for when I encounter new words that I want to learn, which I will merge with the main deck later, but I am being very conservative about this for now. There are currently only 27 cards in that deck total.

Also discovered the iOS app Polylogger, which seems to be a nice little app for tracking time spent studying. Looking forward to using it, if for no other reason than motivational purposes. A bit harder to feel like you aren't doing enough if you can see you've already spent 25 hours that week studying, lol. App seems a little slow/broken at times, but it might just be because I am in China.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Tue May 02, 2023 8:57 am

Haven't updated in a while. For German (yes, I am, believe it or not, still learning Chinese), mostly focusing on listening again at the moment, though I have started doing some writing exercises with my teacher. In general, he sends me a C2 writing prompt, I write a response, send it to him, and we discuss it in the lesson. I make sure to write it by hand and with a timer, no dictionaries or anything. Seemingly no real systematic issues with my language use itself, just minor things here and there (word choice etc.).

The bigger problem is that I consistently write way too much. Like, if you're supposed to write around 350 words, I pretty consistently write at least 500, if not more. He gave me one prompt recently which I guess was some other kind of writing prompt besides the standard C2 one which only required 200 words, and I wrote...690.

Which I can get done in the time alloted, even with ~10 minutes of planning before I start actually writing, but it's often very close. My understanding of this (which I could be wrong about) is that that is not directly an issue that will cause you to lose points, but doing so does give you more opportunities to make mistakes. But, IDK, that's just how I write. I tend to be very verbose in general (which you can probably tell from my endless parentheticals). This is definitely something I need to fix.

One other thing is that I must once again sing high praises for the app Polylogger. It is incredibly motivating to see a detail breakdown of how much time you have spent studying, and it even encourages me to push myself even harder. I guess you can say that wanting to see a number go up isn't the best motivation, but hey, time spent studying is time spent studying. My girlfriend wants to improve her English, and I think she might start using this app soon now that I have introduced it to her.

I currently have a 45 day streak, and since March 19, I have in total spent 115.37 hours studying German, or 2 hours and 34 minutes per day on average. This specifically can be broken down as (everything but minutes approximate):

  • 4231 minutes spent listening (70.5 hours, or 61% of my time)
  • 1457 minutes on vocabulary (24.3 hours, or 21% of my time)
  • 722 minutes on reading (12.0 hours, or 10% of my time)
  • 360 minutes on speaking (6 hours, or 5% of my time)
  • 152 minutes on writing (2.5 hours, or 2% of my time).

I would also like to do this to see if the numbers I have seen claimed elsewhere are correct, i.e. that you (at a certain level) will only notice a significant improvement in listening every 300-500 hours. I can say that after 70.5 hours, I am not sure my listening is noticeably better, but of course I only started logging everything so meticulously 45 days ago. My listening almost certainly is markedly stronger than it was this time last year.

I will also point out that, in doubt, all of the numbers I record are underestimates. If a podcast is 28 minutes and 40 seconds long, I only record that as 28 minutes. That means the extra 40 seconds are neglected, which I think is fair, because a podcast will rarely ever be a constant stream of uninterrupted dialog. There could be parts with music etc., especially at the start and at the end, or sometimes parts where somebody interviewed speaks in English. I have recently noticed some German podcasts *really* like to wait before they actually start translating, and in some cases just straight-up leave the dialog in English with no translation. Which is a bit annoying from the perspective of a learner, but oh well. Once in a blue moon, I'll knock a minute or two off of my time if there was a particularly large amount of English.

I also don't include any rewind times. If it in fact took me e.g. 32 minutes to finish, it is still only 28 minutes.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sat Jun 03, 2023 1:05 pm

Took another trip to Shanghai last week, for just one day. Went again to the foreign language bookstore and bought five books in German. Total (including three books in English) was about 125 USD, but I think it's worth it. If I fluctuate every few months between focusing on reading and focusing on listening, then I guess I am back in my "reading phase" now.

I have already finished the book "Anfang 40 - Ende offen" by Franka Bloom. Meh, it was fine. About a 46-year-old woman who wants to get divorced from her husband but who (the husband) keeps finding excuses to get out of their court hearings. 18-year-old daughter is just graduating high school, so the woman is really looking forward to becoming independent and living on her own, but lots of stuff keeps getting in her way. She meets and falls for a 32-year-old French and PE teacher (in training) from her daughter's school, ends up getting impregnated by her husband...as does her daughter around the same time...lots of stuff happens lol

Have now started the book "Transit" by Anna Seghers. Only about 50 pages in unfortunately but it's pretty good I think. Writing style is taking a little bit of time to get used to (or maybe it's just slightly antiquated?). About a German who escaped from a concentration camp in 1937 and is now on the run in France, and everybody around him cannot talk about anything but visas and trying to get out (it's currently 1940). Apparently very close to the author, who herself (according to the jacket text) fled to France in 1933 and then from France to Mexico in 1941 (as a Jewish communist), and the book itself was apparently first published in English, Spanish, and French in 1944 and wasn't published in German until 1948.

Still doing C2 writing practice with my teacher, though I have now drastically cut down the length of my writings. If the prompt says "around 350 words", then I guess I have to write around 350 words. It's not a college essay or long philosophical piece that needs to be incredibly long. So, I now write with a lot more generalities, a lot less detail, and without 20 examples for every point that I make.

Which is definitely easier to do, I guess. I did a writing the other day and had about 20 minutes left, whereas I normally write until almost the last minute.

Will be taking a trip to the US and Canada throughout almost all of July and in the first week or so of August, and after I get back, I will unfortunately need to get surgery, so I will be in the hospital for a few days. Will most likely take the C2 exam at the end of this year or early next year. As I am planning things now, for better or worse, I will probably be moving back to the US around this time next year.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:34 pm

Gaoling97 wrote:Have now started the book "Transit" by Anna Seghers. Only about 50 pages in unfortunately but it's pretty good I think. Writing style is taking a little bit of time to get used to (or maybe it's just slightly antiquated?). About a German who escaped from a concentration camp in 1937 and is now on the run in France, and everybody around him cannot talk about anything but visas and trying to get out (it's currently 1940). Apparently very close to the author, who herself (according to the jacket text) fled to France in 1933 and then from France to Mexico in 1941 (as a Jewish communist), and the book itself was apparently first published in English, Spanish, and French in 1944 and wasn't published in German until 1948.
I watched a bit of a film adaptation of the book, that had been set in modern day France. Odd :-)
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MaggieMae
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby MaggieMae » Mon Jun 12, 2023 8:48 pm

Gaoling97 wrote:Still doing C2 writing practice with my teacher, though I have now drastically cut down the length of my writings. If the prompt says "around 350 words", then I guess I have to write around 350 words. It's not a college essay or long philosophical piece that needs to be incredibly long. So, I now write with a lot more generalities, a lot less detail, and without 20 examples for every point that I make.

Which is definitely easier to do, I guess. I did a writing the other day and had about 20 minutes left, whereas I normally write until almost the last minute.

Waiting on my C2 Writing results now, and everyone everywhere tells me that more than 400 words is just shooting yourself in the foot. I think mine was right around the 400 mark. More detailed descriptions of what I did for this one are in my log, if you're interested. Are you doing Goethe Institut or TELC? I did Goethe Institut.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Tue Jun 13, 2023 1:16 am

MaggieMae wrote:
Gaoling97 wrote:Still doing C2 writing practice with my teacher, though I have now drastically cut down the length of my writings. If the prompt says "around 350 words", then I guess I have to write around 350 words. It's not a college essay or long philosophical piece that needs to be incredibly long. So, I now write with a lot more generalities, a lot less detail, and without 20 examples for every point that I make.

Which is definitely easier to do, I guess. I did a writing the other day and had about 20 minutes left, whereas I normally write until almost the last minute.

Waiting on my C2 Writing results now, and everyone everywhere tells me that more than 400 words is just shooting yourself in the foot. I think mine was right around the 400 mark. More detailed descriptions of what I did for this one are in my log, if you're interested. Are you doing Goethe Institut or TELC? I did Goethe Institut.


Goethe and yeah, my teacher himself wasn't actually sure at first, but he apparently has a friend who is a Goethe Institut examiner, and IIRC he said that he (personally) would just stop reading after a certain point if it's too long, probably around 400 words, and only grade you based off of what was written up to that point. Some other graders might handle it differently, but the point is, you really should not write too much more than the suggested number of words. And so my last two essays have been around ~340 and ~385 words each, which I guess is the sweet spot.

The stated justification for this is that the exam is testing if you can do writing that is appropriate for certain scenarios, and in real life, nobody is going to want to read your 750 word email. To which I would respond, I absolutely can and would write a 750 word email in English (and probably have even done it in German before), but I guess that's a different problem lol
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Thu Jun 15, 2023 11:29 pm

Two books finished:

Transit by Anna Seghers was good, but honestly a bit difficult to follow for me. I don't really think this is a German problem as much as it is just the way the book is written, as I have had similar problems with some books in English before, too. There are seemingly 80 million different characters to keep track of and it sometimes has dialog written such that it's difficult for me to tell who is even talking. Still, I think the themes of the book (boredom, lack of orientation, the general insanity surrounding the process of traveling to some other country, etc.) mostly came through to me, but I think it would definitely not be a bad idea to re-read this one again in the future.

And now for a much less deep novel, I finished "Inspektor Takeda und das doppelte Spiel" by Henrik Siebold. I am trying to read less Krimis, because it feels like most of the books I have read in German are Krimis (maybe Germans just really like this genre), but this one was definitely a good page turner. It's about a Japanese police officer (named Takeda) on some sort of exchange program who starts working with the police in Hamburg. While there, a famous soccer player from Japan who plays for the Hamburger SV is murdered. He was found in a parking lot after having been shot in the head, but upon inspecting his body, they find that, before he died, he had seemingly attempted to commit seppuku. Takeda and his German colleague Claudia do a bunch of investigation and find the man who shot the soccer player. However, because there are a lot of political machinations in the background who want to sweep the case under the rug as soon as possible, they are forced to declare the case closed even while there are still many questions open.

Takeda and Claudia then unofficially travel to Japan to continue investigations, and the whole thing turns into a story about German-Japanese relations in WWII, right-wing conspiracies, Zen Buddhism, new religions/cults founded in Japan after WWII, the Yakuza, and all that fun stuff. Again, not exactly high literature, but definitely a fun read. Sort of a Metal Gear Solid feel, lol.

Of course there are a few points where it sounds a bit copaganda-ish, and it's a bit off-putting (at least to me personally, maybe others disagree) the way the German cop describes Japan. Especially her bizarre fixation with the fact that Japanese people slurp noodles. As an American myself, I have never understood the visceral reaction of pure disgust westerners have when they hear somebody slurping noodles, but that is, as I am excruciatingly aware, a thing. Ultimately a fun read though. Not hard either. I am still underlining new words/expressions, and there were many points where I went several pages in a row with no new underlines.

EDIT: oh yeah, and apparently this is a series, and the book I read was the fourth one (published 2019), but it was pretty easy to read it independently of the others.
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