Mastering French and German

[Eternal Foreigner]

Greetings
My goals for January and February are:
French:

Read the first book in a series I picked out in French (about 200 pages, only 3 pages per day)
Watch 20 hours of series (only 20 minutes per day) and make anki cards of dialogue I didn't understand
Review the anki cards

German:

Study the Refold DE1k Anki deck (10 new cards per day)

Longterm goal: Master French and German

[Eternal Foreigner]

A bit more about me, I've always had kind of "shiny object syndrome" when it comes to languages. I first started with Spanish when I was in school, and in the past I dabbled in Norwegian. I realized quickly how much more difficult it is to study a language that doesn't have a lot of resources available, and it can seem impossible to immerse in it without access to many movies, series, books, etc.
More recently I switched to learning Portuguese and reached a comfortable intermediate level. Portuguese has more resources, but the majority of them are from Brazil and I was learning the variety from Portugal, so it became really difficult finding the right resources. Audiobooks were particularly difficult to find, ironically it would have been easier finding them for Norwegian.

So partially due to some frustration, and mainly due to a shift in focus, I decided last year to try out French, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Having such extensive access to content makes the process so much more enjoyable. So I decided that French and German would be the languages that I take to a higher level. I focused on French mostly last year, but did learn some of the basics of German as well. I intend on focusing on these two languages for the next several years until reaching an advanced level.

Depending on how many of my goals I meet, I may add Spanish and Portuguese back into the mix at some point. Being romance languages, it seems like the vocabulary and grammar are thankfully not major obstacles, and the only major hurdle (for me at least) is listening comprehension. But for this year my focus will be exclusively French and German.

[Eternal Foreigner]

They say if you're having trouble reaching your goals, just have easier goals.

After one week, I've noticed several problems with my plans. I could have done any two of the three things (reading in French, watching series in French, and doing anki in German) without much issue. The problem is that reaching my targets for all three things every day is just too much for me to handle at my current level.

A more specific problem regarding watching series in French is that I underestimated the difficulty. I did this in Portuguese before and it wasn't too hard, but my level in French is still a bit behind. I wrote that I would make anki cards for each line that I didn't understand, but I ended up generating so many cards that reviewing them would have been unsustainable. This method is really a drag, but it's so effective, I really don't want to stop. But my daily target is way too high, and I didn't take into account how long it would take to actually review the cards I'm generating. So I'm going to pick some more realistic numbers.

After some more practice, I'm sure hitting more ambitious targets will become easier. But for now, I've decided to focus instead on monthly goals rather than having any specific goal for the entire year. This way, as I improve, I can gradually increase these targets.

[Eternal Foreigner]

My Motivations

[Eternal Foreigner]

Another update:

Hitting my revised targets is much more feasible. But it's been really stormy weather here lately so I think that's been a large help in making it easier to sit inside all day and read/immerse. Even though it's only been a little over two weeks, starting this log is already benefiting me with motivation. Looking back at my earlier post, I'm struck with the memory of how hard it was initially to watch a full episode of a cartoon in French and make the anki cards. I still struggle with it, but a bit less now. I'm able to far more often figure out a line of dialogue if I rewind and hear it again once or twice, in which case I don't make an anki card and it saves me a lot of tedium. And now when I do come across a line I completely didn't understand (either due to an unknown word or just pure phonetics/speed), it feels good to make the anki card and know that I'm filling a gap.

In the beginning I was watching a children's cartoon that I didn't actually enjoy that much, but I thought would be easier because of what it is. But that turned out to be wrong, in fact I realized part of the style of the show is some characters speaking VERY quickly for comedic effect. Only about four episodes in, I switched to a different cartoon (an anime intended for adolescent audience) which I've seen before in English and I'm already familiar with the plot of each episode. The show is much more to my taste, and the characters speak mostly at a normal pace.

As for the book I'm reading, it's going a lot better now. Books are always difficult due to the descriptive nature, but once you start to memorize certain phrases ("he nodded his head", "he squinted his eyes", "he retorted", etc) then it becomes easier. The prologue was the hardest part since it was the most descriptive, and had much more narration than dialogue. But thankfully since this is a book for a young audience, it seems like the author doesn't get too crazy with the vocabulary. The theme is centered on nature and animals, so once you learn the vocabulary surrounding that theme it becomes much easier. I'm already finding myself willing to read further than my target, so I should finish this one a bit early.

Then there's anki, where I have two obligations. My French audio cards from the series I'm watching, and the German basic vocabulary deck. I absolutely loathe learning vocabulary this way, but since I'm still a beginner in German, it seemed necessary in order to get a foothold in the language. I'm highly considering dropping this soon though, and finding an easy graded reader to go through instead. There are some words I've found that I just cannot learn this way, the meanings of words like "sonst" and "sondern" just refuse to stay in my memory. The French audio cards on the other hand have been critical for my progress with my French listening comprehension. The nice thing about these is that they get so much easier over time, and as I improve I make fewer and fewer new cards. Whereas the large vocabulary decks just seem much less forgiving, if you forget too many words then the mountain of reviews just grows and grows until you have to cut off all new cards just to keep up with the reviews.

For fun, I tried watching my favorite TV series dubbed in French, but unfortunately I'm still really not able to understand much of the dialogue. I know it's still too early to expect any different, but I'm really eager and impatient to get over this listening comprehension hurdle.

[Eternal Foreigner]

I dropped the German anki deck. It was somewhat helpful for learning some basic vocabulary, but now I'm going to start reading very basic texts, such as graded readers and short stories. I've also found some old nintendo games to be fantastic since the dialogue rarely contains uncommon words or complicated sentences. These games helped me a lot last year with French. At this stage it's a bit painful due to the amount of words I have to look up, but I remember when French was a bit like this and I powered through it. I'm hoping it will be a similar experience with German.

My French reading and watching series has overall been going well, but I think having such concrete goals was a bit shortsighted. I was really focused on reading 4 pages a day, and watching 20 minutes of a series (1 episode) per day. This made it easy to estimate where I'd be many months from now, and it feels good to know which book I'll be on, and how many episodes of the series I will have seen. But unfortunately life doesn't work that way, and I've found that having a less consistent approach is much easier. For example, reading 8 pages one day and zero the next is much easier than 4 pages per day. This book's chapters tend to be 6-10 pages long, so I've just been reading a chapter per day, taking whichever days off that I need.

It's a bit harder to double-up on my one episode per day, because watching even only 20 minutes of this series still feels like a decent amount of work. Re-listening to certain lines to try to figure out what's being said, and making anki cards with the audio can turn this 20 minute task into well over an hour. I'm currently making roughly 10 anki cards per episode.

Another activity I haven't included in this log so far is listening to podcasts. Last year I started listening to Inner French which is fantastic and helped me a lot. I realized pretty quickly that all my activities that I listed here are things that require full concentration, but obviously we don't always have time to sit down and focus on something. I want to take advantage of podcasts so that I can still get some listening practice in even when that happens. So I'm allowing myself some leniency in substituting my other tasks with podcast episodes.

Final note, I've been seeing some worrying news articles lately warning that many large corporations (including the one I work for) are laying off massive amounts of employees. At the same time, I've been asked to provide some data reports which suggests the same thing. Obviously a sudden lack of employment would be a complication. Part of me welcomes the opportunity to look for other opportunities, since I've been getting really fed up with my current job, but I'd hate for it to interfere with my language goals. I've set aside a week in February to get some work done in preparation for this, during that week I might unfortunately make less progress.

[Amandine]

I smiled when you talked about the phrases that get used over and over again in books - "hocha la tete" and "fronce les sourcils" were phrases I learned immediately when I started reading in French since they were on every second page!

Bon courage with the work situation.

In terms of podcasts, you might like to listen to a couple that mix English explanations in with the French so its not 100% concentration the whole time. Two good ones I found were the Duolingo podcast and Little Talk in Slow French.

[Eternal Foreigner]

I smiled when you talked about the phrases that get used over and over again in books - "hocha la tete" and "fronce les sourcils" were phrases I learned immediately when I started reading in French since they were on every second page!

Bon courage with the work situation.

In terms of podcasts, you might like to listen to a couple that mix English explanations in with the French so its not 100% concentration the whole time. Two good ones I found were the Duolingo podcast and Little Talk in Slow French.

Thanks. Maybe concentration was the wrong word to use. What I meant was that you can't multitask while reading or watching a series, but you can while listening to a podcast. So if there's a random thing I need to do, such as clean my place or drive somewhere, I can still get my practice in that day.

Thankfully I think I'm past needing any explanations in English for French, but if you know of anything like that for German that would actually be really great. I already listened to the whole Language Transfer German last year.

[DaveAgain]

Thankfully I think I'm past needing any explanations in English for French, but if you know of anything like that for German that would actually be really great. I already listened to the whole Language Transfer German last year.

GaryB has mentioned "The Easy German Podcast".

[garyb]

Thankfully I think I'm past needing any explanations in English for French, but if you know of anything like that for German that would actually be really great. I already listened to the whole Language Transfer German last year.

GaryB has mentioned "The Easy German Podcast".

I'm a fan of the Easy German podcast, but don't be fooled too much by the name: it has quite natural conversations on many subjects, albeit a bit more slow and clear than natives would typically speak with each other, all in German with no English explanations.

If you want simpler language with English explanations, something like Coffee Break might be more appropriate; they have some beginner material and some slightly more advanced stuff like dialogues and stories. Or the Easy German videos on YouTube, which have English and German subtitles.