Right now, my main goals with German are:
- Not to fall into the intermediate plateau!
- Work on my sentence structure.
- Understand Präteritum better.
- Get a solid grip on dativ & akkusativ.
I know it's probably a little late in the game to be figuring out dativ and akkusativ.
My teachers at the Volkshochschule didn't really emphasize it all that much, and I was just a little too lazy. Recently I was looking at the cases in English (I/me/mine, he/him/his), and thought about how terrible it sounds when learners mix those things up... and I realized I sound that bad in German. D: So it's high time I get that sorted out.The other two things are just because sentence structure was something I never quite managed to get straight, and because once I get Präteritum down I should have an easier time reading German books (most novels are written in Prät.). I do enjoy learning languages, but it is work. Reading though? God, I love to read. I can read for hours and hours on end, no problem.
So I figure once I get good enough that I can read fluidly, things will really start to take off. I've tried some middle-grade novels, like those Goosebumps books, but it's still a bit grating. I find I have to concentrate very hard, I'm not able to lose myself in the book like I can in English.
French is totally on the back burner for now, but someday I want to get at it! I actually have a quick vacation to Lille coming up soon, so I should at least try to learn some basic phrases.
