6 Months of German

[mitgedichte]

Hello, everyone.

This thread is for me to document my 6 month journey of German learning. At this time, I don’t have a specific proficiency goal in mind (A2, B1, etc.), but rather I want to give myself a time-frame of dedicated study and see where it takes me.
I don’t intend to cease studying after the 6 months, but mentally blocking out that time period to get over the beginner’s slump feels fun to me.

Prior Exposure To German
My only real exposure to German has been through the occasional un-dubbed movie and music. I always loved how it sounded and wanted to learn, but didn’t really know how.

Possible Advantages
I’m a native English speaker. I have also spent the past several years (badly) learning Japanese off and on, but never made much real progress and consider myself a bad and inconsistent learner…

Plan
Step 0:

• Take free Goethe Institut test or Dialang test to assess starting point.

Step 1:

• Study Assimil until lesson 50 via a version of this Anki deck that I am modifying to include lesson notes, full lesson dialogue audio, and review chapters. I don’t intend to do any shadowing.
• Study the top 100 most common German verbs with this Anki deck.

Estimated completion: 2 months.
Take test to assess progress at end of step.

Step 2:

• Continue Assimil passive phase for lessons 50-100 using same Anki deck described above.
• Start active phase of Assimil once I reach lesson 50 of the passive phase, employ bidirectional translation method starting from lesson 1. Here’s a video on the method (explanation starts at 4:35).

Estimated completion: 2 months. Assimil active phase will persist into Step 3.
Take test to assess progress at end of step.

Step 3:

• Continue Assimil active phase until lesson 100.
• Start a bootleg version of the L-R method using English and German copies of books in lieu of parallel texts. Books I’m currently looking at using are some of Kafka’s writings - starting with The Metamorphosis - and Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. I’m open to others, but am particularly interested in texts originally written in German. I don’t intend to repeat pages, chapters, etc. on my way through the book. Instead, I will read through the book in its entirety once in German with German audio, again in English with German audio, and then repeat the process in either German or English until I feel I am at a comfortable level of comprehension. I may even just continue on to the next book without repeating more than twice since reading more from the same author is likely to include similar vocabulary and syntax.

Estimated completion: 2 months.
Take test to assess progress after completion of first book with relatively strong comprehension. Continue checking progress for fun at 40 hours, 60 hours, 80 hours, etc.

And that’s about it. I have experience using Assimil before, so I am confident in learning from that process. I’ve never tried the L-R method before, so I’m excited to see if I’ll get anything out of that. Reading others’ experiences was fun, and as I’m always looking for an excuse to read more books, I think it will be an easy method to stick to.
I don’t intend to read through any grammar books. I feel as though Assimil will cover enough, and anything that I really get stuck on later with L-R I will look up as needed. I don’t have any plans to sentence mine or add further to Anki decks.
I may make some effort to watch native German materials like movies or shows, but won’t be going out of my way to actively study anything outside of my described plan above.

In Search Of Recommendations

• Books originally written in German
• Poetry originally written in German
• German movies (possibly shows, but I prefer films)
• And on the off chance anyone has some point-and-click games in German to recommend…

[mitgedichte]

Step 1: 3/28/24 - 5/15/24 (48 days)

• Update 1
• Update 2
• Update 3

Step 2: 5/15/24 - 7/19/24 (65 days)

• Update 1
• Update 2
• Update 3
• Update 4
• Update 5

Materials:

• Assimil 100/100 lessons (~40 study hours)
• Dark 23/26 episodes (German audio, German/English subtitles, ~17 hours)

[DaveAgain]

In Search Of Recommendations

• Books originally written in German
• Poetry originally written in German
• German movies (possibly shows, but I prefer films)
• And on the off chance anyone has some point-and-click games in German to recommend…

One book I liked was Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer. What I would recommend to myself, if I could go back in time, is to stick to parallel texts until I've exhausted the available supply. Penguin have a range of German-English books / German short stories.

Rilke often gets mentioned in German programmes, but I've not really read his poetry, I did read a short story collection Geschichten vom lieben Gott. Recently I've listened to some videos about Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, her most famous poem seems to be Der Knabe im Moor. Schubert set a lot of German poetry to music.

A film I liked was Balloon.

[mitgedichte]

In Search Of Recommendations

• Books originally written in German
• Poetry originally written in German
• German movies (possibly shows, but I prefer films)
• And on the off chance anyone has some point-and-click games in German to recommend…

One book I liked was Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer. What I would recommend to myself, if I could go back in time, is to stick to parallel texts until I've exhausted the available supply. Penguin have a range of German-English books / German short stories.

Rilke often gets mentioned in German programmes, but I've not really read his poetry, I did read a short story collection Geschichten vom lieben Gott. Recently I've listened to some videos about Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, her most famous poem seems to be Der Knabe im Moor. Schubert set a lot of German poetry to music.

A film I liked was Balloon.

Thank you for taking the time to share some exciting looking resources. I've acquired digital copies of some of the items you've linked, and am looking forward to perusing them once I get further into my Assimil lessons.

Not much to share on the progress front. Nearly completed with the first pass of the 100 most common German verbs, and continuing my daily Assimil lessons and reviews (I'm at lesson 15 now). I will hopefully have a more meaningful update soon

[mitgedichte]

Step 1, Update 1

I've finished my first pass of the 100 most common verbs and am now just reviewing them as they come up.

Currently on lesson 23 of Assimil and finding it enjoyable so far. I don't feel like it has really kicked into gear difficulty-wise, but I'm sure that's just around the corner. I'm continuing to listen and review the lesson sentences via the Anki deck I linked in my first post. I've added full lesson audio to the deck so that I can listen to lessons in their entirety as review as well. As I've been studying, I've been hand typing in all of the lesson notes since none were present in the deck. I've done the same for each review lesson every 7 days.

I've started watching the Dark series on Netflix with German audio and English subtitles just for additional exposure to the sounds of the language. I'd say I can pick up a word here or there, but I'm not really aiming to gain any comprehension from it, just expose my ears to the sound and rhythm of speech.

Things will probably be quiet here until I hit lesson 50 of Assimil, since updates will probably just be the same ol' same ol' until then

[DaveAgain]

I've started watching the Dark series on Netflix with German audio and English subtitles just for additional exposure to the sounds of the language. I'd say I can pick up a word here or there, but I'm not really aiming to gain any comprehension from it, just expose my ears to the sound and rhythm of speech.

I listened to a video by a French YouTuber the other day, where she said early on in her (English?) learning she listened to audio books that she already knew, so she had an idea of what she should be hearing, a scaffold to cling onto.

You might like to try watching documentaries about topics where you already have an idea of the sort of things that the documentary should be saying. ARD and Arte are two resources that might help with that.

[squirrel]

In Search Of Recommendations

• Books originally written in German
• Poetry originally written in German
• German movies (possibly shows, but I prefer films)
• And on the off chance anyone has some point-and-click games in German to recommend…

One of my past German tutors recommended Deponia to me. I haven't played it yet, so I can't personally vouch for it, but I'm pretty sure he said it was point-and-click

[mitgedichte]

I listened to a video by a French YouTuber the other day, where she said early on in her (English?) learning she listened to audio books that she already knew, so she had an idea of what she should be hearing, a scaffold to cling onto.

You might like to try watching documentaries about topics where you already have an idea of the sort of things that the documentary should be saying. ARD and Arte are two resources that might help with that.

Thank you again for the helpful response and resources to check out. I've been lost down a rabbit hole of videos on that channel for too long now.

I've recently read The Metamorphosis in English, so when I get to that stage it will be something I'm familiar with. I've also found a parallel text version of the book here that I may give a try, though I think I'd prefer to do my L-R in a comfortable chair with a physical book.

One of my past German tutors recommended Deponia to me. I haven't played it yet, so I can't personally vouch for it, but I'm pretty sure he said it was point-and-click

I'll check this out, thank you! Lucky me, it's 80% off right now.


Step 1, Update 2

As far as updates are concerned, I've reached lesson 30 of Assimil and things are picking up in difficulty for me. I'm definitely slowing down on each lesson now. Nowhere to go but onward I'm afraid I haven't been diligent in tracking my time spent on studies each day, but my typical routine consists of reviewing the 100 most common German verbs, reviewing previously learned Assimil lessons, going through new daily Assimil lesson, and manually adding lesson notes to my Anki deck to be reviewed later.

I've found a library copy of a book titled Twenty German Poets put together by Walter Kaufmann that is a series of German poems presented in parallel text. I've also found a copy of The Cantatas of J.S. Bach by Alfred Dürr which is presented in a similar fashion along with some annotations and notes. Then of course, Penguin Books' German Short Stories edited by Richard Newnham. Not sure at what stage I'll be adding these to my routine, but they all interest and excite me greatly.

Thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read any of this little thread, and best of luck in your own studies.

[mitgedichte]

Step 1, Update 3

Well, I've reached lesson 40 in Assimil. I've continued my daily reviews of older lessons as well.
Overall, I must say that I don't understand the majority of the grammar explanations in the lesson notes at all, but I can comprehend nearly every sentence of every lesson so far, so I'm not sweating it too much. The sentences make sense when I hear/read them, but I don't think at this time I'd have any hope of producing any sentences of my own. I'm interested in seeing how the active phase of Assimil goes when I start it week after next.

Not much of an update, I know. See you all again in 10 days

[mitgedichte]

Step 2, Update 1

Back as promised. I've reached lesson 50 of Assimil, and have started transcribing the beginning lessons for my bidirectional translation/active phase. I've made a template for myself in Notion that makes the setup a little easier. Basically, I copy the original transcript into the first column (collapsed in this example), use the German text as the basis for my English translation, collapse the German text, correct my translation against the original English text, and then use my own corrected English translation as the basis for my German translation which is then corrected in the same manner as the English text. I'm doing each step of this over the course of 3 days so I'm not translating what I've already seen the full transcript of in that day. I'll be rotating active lessons, so - for example - I'll be copying the transcript for lesson 3, creating an English translation for lesson 2, and translating lesson 1 back into German in a day instead of doing all 3 of those steps for the same lesson.

As I mentioned in my last update, the lessons had been getting very difficult for me, and I think it was lessons 44 and 45 in particular that really just felt like hitting my head against a brick wall. I'm trying not to dwell too much on one lesson and pressing onward. I know that when I circle back to the content my brain will be more receptive to it. Who knew language learning was challenging?

I don't honestly think I'll get any sort of interesting result, but I plan on taking a proficiency test for my next post, so we'll see how that goes.