Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

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Gaoling97
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18675
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Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:13 am

Hello everyone,

as I mentioned in my introduction, I am an American living in China and have been studying Chinese for the past 3.5 years. Because I'm living in China, it would of course make sense to focus on Chinese, but due to some personal reasons, I am taking a break for now and focusing on German, which is a language I have been studying on and off for over a decade. I am still exposed to Chinese every day at work, speak it with my girlfriend, and take a one hour lesson each week, but that is about it for now.

In terms of specific language learning goals, I would like to take and pass a C2 exam in 2023. Even if I have to stop actively studying German after that, C2 is, I would say, a respectable level to have reached and one which should sufficient for the majority of practical purposes. That being said, in terms of what is actually fulfilling for me on a personal level, I would say I will most likely have to continue studying for several more years even if I have passed C2 before I can reach a level that I am satisfied with (read: more or less native speaker level in all areas besides maybe accent).

In any case, I am not doing any specific exam preparation yet, and the primary focus of my studies is currently to improve my listening comprehension and vocabulary size. I may later switch the focus to e.g. reading/writing. I do take one hour of German lessons a week to improve/refresh my spoken German -- until a few months ago, I basically had not actually spoken any German since my year studying abroad in 2017/2018 -- but my primary study routine consists of the following things (similar for Chinese, when I do it). I do not do most of these activities (especially (3)) every day.

1) Listening to audiobooks and podcasts (on my phone), and sometimes watch videos and TV shows too.

2) While listening, if I encounter a new "item" that I want to add to Anki, then I take a screenshot, which usually includes the item opened up in the dict.cc app and the player with the relevant timestamp. An "item" here can be anything that I, for whatever reason, want to add to Anki. It could be a new word, or a new collocation/idiom, or some structure that I have never seen before, or just something that I, after repeated attempts, was not able to understand and want to try to understand later. The latter occasionally happens because I usually listen while walking outdoors, where other people are talking, cars are honking their horns, I need to divert my attention to cross the road, etc.

3) Making Anki cards. This is by far the most exhausting part, but probably one of the most critical. I find that Anki is absolutely indispensable to my entire workflow, to the extent that if I didn't have Anki or some other SRS, I very well might not be into language learning at all. The cards I make are usually sentence cards, and in the majority of cases are audio cards. The advantages of these are a) they, based on my own personal experience, cement the words much more deeply into my mind than regular, text-based cards, b) establish a much more direct relationship between a word and its pronunciation, and c) give you a small extra bit of listening practice while reviewing.

The main disadvantage is, well...they take forever to make. I usually make cards in "shifts" or "sets" with a sort of Pomodoro system, where I make them for 30 minutes at a time, take 5-10 minute break, make them for 30 more minutes, etc. I usually do this until I have been working for 90 minutes/have done 3 sets before taking an extended break.

I just got done with my third set tonight, and in those 90 minutes, I made...exactly 30 cards. So, it took me an average of 3 minutes per card. Compared to making cards from a book or article, this is of course very slow, but I still believe it is worth it.

On a side note, the audiobook that I was making cards from tonight was called "Ich musste raus. Wege aus der DDR" which is a collection of little stories about how various people left East Germany. It was read a bit dramatically (and even had music sometimes), so as a result, I had to spend a small extra amount of time snipping out pauses in Audacity before making the cards. I also had to use Audacity to speed the audio up 1.3X, as that was the speed I originally listened to the book at, which also adds an extra few seconds per card, but I find necessary, not just because it is the speed that I originally listened at, but also because my time spent reviewing the cards would be dramatically longer if I didn't do this.

4) Reviewing the cards. Takes me about 30-45 minutes a day and I usually do it either during my lunchbreak or right after work. I know some people prefer to spread this out throughout the day and review a couple cards while waiting in line or on the toilet or whatever, but that doesn't work for me. It very much is a task where I need to sit down, get my mind in Anki mode, and intensely focus before I can do it.

---------

Anyway lange Rede kurzer Sinn, that's what I do. I also often take a day or two a week off (or have a day or two where I'll, for example, only review Anki and do nothing else) because I will just burn out if I don't. There are also of course other activities where I don't time it and just use the language while enjoying some other activity, e.g. watching gaming videos or playing games in German. I just got Pokemon Violet a few days ago and am playing it in German (after having played Pokemon Legends Arceus in Chinese).

As for what I have done so far today (2022-11-22)

1) Anki reviews (39 minutes, during my lunch break)
2) Making Anki cards (90 minutes, 30 cards from "Ich musste raus. Wege aus der DDR" audiobook)

I am now going to take a break and later tonight take a walk for ~1 hour, though there is a high probability that I will only listen for 30 minutes or something before calling it quits for the day and just listening to music for the rest of my walk. It's 7:10 PM already here and I wake up at 6 AM every day.
8 x

Gaoling97
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Posts: 84
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Wed Nov 23, 2022 12:18 pm

Anki reviews today: 303 cards in 1.07 hours. Very exhausting, but I guess the number of new cards was very high today. I admit that is one minor issue that I have: the number of new cards every day is very inconsistent. For text-based cards, where I have a huge backlog of cards (many of them are nearly a year old), I just do 30 new ones every day no matter what. For audio cards, I have a limit of 30 max per day, but in practice I almost never have a backlog and often am not able to reach 30 new cards per day. Oh well, it's good to keep the number of reviews under control anyway.

I have long had a theory that one of the best ways to memorize vocabulary, especially in German and Chinese, is in fact to learn more words, because words in German and Chinese (the latter thanks to the characters) are usually very transparent combinations of other words/morphemes. I had yet another confirmation of this today: I just happened to review three cards which included the words "hinken" (to limp/hobble), "hinterherhinken" (to lag behind), and "hinken" specifically in reference to a comparison (used to express that a comparison doesn't quite work). I had somehow never consciously made any connection between these three different things, but once I noticed it, it really reinforced my understanding of these three things.

(I guess the last one is basically the same as the first one, just in a more metaphorical sense, but still, I didn't make the connection until now.)

Another example would be something like "Zusammenprall" and "Aufprall". I learned the former first followed by the latter, and I think knowing both made the difference between the two much more intuitively obvious to me (or at least what I think the difference is, I may be wrong haha).

After getting home, I had to watch two short videos (~10 minutes total) and then had a German lesson (1 hour). Teacher suggested that we start working on a C2 exam preparation book in the near future, which I think would be a good idea.

Anyway, I was very busy at work today and didn't sleep particularly well last night either, so I think I will just relax for the rest of the night.
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Gaoling97
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Posts: 84
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:18 pm

Today:

  • I know I said I am focusing on listening, and I am, but I somehow recently stumbled across the book "Wir und die Russen: Die Beziehungen zwischen Berlin und Moskau im Herbst ´89" by Egon Krenz, which is a book by the East German politician and very short-lived successor to Erich Honecker about the relationship between the GDR and the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s. Very interesting with a lot of, you could say, behind the scenes info. I read it for an hour yesterday and almost two hours today.
  • Working through my Anki backlog still, have now reached cards I made from a detective novel I read around March of this year called "Das Buch des Totengräbers: Ein Fall für Leopold von Herzfeldt." Good amount of domain-specific vocabulary, and also some Austria-specific vocabulary. Takes place in the late 19th century to my recollection. 54.05 minutes total today.

I plan to make a lot of cards tomorrow. Like, a lot. Maybe hundreds of audio cards.
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Gaoling97
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Posts: 84
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:37 am

Today:

  • 1.63 hours spent reviewing Anki. Yes, really. This is getting a bit out of hand lol, I should probably reduce the number of new cards per day.
  • Only 16 new cards made, but oh well.
  • Started listening to the audiobook of "Tintenherz" (Inkheart). Have never read/heard it in any other language or seen the movie. Interesting story though, heard it recommended a lot. Another one of those German classic fantasy stories, I guess (like Neverending Story or Momo, which I also listened to last year). Primarily listening at 1.2X speed. Listened to almost 90 minutes so far today, up to the part where they go to Elinor's (apparently not "Eleanor" lol) house and Maggie finally gets to look at the book that her father has been hiding from her.
  • May read more of the Egon Krenz book tonight.

Tomorrow is sadly Monday, which means I won't have as much time to study. Especially because I'll have a shitload to do at work. Oh well.
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Gaoling97
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Posts: 84
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Wed Nov 30, 2022 2:03 pm

Too busy today to really do any Anki. I might try to get my audio cards (just 39 due today) out of the way before going to bed, but no way will I be able to do the text cards.

One hour lesson with my teacher today. We are going to start with the textbook "Erkundungen C2" next week. Not really super organized, just let him know what activities from each chapter I want to do a day or so in advance (and I can just skip chapters or do them later if I really want to). I personally am excited to treat this as a kind of homework that I need to get done every week -- I will even print out the pages tomorrow at work hahaha.

Have been listening to Tintenherz a lot over the past couple days. Even while walking outdoors, and with the speed now raised to 1.3X, my comprehension is still surprisingly high (though it is ultimately a children's book, to be fair). About 1/3 of the way through now -- Meggie, Elinor and Staubfinger have all gone to Capricorn's village to give him the book and free Meggie's father, but Elinor and Meggie have basically been taken prisoner. Mo is now telling Meggie why the book was important, including where Staubfinger et al came from and why he no longer reads books aloud. I guess this is finally turning into a fantasy story, now. Excited to continue listening.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sat Dec 10, 2022 2:08 am

Update on Chinese for once: I am a high school math teacher at an "international school". Except not really; it's the international department of a regular public high school. If you know anything about how these international departments in China function...to make a long story short, the students are not generally the cream of the crop, especially when it comes to English proficiency. So, because of some circumstances, I had no choice but to start speaking to some of the students in Chinese. A lot of them already spoke to me in Chinese (though I would respond in English, which seemed to get the job done in many cases) and I would sometimes write things to them in Chinese (feedback on papers, WeChat messages, some vocabulary words on the whiteboard) but I never actually spoke to any of them in Chinese. There is no rule against this, and some other foreign teachers do do it, but for a number of reasons, I did not want to up until this point. So, for better or worse (given the circumstances), I might get a bit of extra speaking practice.

As for German, I had my first lesson from the C2 book with my teacher last week, and it seemed to go pretty well; I think this book is appropriate for my level. I picked all of the activities/exercises out myself ahead of time.

First one was a bunch of quotes from Mark Twain about learning German. Just had to discuss those, which ones you agree/disagree with, etc. Not too bad.

Second one was a little article, again about Mark Twain and learning German. You had to read and then find synonyms for given words in the text (e.g. "der Kitzel" is given and you have to find "der Reiz" in the text). Again, not too bad, but I did slightly worse than I was expecting. My excuse would be that I was tired/rushed it at the time that I did it. For example, I 100% understand and am capable of using the phrase "ganz zu schweigen von etw", but for some reason I just couldn't find it in the text at the time. This is something I did before class as a kind of "homework" and we just briefly discussed.

The next one was a little text which seemed to test your knowledge of collocations. The actual text was almost irrelevant; you just kind of had to see "in Betracht ____" and immediately think of "ziehen", or read "unter Beweis" and immediately think "stellen". Relatively doable, though I must say that this language has a seemingly endless number of collocations lol.

In all of these activities, there were a few words that I added to Anki afterwords.

The last one was a listening exercise. The actual listening listening was not hard at all; I think I understood nearly 100% of the words that the speaker said. That being said, there were 8 multiple choice questions that you had to answer, and they really tried to trick you. For example, in one question, one of the possible answers is "German is learned by 14% of European students as a first foreign language." This is false; it is learned by 14% of European Union students as a foreign language. I know for a fact that I have heard native German speakers (erroneously, of course) refer to the entire EU simply as "Europe". Kind of tricky. That being said, I still got that question correct, and my total score on that section was 7/8. Not perfect, but I would say satisfactory.

I was also planning to hold a little three minute speech, but we didn't have time for that.

All in all, while the difficulty of the first chapter may potentially have been slightly easier than the rest, I am overall pretty happy and looking forward to doing the rest of this book. I really do think C2 in 2023 should be doable.

Only real difficulty I am experiencing is that I just do not have enough time to keep making so many Anki cards. I am really going to have to sit down and find some time for this, or just accept that my vocabulary is going to grow slower than it is now. It's Saturday now, and assuming I don't have to help any students with their reports (due at 9:00 PM, so I expect an influx of questions around 8:55 PM), I should have the rest of the day to consume content or continue with the textbook.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sun Dec 18, 2022 3:30 am

I finished Tintenherz today. For the last 2-3 hours, I actually got bold and raised the speed all the way up to 1.5X (!). It was definitely more demanding (in terms of mental energy), and I am sure I missed some details here and there, but still ultimately very doable. I may soon start the second book, though I have a MASSIVE backlog of cards from various things that I still need to make, and some other stuff that I have started but yet to finish.

Fun fact, I wanted to buy a copy of the German translation of the book "Holes" by Louis Sachar. Don't ask why; just thought it would be a nice blast from the past and an easy read that I could finish in a day or two. Unfortunately, finding books in German in China is absurdly difficult. Even on Taobao, there is almost nothing besides textbooks. A bit weird in the largest country in the world, which regularly sends students to study in Germany, but I digress. I used the website 孔夫子舊書網, which is an app for buying and selling used or rare books. At first, after having discovered there is no way to search by language, I decided to just search “德語版” or “德文版” (German edition)...and found basically nothing.

It was only then that I realized that most of the Chinese sellers cannot actually tell what language the books are in. I think I once even saw a book in Russian listed as "English edition". So, all you can really do is search by title and hope for the best. I searched for "Löcher" and could not find it. But I was able to find a German copy...by searching "Louis Sachar", which the seller mistakenly believed to be the title of the book. Very nice. Obviously I could have just got the Kindle version, but it was only a few dollars, and it's nice once in a while to hold a physical book in your hand.
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Gaoling97
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Wed Dec 21, 2022 6:53 am

Cancelled my German lesson today because I am just not feeling it.

In good news, though, I was able to finish Holes in just three days, and I already nearly have the majority of new vocabularly words in Anki. I try not to read too much stuff that was translated and focus on stuff that was originally written in German, but like I said, it was a nice easy read and a blast from the past.

Yesterday (or the day before yesterday? I seem to be losing my sense of time) I bought the audiobook for "we fell in love in october". Title apparently written in all lowercase and, well, in English. As irrational as I admit this is (and yes, I know it is irrational), I don't think I will ever stop getting annoyed by all of the gratuitous English that Germans like to use, and that is something that comes up occasionally in this book. Are Germans slowly dropping the long-established word "Freund" and directly using the English word "boyfriend" now? Is that a thing? Why? I guess because "Freund" is ambiguous?

And I guess "mom jeans" is a German word too now? "Display"? "Damn, girl!"? Ugh. Or "community"? I have never heard "LGBT Community" or any variation thereof actually get properly Germanized, but maybe I need to look a bit closer. I guess German and English are at least closely-related languages, though; hearing my Chinese coworkers say things like “你好fashion!” makes me want to rip my ears off.

The book itself is good though. Again, not a super difficult read, but a nice little lesbian romance by author Inka Lindberg. She actually wrote another book called "Mit dir falle ich" that I bought probably about two years ago now, when I wasn't focusing on German, but I kind of lost interest in it. Might go back to it later.

I am primarily listening to the book at 1.3X speed. 1.5 might be doable but it's nice to relax a little bit. About halfway done now already. I can definitely feel that my listening comprehension in German has shot way up in the past year or so, in addition to my vocabulary size. The number of unknown words per page/per minute has decreased dramatically. I honestly don't think that approaching 100% comprehension of most texts is that unreasonable of a goal for me at this point. Still not going to happen tomorrow, but probably isn't going to take 30 years either.

EDIT: Schade, dass ich mich nicht ebenso einfach löschen konnte. Es war nicht so, dass ich verschwinden wollte. Doch ich hätte gern meine Festplatte “ “ “ “ “resettet”””””, wollte einfach von vorne anfangen.

No comment.
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Gaoling97
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Posts: 84
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Fri Dec 23, 2022 9:26 am

Finished we fell in love in october yesterday. Good book overall; really touched me at the end.

I swear to god somebody needs to stop me from buying so many books LOL. They're not expensive, but I really have such huge backlog of cards that I need to make. I know a lot of people say "just read and you'll gradually remember all the words!" but this absolutely does not work for me (and I am not entirely convinced it does for others either).

In any case, got two new books today: "Haie an Bord" (Sharks on Board) and "Der Knabe im Brunnen" (The Boy in the Well). I started reading the latter today, and I have to say...surprisingly difficult? Takes place in the early 1900s in a very rural setting ("near Trier"), at least at the start of the book. According to the back of the book, the author was born in 1906. The descriptions are all in completely standard High German, but the dialog is all written in dialect. The dialect itself is not that difficult to understand, though, at least the way it is written: mostly just "das" becoming "dat" or "sind" becoming "sein" and things like that.

That being said, I don't know why, there is a metric shitload of vocabulary that I don't know. Some of it is very regional vocabulary, and some of it is farm vocabularly that I don't know, and that is in addition to the normal amount of words that I don't know. Granted, the print is small and there are a lot of words per page, and maybe I am exaggerating, but still, a bit demotivating. Not enough that I can't still read and enjoy the story, at least. Probably won't take more than a week or two to read.

One specific problem area I have, now that I am thinking about it: I get really annoyed by the names of animals and insects. Seems to happen way too often that one name doesn't have a clean, direct translation into the other, or one name has a much broader meaning than in the other language...or there are way too many regional variations, etc.

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Gaoling97
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Posts: 84
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:48 am
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Re: Gaoling's Language Log (German, Chinese)

Postby Gaoling97 » Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:46 am

A few things:

first, I got covid and spent Christmas Eve entirely in bed in agonizing pain. I then spent Christmas day walking for two hours to get medicine for my girlfriend. As you can imagine, I took a break from that point and didn't really have any energy to do...well, anything.

That being said, I did recover, and I decided to temporarily drop "Der Knabe im Brunnen" and switch to "Haie an Bord". Good choice; I finished it today. This was a very enjoyable book, though, I must say...not sure it has aged very well? The depictions of non-white people (especially Arabs) seem a bit...off, and there in general seems to be this thread of implied superiority of "Europeans" in the book. Not to mention the frequent usage of the word "Neger" (sorry, don't know how to do spoilers). Book was originally published in 1974, so make of that what you will. As for the actual quality of the book itself, I will say that it seemed a bit disorganized; the last third or so of the book seemed very rushed.

And as one reviewer I can see pointed out: most of the book doesn't even take place on a ship (title is literally "Sharks on Board"). Oh well, this is the kind of book you would buy for a train ride, I guess, and not really high literature.

In any case, I conveniently today got a copy of "Das Bernsteinzimmer" (The Amber Room) in the mail, by the same author, which caught my interest while I was browsing the app that I mentioned because it was a topic that came up in the German textbook I am using. Not sure if I will read it yet, though: it is 448(!) pages long. I also got a copy of "Homo faber" by Max Frisch, which seems to be a German literary classic (or at least one of those "standard" books that you read in school). Written by a Swiss author, which is also cool I guess (I think every German book I have read so far has either been written by a German or was a translation from another language).

So, yeah, 1/12 books done already for my New Year's Resolution lol.
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