Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:13 pm

I like my Studio so far. My normal go to at home in Portland is my Pilot Vanishing Point but I didn't bring it with because I didn't want to chance losing it. I used to only write with extra fine nibs but then I discovered inks that have a lot of sheen and/or shading and I've gotten to the point where I normally write with a medium nibs for the most part. Obviously the medium nib on the vanishing point is more or less a fine on any other pen. The whole being a Japanese brand thing...
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:00 am

New strategy: get to school an hourish early and work on the grammar topics that we'll be going over. It worked very well this morning. It's interesting because I think if this program had a B2.2 course I would be a better fit there than in C1. Yesterday we had an excursion and were with the B2 intensive class and it's very clear that I don't belong there. My hörverständnis is very much at the C1 level and my reading is getting a hell of a lot better as well. Really I think it's grammar that's the real issue and that shows up in my speaking and, to a lesser extent, in my writing. My class is also the only class that only speaks German with each other outside of class (I say as I listen to people in the B2 intensive class speaking English with each other during our break). That said, we went over passiv earlier this morning and a everyone was...a bit passive about trying offering up answers because we were fairly unsure.

In other news - I have impressed my host family with my cooking. Yesterday I got out of class early because the excursion so I went grocery shopping. I ended up just making a simple marinara sauce with mushrooms and sauteed a few chicken breasts and served it with store bought gnocchi. My host mother and her son were very impressed. Pasta sauce, however, for me is one of the few things that I make that I'm always worried about until the very end when I add salt. But yeah - it was simple, it turned out well, and they liked it.

I also am going to register for TELC C1 Hochschule today. I asked my host mother yesterday if I could have the test center I want to take it at send my results to her and if she could then send them to me. Said test center won't send the results outside of Germany and I'm pretty sure that the other centers in Berlin won't either. She's totally fine with it and when I offered to pay for mailing it to me in Portland she turned me down. She also said that if no one from FUBEST in the Fall is staying with her that I'm more than welcome to stay with her after I come back to Berlin from Vienna. I already have an AirBnB but I can cancel it if I find out soon enough. She thinks the housing coordinator has already told her whether or not anyone has or hasn't been placed with her so she's going to check today or tomorrow.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Fri Aug 04, 2017 4:55 pm

Week 2: done!

German language specific things to do this weekend:
  • Edit the einleitung of my essay
  • Work through at least one chapter in the TELC prep book
  • Vocab
  • Review konjunktiv I (not too hard)
  • Review Passiv
  • Try to also review a handful of other things (commas and some other stuff that I have written down but don't have in my immediate reach)
  • Work on my presentation that is due on Tuesday
Things that aren't related to German involve going to a yarn store way in the North of the city and think about going to the aquarium either early tomorrow or early Sunday morning. I also need to go to Saturn and get an external dvd drive (thanks Apple and your lack of drives in your even kind of recently released laptops).

Today was significantly easier than most of the other days this week. We went over konjunktiv I, had a debate about the migration crisis, and went over corrections for our papers. I am also coming to the realization of how little time I have during the week to really study for the two tests I have coming up (TELC and TestDaF). Given how little homework we actually have and that I've finally gotten over my jetlag I'm going to try to work through the TELC book a little bit every night during the work week and more so during the weekend. Said book has two CDs and given that I have next to no background on the speaking and listening parts of this exam I figure it would be smart to actually use those CDs.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Mon Aug 07, 2017 6:47 am

My day has started out a bit crappy - first my host brother ate the brötchen that I bought for myself yesterday. That I bought specifically so I wouldn't have to buy any for my breakfast and snack today (I eat massive amounts of bread when I'm in Europe). Second I have less than five euro on my mensa card and no Bargeld to recharge my card with (and there's no ATM near here). That bit should be fine but such is life.

This weekend was pretty good. On Saturday I went to deutsches technisches Museum Berlin and spent at least two and a half hours there poking around and taking pictures. It was fantastic. I also happened on three rabbits which were more fun to try to take pictures of than anything else honestly. Even better was that I was the only person around so I was the only person around to scare them (or try not to scare them). Before that I went to a really nice cafe in Prenzlauer Berg.

Yesterday I met up with one of my friends who I've met here and we went to a few cafes in Prenzlauer Berg. The first for breakfast and the second for studying (and cake/coffee/lunch). She's a native Swiss German speaker who is taking one of the English classes that is offered here. It's great because she's able to help me with my German and I'm able to help her with her English. She also studied at Humboldt University last two years ago so she's a good person to wander around Berlin with.

I'm not positive what we're doing in class today but I have a feeling it has something to do with academic language.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Aug 07, 2017 6:41 pm

I just came to think of the fact that you're in Berlin. Members from the old HTLAL live there, some of them seasoned polyglots. Maybe there are multilingual language cafés, polyglot meetups etc.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:51 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:I just came to think of the fact that you're in Berlin. Members from the old HTLAL live there, some of them seasoned polyglots. Maybe there are multilingual language cafés, polyglot meetups etc.


like these? https://www.meetup.com/topics/polyglot/de/berlin/
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:19 pm

Thanks for the well wishes and suggestions for socializing. I was actually planning on going to some knitting groups in Berlin but honestly haven't had the energy. My host family and one of the two Mitbewohnern is really extroverted and I have had more chances than I think anyone (other than them) would have expected to socialize - both with the people who live in this house and their friends. I've taken them up on most of their offers which has meant that I have cherished every minute of my alone time. Plus those meetup groups, definitely not related to natural languages ;)

I also leave for Brno on the 19th and then take the train to Vienna that next Thursday I want to say? After two weeks in Austria I go back to Berlin where it's going to be all studying for TestDaF and TELC all the time. My upcoming travel schedule seems a bit unreal honestly - I'm not sure how I'm able to pack everything in but it appears I'm going to/have been able to. My calendar with all of my flight and airbnb information isn't lying to me.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:40 pm

Yeah, I just noticed that two of the three meetups had more to do with programming languages.

Maybe this? https://www.meetup.com/topics/language- ... de/berlin/
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Tue Aug 08, 2017 5:23 pm

Super good news! My host mother is letting me stay here during my last two weeks in Germany/Europe! This is saving me nearly $500 (the cost of the cheapest AirBnB that is an entire flat as opposed to a shared room) and is really really nice of her. I'll have to make the family a nice dinner when I come back from Vienna (and bring chocolate...).

I had a really nice exchange with one of the women who works at the mensa (cafeteria) at the FU Berlin campus my program is at. Most mornings I get there early and buy a coffee and study. I should note that everyone who works in the mensa is all sorts of stressed and they all seem especially stressed at the moment because they're inundated with students who can't speak German or who speak very little German (note that it's not reasonable to expect the people who work there to speak English as well because there are a bunch of students who also have very limited English skills), don't know how the mensa works, don't think about efficiency (it's like I'm becoming German), and don't pay attention to how much money they have left on their mensa card.

Anyways - this morning I got my coffee and paid but realized that the women working could bairly see my student ID so I asked, in German, if she needed to see my student ID. She explained that she didn't need to because it's only required during lunch (in order to get the cheapest price) but that it's fine either way. Then she was like, "...but your german is so good!" I explained that I'm in the C1 course though then realized that that may very well mean nothing to her, wished her a good morning, and went on my way. I get the, "aber sein Deutsch ist so gut!" or "Sie können aber gut Deutsch" somewhat frequently when I let people know that I'm taking a German course (and then I try to be humble) but it was especially sweet this time because she seemed so relieved that I wasn't trying to ask her something in a language that wasn't German and that I understood what she was saying.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Thu Aug 10, 2017 3:51 pm

I have just over one week left and I must say I'm pleased with the German course that I'm in. Do I think I could have gotten the same out of a very strict private tutor while living in Germany for four weeks? Yes. Do I think I would have talked as much as I have over the past nearly three weeks? No. I also would be in a totally different living situation than I'm in now and thus likely wouldn't have the opportunity or need to speak German at home.

I also think that, at least at the advanced level, the idea of, "people will assimilate their pronunciation to that of their classmates and it will be wrong" is really overblown. Yes my sample size is six and all I have is anecdotal evidence (though that's all anyone seems to have on this specific subject), but none of us have assimilated our speaking to the other people in our class. I say that both in terms of grammar and in terms of pronunciation. Most if not all of us have improved our grammar but no one has picked up anyone else's mistakes. The same is completely and utterly true for pronunciation, though with less improvement because my teacher forgot to schedule time for that into our lessons (we did spend one afternoon on it - I have a feeling she's going to take the "more phonetics" back to her colleagues so they can also spend more time on it). This is despite the fact that the six of us spend essentially six hours a day five days a week with each other, including lunch and breaks, and despite the fact that we speak german with one another almost exclusively.

I also know that I wouldn't have done nearly as much writing in German. Mind you I did say a month ago that I would start writing one post a week here in German but that clearly didn't happen. Given that I spend most of my day surrounded by German and producing German I'm ok with that. I am going to start writing more, in general, in German after this course though - in preparation for TELC and TestDaF.

All that said - things that I have left in terms of major assignments and tests:
Zwischenprüfung tomorrow (which is silly because really it's not the middle of the course)
2 plus pages of my term paper by Monday (my goal is to more or less finish it over the weekend
The finished paper by Thursday I think.

Things I am studying this evening (aka things that will be on the test tomorrow):
  • Passiv
  • Konjunktiv I
  • Partizipien und Relativsätze (or something along those lines)
  • Specific Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen
  • Vocab about the DDR (specifically in relation to their interrogation techniques)

As of writing this I'm taking a break from studying Passiv, need to actually remember which verbs go with said nomen verb verbindungen (Quizlet is going to be my friend tonight), and downloaded Sag's Besser: Teil 1 from the Goethe Institut elibrary because the Heuber verb book that I was using isn't going to actually give me everything in need in terms of practice (aka cramming) material for tomorrow. I might be regretting my choice of only studying vocab and Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen yesterday.
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