ShawnP's German Adventure

[jeffers]

I love your version of the Rocky quote, totally spot on! I read the first few Dino Lernt Deutsch books a few years ago. I found it helpful to listen to the audiobooks while out on walks, but unfortunately the audiobook is sold separately. There's an even easier reader for beginners called "German Easy Reader" by Brian Smith. The advantages are that the mp3s are free to download from his website, and the text is quite easy. The downside is that it's rather boring, but as I wrote somewhere else today, the "wow I can understand all that!" factor was motivating.

One of the things that has tripped me up on all my attempts to learn German has been the case system. Lots of beginners complain about the genders, but those are just light taps to distract you before German whacks you with the left hook that is the case system. This week I decided to find a Memrise deck on cases rather than throwing in the towel, and this one looks like it might be just the thing (although I'm only on lesson 2):
https://app.memrise.com/community/course/67928/german-cases/

Anyway, good luck with the move, and good luck with your German studies up to and beyond that point!

EDIT:
The course above turned out to be incomplete, so it just covered a lot of vocabulary which I guess the author was going to use to make sentences or something. I found a better memrise course about cases:
https://app.memrise.com/community/course/68265/cases-7/

[ShawnP]

Thanks Jeffers. I had a look at the Brian Smith books and went ahead and picked up the first three and downloaded the mp3's for them. They are definitely easier looking and probably a great place to start for someone at my level.

The gender thing won't be a problem for me as I'm use to it with spanish. I'll have to keep the case issue in the back of my mind. Thanks again.

[tastyonions]

Gender is rather less transparent in German. There are some universals (-ung nouns derived from verbs are all feminine) and some good generalizations, but there are way more words that don't fit any obvious rule than there are in Spanish. Good luck with your German!

[ShawnP]

A fairly good week in my German adventure has come to an end. Not a whole lot to report on though as it's still slow-going since everything is brand new.

This week consisted of me running through my truncated Pimsleur German mp3's. I still dont have them all down just yet so next week will consist of all the same. What I did was use the Audacity program and cut out all the spoken English and the latter part of each lesson and I'm just focusing on the main conversation. I know I'm not doing the program as it was intended but I hate listening to English when I'm trying to learn German.

I'm also running through my Pimsleur German Anki deck. So not only am I listening and reading to conversations, but I'm reinforcing the sentence structures and words. I must admit I've never been a big fan of Anki as I sometimes feel it takes time away from Listening/Reading. I wonder if running through an Anki deck is better or worse than reading a book and speaking out the sentences as I read them out loud.

For reading, I picked up the German Easy Reader (Super 500) by Brian Smith along with the accompanying audio at the recommendation of Jeffers. It's just perfect for a new learner with no prior knowledge of the language.

On a personal note, the movers came and picked up my household goods that I plan on shipping to Germany this past Thursday. Off to Germany in 5 weeks.

[ShawnP]

A good week in my adventure has come to an end. The newness/timidness of starting to learn German has worn off. This week has been mostly an extension of last week. Listening/Reading/Speaking

This week I mostly focused on mp3's from Pimsleur German II. All I've been doing is listening to the conversations over and over and over again and speaking the sentences out loud. I will probably stick with Pimsleur I and II until I depart for Germany and just listen as much as I can to the conversations and work on speaking the sentences out loud.

I also spent the majority of my time on LingQ this week. I was a big fan of LingQ at the start of my Spanish adventure and I'm still a fan for my German adventure. Some people don't like the idea of spending money learning a language but for me I don't mind, especially if it keeps me coming back. This week consisted of listening/reading/speaking out loud to the easiest Guided Course I could find in Beginner 1 (Elli's Small World for Beginners). There are 12 lessons in this course and I'm through all of them. Right now I'm just doing a lot of listening to each lesson, speaking the sentences out loud, and following the LingQ lesson reviews.

I've slacked a bit on reading from my German Easy Reader 1. I've stuck around the first three chapters these last two weeks and listened to the accompanying audio. I need to buckle down and press on but there are only so many hours in a day left after work. Once I get the Pimsleur I and II mp3's down, then I'll be focused on LingQ lessons and reading my German Easy Reader books.

Unless there is a government shutdown on March 8th and it messes up my move, I should be in Germany in exactly one month.

[ShawnP]

A fairly good week in my German adventure has mostly come to an end. I will relisten to a lot of previous lessons on Pimsleur and LingQ that I have on my Ipod today but other than that will not look at anything new until Monday. It's Saturday morning here and I have some things to accomplish today, mostly tidying up my house and perhaps carrying some stuff to Goodwill and donate it. I plan on getting rid of everything that I no longer want nor need in the future. Decluttering my life a bit. Most of my important stuff has already been shipped off to Germany. Tomorrow I'll go golfing as it will probably be the last chance to go golf before I move to Germany.

No changes in my plan occurred this week. I mostly stuck with listening to my Pimsleur 1 & 2 mp3's several times over. For the most part, I can follow alone to the conversations without issue. A few sticking points on a lesson or two but I'm just going to move on and put Pimsleur in the rear-view mirror.

For LingQ, I logged 5 new lessons this week. I treat each lesson like an Assimil lesson. I listen, read, and speak the sentences over and over and download the mp3 and put it on my Ipod. Each day, I'll do a main lesson and review old lessons also.

For Reading, I only read one chapter of German Easy Reader but I mainly focused on a lot of Pimsleur review this week. Need to work on my reading. Sometimes a job just gets in the way of things, but I like to eat so I guess I'll keep working.

I do not plan on doing anything different this coming week. Listen/Read/Repeat Sentences out loud.

[ShawnP]

A decent, but not great, week in my German adventure has almost ended. I'm updating this log now although I will continue to do some more studying this afternoon. As you can imagine when about to leave a job, especially when you oversee a section and a couple subordinates, things at work can get a little crazy with last minute tasks, outprocessing, etc. That was my life this week and will also be the same, or worse, next week. Especially since I will only be at the office Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Wednesday is my last working day. Movers coming Thursday to get the stuff I didn't ship to Germany and that stuff will go into storage. Friday, a house cleaning crew will come and clean my house. It wont be too bad as I keep a fairly clean house but I know they can do a better job than I. I hate cleaning house.

This week was a pretty straightforward week. I knocked out a couple German lessons on LingQ and completed eight lessons from Deutschtrainer from the DW website. I got in no reading this week. I've been mentally and physically exhausted after work and there is only so much a person wants to do.

For this coming week, I will most likely stay with all my current lessons and not pick up any new ones. I have covered 25 lessons in short order but I don't have them all down yet, and the majority of the lessons could use a lot of review. I have all the mp3's for each lesson on my Ipod so I'll just listen over and over. I will probably continue with Deutschtrainer though. They are fairly short lessons and as of now I'm not going back for reviews. Just going straight through from 1-100. I can do one on my cellphone if I find some minutes to spare.
Nicos Weg will be next, but I'll be in Germany when I start that. I'm looking forward to starting Nicos Weg.

This may be my last post for a while. I may try and update before I leave Florida to go visit family one last time. If all goes well, I'll be off to visit aunt/uncle this coming weekend. Got to drop my guns and compound bow at their house. Don't want to put it in storage. Uncle wants to go to the Georgia mountains one last time for a few days before I fly out to Germany. I love it up there, go twice a year, so I have no problem with that at all. I still dont have my plane tickets yet but I'm going to assume all will work out. Hopefully while in the mountains, I dont break anymore bones like I did in October when I was there. There is no TV or Wifi in the mountains so I don't expect to get any study in. Maybe download some podcasts from Coffee Break German just to keep a little momentum. Uncle is 80, has had two heart attacks and beaten prostate cancer, so I need to ensure I spend quality time with him and not try to be on a cellphone studying. I've come to the realization this might be our last trip to the mountains together.

[ShawnP]

A not-so-good week in my German Adventure has come to an end. Considering this was supposed to be my last week at work, I decided to only review all the German lessons I've covered so far and really ingrain them into my brain. Plus, this week was a madhouse trying to get everything accomplished before end of day Friday. I was then going to take a few days off and visit family so I thought it best not to even start anything new. Unfortunately for me, I got some not-so-good news on Thursday afternoon. My reporting date was pushed back 2 weeks due to government funding so instead of flying out to Germany on 23 March, I'm now scheduled to fly out to Germany on 6 April. Well, technically not because until funding I can't purchase plane tickets. I'm not allowed to purchase them on my own. I'm not too happy about all of this but it is what it is. My Germany job is still intact so I'll keep a positive mindset.

All I did this week was review about 25-30 German lessons on LingQ and do a couple exercises from DeutschTrainer on the DW website. I think I'm on 18 now. So not really pushing myself this week at all.

I've also realized I need to change up the way I'm tracking what I do. With ShawnP's Spanish Adventure, I kept track of the time I spent each day by lessons, TV shows, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. I quickly racked up many hours each week and my motivation was much higher than now. Of course it was much easier too. I'm going to go back to my old system and track how many hours I'm actually with the German language, at least with YouTube/TV time.

Well, back to the grind on Monday.

[ShawnP]

An average week in my German adventure has come to an end. I mainly focused on Assimil German lessons 15-21 this week and a couple lessons on LingQ. I'm going to set LingQ aside until I get to Germany. Just to cut down on things to do. I do, however, feel LingQ is better than Assimil (for me). Opinions vary. For reading, I started over and re-read chapters 1-9 of my beginner German book. There are only 13 very short chapters in this beginner book. I'm finding it a bit difficult so once I complete it, I may read it once more before going to the next book in the series. I will decide once I get there. If the next part doesn't look any more difficult, then I'll just keep going. I think most of my study time was spent on YouTube videos. I think that will be the norm for quite some time.

German Programs: Assimil German and LingQ
German YouTube videos: Easy German (17 videos), Deutschtrainer (30 lessons), Learn German (1 lesson)
German TV / Movies: none
German books: Super 500 (beginner book)

It would appear the govt funding bill has passed so I'm hoping I'll get good news Monday or Tuesday so I can book my tickets to Germany. Thats the plan anyway. Positive thinking.

Just got back from golfing. Beat my golfing buddy by 14 strokes so today is a good day.

[ShawnP]

I'm going to go ahead and update this log today although it's really not needed. All I completed is four Assimil lessons and three chapters of my Beginning German book, some Deutschtrainer, and watched some Easy German videos.

What I wanted to focus on this post is that tomorrow is my last day of work here in Florida. I received the go-ahead this morning for traveling to Germany. I will spend all next week in GA with uncle then fly out from Atlanta to Frankfurt on 6 April and arrive 7 April. I will most likely not advance any further while I'm home in my German studies and just enjoy my time with uncle. I've also decided to consider the work I've done in German so far to be a mini-introductory course. I think its only fitting to really track my language log starting on my first workday in Germany, 8 April 2024.

What I also wanted to focus on is the very nice-looking Cuban woman that just came and cleaned my house. Her English is worse than my Spanish. And although I haven't tried speaking any Spanish in quite some time to a native speaker, so much came back and we could have decent but short conversations. Never fluent, far from it, but can easily get my messages across and understood what she was saying back. My concern is that even if I am living in Germany, perhaps for the next 5 years, will I have the motivation to reach the same level and go even higher in German? Time will tell.

Perhaps it's the Latinas that inspire me.