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

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

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:15 pm

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

Postby aokoye » Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:30 pm

Danke! I'm taking a short(ish) break from one of my last final right now. I have a little over an hour to finish it (I have one more essay question to do - it's online). Syntax when as well as could be expected if not slightly better. I near totally bombed one section but there were other parts where my notes were really useful.

My German plans for the rest of the week into next week involve a lot of vocab and reviewing grammar from Sparks' German in Review - I should focus on future, subjunctive I and II, and passive verbs right now. I also need to figure out if I'm having a tutoring session tomorrow (I just sent a text message about that).
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Wed Jun 14, 2017 10:45 pm

Thursday will be a tutoring day. We will apparently be working on reading and listening :)
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby Ani » Thu Jun 15, 2017 5:19 am

Good luck! Hope it went well. Was that your last one? I used to love the "last final is over" feeling (until grades came out.. I spent a little too much time enjoying myself in college :lol:)
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Thu Jun 15, 2017 5:21 am

Yeah - the one this afternoon was my last one thank goodness! My thought is generally analogous to what you described. I'm excited it's over and anxious about grades.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sat Jun 17, 2017 8:18 pm

Tutoring went really well this week. The main takeaways - I need to work on grammar, vocab (which I think is totally doable), and speaking more fluidly. I'll talk more about all of those points later in this post. We're also probably going to have two sessions a week. One phone session to get me used to talking on the phone and listening to people without seeing them (in a different context than the radio) and one in-person session. She also sent me one list of vocab. It seems very clear that the test really is all about going to university in Germany/Austria. In terms of the reading tasks this is actually pretty optimal for me because nonfiction is my prefered reading and I read a lot about academia as it is. Speaking wise I don't know.

We spent an hour and a half working mainly on the first, and easiest, speaking task - asking for information on the telephone. She gave me three prompts and we really drilled them. The first was asking about a German course, the second about an international students orientation, and the third about a sports club. I had 30 seconds to pack in way more questions than I would if I were doing it in English (it was essentially as if I was leaving a voicemail).
We talked about how to prepare (take notes) on the prompt, how to order what I'm saying, and talked about how I need to use a variety of verbs as opposed to, say, only "machen" or "stattfinden". She also made a Lückentest which I managed to do surprisingly well on despite my general hatred of them. I also just need to talk faster - if I were to do the task in English I would do it slower than I'm being asked to do it for the test.

Grammar wise, this week I need to work on future tense, konjunktiv II, and adjective endings (per usual). I went through three of my grammar books and wrote down the pages that all of those topics are on. My goal is to work future tense this evening or late afternoon, konjunktiv II tomorrow, and adjective endings either tomorrow or Monday.

Vocabulary wise, my tutor made a thematic vocabulary list and emailed it to me last night. It has 144 words/phrases that fall into the themes of business, science, and environmental issues. I'm using Learn with Oliver for at least the summer and decided to buy a paid account so I can add in the words that aren't in its database (the native audio is a nice touch as well). It turns out that was a good plan - a. there are a number of words on my tutor's list that aren't in Learn with Oliver (but are on dict.cc and the like) and b. apparently Learn with Oliver has a shockingly attentive team as six of the words that I added last night, less than 24 hours ago, have been officially added to their database. I also like the multiple choice review. While I know that a lot of people think disparagingly about multiple choice, I think it'll be good for me, at least in the beginning. I also have enough discipline to think about the response before looking at the list of words.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about Mittelpunkt C1 right now. I think it'll depend on the next wordlists that I'm given and the homework she assigns me.

Speaking of homework - for Thursday she wants me to write at least one phone "dialogue" (voicemail) that is inline with the first TestDaF Mündlicher Ausdruck. She also wants me to create a handful of sentences in order to work on adjective declension.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Tue Jun 20, 2017 2:30 am

I had my second tutoring session today, this time over the phone, and it went really well. I only had time to create one "voicemail" of sorts (the goal was two) because I spent a good chunk of Friday looking after my friends' daughter. It was lovely but it meant waking up early after a night of restless sleep, spending a long time with a 13 year old, and then getting home and then taking a nap. That said she was pleased with what I did write up (really I wrote notes and had practiced a number of times. We also worked on one extra one.

We also worked on the second part of the Mündlicher Ausdruck which I like far better than the first. Essentially you're given a short prompt, have one minute to prepare, and one minute to answer. An example in English would be:
You were at eating lunch with your classmate Thomas and he started telling you about where students in Germany do during their summer break. He asked you what students in your native country do during summer break.
Explain what sorts of activities students do during their summer break in your native country. Where do students live during their summer break?

She wrote out three of these and sent them in a word file (I think she has a master document of them) so I read them all out, she asked if I had a question about one of the vocab words (at which point I had to explain that grilling and barbecuing are technically different in US English - I don't think she believed me), and then I answered them without any prep time, partially because I didn't feel that I needed it and partially because a minute of nearly dead air is awkward. She also meant to copy and paste a fourth but had forgotten so she just read it out and I answered it. She mentioned that it was good practice as one of her previous students ended up in that situation during TestDaF. Some of the students had a manual that wasn't complete so they had to answer the prompt from the recording that they were listening to as opposed to being able to read and listen to the recording of the prompt.
Turns out that I'm much better at this one than I am at the first, easier, task. She had a few grammar related corrections but overall I am much better at this. On Thursday we're going over the next two tasks in this section (there are seven in total). They involve describing a statistical graphic and talking about the pros and cons of something.

I apparently spoke a lot smoother today than I did last Thursday. She also mentioned that my pronunciation, by and large, was totally fine. We were talking about pronunciation in general and she said that she has no problem understanding me and doesn't think anyone else would either in terms of my pronunciation. In general the issue is grammar, especially a select few propositions.

What was supposed to be a 60 min tutoring session ended up with us talking for two and a half hours. We spend most of the time talking about linguistics and school systems.

I wasn't able to get any grammar stuff done yesterday so tonight will be Konjunktiv II (oh joy...). Earlier today did some review of Futur I und II which I was able to work on in full on Saturday. Homework for Thursday is another voicemail, working on the verb worksheet she emailed me, and working on vocab.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sat Jun 24, 2017 5:51 am

I'm seriously thinking about taking the telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule test as well as TestDaF. Really it's an issue of my anxiety being a jerk and not thinking I'll do well on the speaking part of TestDaF, never mind that I have over two months to prepare, I am actively preparing for it right now, and that I'll be in German speaking countries for two months before taking TestDaF. It is also accepted at all of the universities that I'm looking at (it's a new test from what I can tell) I don't think that preparing for the telc test will take much if anything out of preparing for TestDaF given the amount of time I have. There are a number of test centers that I can take the telc test at in early to mid September. We'll see.

For now it's more vocab, working on Konjunktiv 1 und 2 and more vocab
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby schlaraffenland » Sat Jun 24, 2017 8:49 pm

aokoye wrote:I'm seriously thinking about taking the telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule test as well as TestDaF. Really it's an issue of my anxiety being a jerk and not thinking I'll do well on the speaking part of TestDaF, never mind that I have over two months to prepare, I am actively preparing for it right now, and that I'll be in German speaking countries for two months before taking TestDaF. It is also accepted at all of the universities that I'm looking at (it's a new test from what I can tell) I don't think that preparing for the telc test will take much if anything out of preparing for TestDaF given the amount of time I have. There are a number of test centers that I can take the telc test at in early to mid September. We'll see.

For now it's more vocab, working on Konjunktiv 1 und 2 and more vocab


Go for it! You will never be as ready for such an exam as you will be after two months in-country inhaling the language at every opportunity.

Haben Sie vor, während Ihres Aufenthaltes auf Deutsch zu bloggen? :D
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sat Jun 24, 2017 11:00 pm

schlaraffenland wrote:Go for it! You will never be as ready for such an exam as you will be after two months in-country inhaling the language at every opportunity.

Haben Sie vor, während Ihres Aufenthaltes auf Deutsch zu bloggen? :D

Thanks for the encouragement! It kind of makes sense honestly. I would rather maximize my chances and I think my anxiety about taking either test would be far lower if I just took both. It's really going to be an issue of how much money I have.

The thing about the speaking part of TestDaF is that very little of it involves speaking even kind of freely. It looks like in the speaking portion telc's test you give a three minute presentation, summarize and ask questions about your partner's presentation, and then have a discussion about a quote (or multiple quotes). Those are all things I can do and all things I will likely have been doing in my four week class in Berlin.

I'm probably going to start blogging in German, either on here or on my personal blog (which I need to re-setup) when I get to Germany.
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