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.
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).
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.
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…
