Rob's Log - From German B2 to C1, French 0 to B1

[rtickner]

After fathering two young lads and running a business during the day, I find myself with a bit of time left over. This used to be filled with language learning as a hobby (prior to the HTLAL diaspora) but has recently started to fill up with more work or television time.

The purpose of this log is to claim back that time and put it to use again learning languages I find to be interesting.

Certification is of course not necessary, but I find the external validation by unbiased native speakers to be a good yardstick.

German

For the longest time, learning German was my favourite past-time. I have a B2 certificate from the Goethe-Institut in Sydney, and would like to sit the C1 exam in the not too distant future. Having read a lot in German (partly thanks to several Tadoku contests), my comprehension is fine but I do need a lot of practice with writing. Have travelled to Germany 5 times, each time only speaking German (the first time I was so nervous people probably thought I was a mute). Would love to live there for a period of time in the future, once the kids have grown up.
Short term goal: Run through an advanced course to improve some weak points on grammar and writing.
Certification goal: C1.

French

I studied French for six months prior to going to France for our honeymoon in Paris back in 2011. Enjoyed both Paris and the French language a lot, not as much as German but still very nice and piqued my interest for further study. Always planned on certification at the Alliance Francaise in Sydney but never made the time. Wife would like to go back in two years time for her 30th birthday so would be good to pick this up again. I can read and speak French without too much difficulty, but writing and listening skills are practically non-existent.
Short term goal: Refresh some basic vocab with Anki.
Certification goal: B1.

Chinese (Mandarin)

I've been really interested in picking up Mandarin and learning to read Chinese (simplified characters) for quite some time, but have always been pretty intimidated by it. I've been waiting for a window of opportunity to throw myself into it but I figure I should just get started and learn to converse, and the pick up the reading later. China being quite close to Australia, plenty of travel and speaking opportunities.
Short term goal: Finish an audio course (probably Pimsleur).
Certification goal: HSK1.

[rtickner]

Day 1. Some planning and choosing materials and deciding on my approach this time round. Ultimately I want to get out of the "learner" stage as quickly as possible and do away with crutches like Anki and course books.

I like to use Anki right at the start or when getting back into a language, as a rough embrace of common words and general meanings, with the intention of dropping it as soon as possible and switching to reading and writing.

I get bored with course books very quickly, but I use them right at the start to refresh grammatical knowledge and I need to use them now to target weak areas e.g. prepositions and adjective declensions in German.

German

• Read 13 pages of Paulo Coehlo - Der Alchimist to warm up.
• Selected an advanced course to use - Routledge's Intermediate German - A Grammar and Workbook. Read the preface. After that I have Routledge's Developing Writing Skills in German, which I'm looking forward to - more targeted work at weaknesses.
• Anki: 50 words. Found a 5,000 card deck on Anki based on frequency for review. No audio or sentence cards, simply a word and rough meaning with an example sentence to "bootstrap" back into reading. Arguably not necessary at my current level (B2) but I'm sure I'll pick up a few things and it's good for a flick through on the phone when waiting in line, etc.

French

• Read chapter 1 of Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers.
• Selected a beginner's course to use - Hugo in 3 Months - I've done this course before and like its no-nonsense approach to introducing the grammar and translation exercises. Read the preface.
• Anki: 50 words. Found a 5,000 card deck on Anki based on frequency for review. Again, no audio or sentence cards, just a word, rough meaning and example sentence. Idea is to ditch this as soon as possible for general reading.

Mandarin

• Read Chapter 1 of Remembering the Hanzi, out of pure interest. Planning on starting Pimsleur soon but couldn't help myself.

[rtickner]

Day 2. Off on paternity leave at the moment so had a few hours to spend today.

German

[*]+50 Anki words. (Total:100/4000)
[*]+13 pages of reading - Paulo Coehlo - Der Alchimist. (Total: 0 books, 26 pages)
[*]+1 course chapter - Routledge Intermediate German - Chapter 1 - Nouns and Gender. (Total 0 books, 1 chapter)

Can't believe it, but learned for the first time about weak nouns tonight (-(e)n ending in all but masculine nominative singular), which explains the unusual Herr/Herrn/Herren popping up. Another mystery solved.

Getting some good writing practice by writing all the German presented in the course book in a notepad beside me.

French

[*]+50 Anki words. (Total: 100/5000)
[*]+14 pages of reading - Chapter 2 of Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers. (Total: 0 books, 34 pages)
[*]+1 course chapter - Hugo's French in 3 Months - Week 1 - some basic work on vocab, articles, negations, pronouns and avoir. (Total: 0 books, 1 chapter)

Again, writing down all French I come across in the course for writing practice. Had forgotten about du/de la/des becoming de in the negative.

Mandarin

[*]+1 Pimsleur lesson - Volume 1, Lesson 1 (Total: 1 lesson).

Learned how to say excuse me, can you speak English/Mandarin, I can't speak, I'm an American (not so useful for an Aussie ).

Am planning on going through the transcripts before too long and jotting down the pinyin for what I'm learning in the audio lessons - would be good to review the tones as well based on the pinyin, as they aren't always clear from the audio.

[rtickner]

Day 3.

German

[*]+50 Anki Words (Total: 150/4000)
[*]+4 pages of reading - Dan Brown - Illuminati (Total: 38 pages)

Got sick of the Alchemist - not my kind of book. Grabbed the Dan Brown book off the Kindle Store and had a quick read. The pop-up dictionary on the Kindle is fantastic. One or two words per page that I don't know, tap them quickly to see the definition and move on. Quick and effective.

No grammatical work today.

French

[*]+50 Anki Words (Total: 150/5000)

Watched an episode of Babar in French with my young lad before bedtime - forgot that Babar's mother gets taken down by a hunter in the first episode. What a tragedy. Youtube auto captioning helped with some of it, though not relying on its accuracy.

No reading or grammatical work today.

Mandarin

[*]+1 Pimsleur lesson - Volume 1, Lesson 2.
[*]Pinyin work on ChineseLearn app - 20 minutes.

The ChineseLearn app looks pretty great - going to start using that more over Pimsleur. Perhaps look into some other podcast resources.

[rtickner]

Thanks for the kind welcome Morgana.

Day 4.

German

• +50 Anki Words (Total Vocab: 200 words/expressions)
• +33 pages of reading - Dan Brown - Illuminati (Total Reading: 72 pages)
• +85 minutes of TV - Babar with my boys and first episode of "The Same Sky" on Netflix (Total TV: 85 minutes)
• +54 minutes of podcast - ARD Radio Tatort episode "Abschaum" (Total Podcasts: 54 minutes)

French

• +50 Anki Words (Total Vocab: 200 words/expressions)
• +15 pages of reading - Chapter 3 of Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers. (Total Reading: 49 pages)
• +5 pages of grammar - new book "grammaire FRANÇAISE 4th ed." by Ollivier and Beaudoin https://www.amazon.com/Grammaire-Fran%C3%A7aise-Jacqueline-Ollivier/dp/1428229582 picked up at a local bookshop for $10. The book is written entirely in French which I find aids greatly in keeping in "French mode" while studying. Today spoke of nouns, genders and common noun endings which "might" give a clue as to the gender (with noted exceptions).

I ordered the B1 exam preparation book this evening https://www.amazon.com/Reussir-Delf-2010-Livre-French/dp/2278064495, from a cursory glance the Alliance Francaise de Sydney runs exams in May and November, so this should give me either 6 or 12 months to reach a comfortable B1 level. If I were a rank beginner, I would say that is overly optimistic. I am however a false beginner and feel like it's achievable, comparing it to the German B1 exam at the Goethe Institut. At this stage I'll aim at May but won't be registering until February or March next year.

Mandarin

I have decided to drop Mandarin for the time being. I'm back at work full-time on Monday and I know realistically that I'm not going to have enough time to devote to Mandarin and at the same time make the progress in German and French I'm aiming for (much more important to me at this time).

[rtickner]

Day 5.

German

• +50 Anki Words (Total Vocab: 250 words/expressions)
• +28 pages of reading - Dan Brown - Illuminati (Total Reading: 100 pages)
• +22 minutes of TV - Babar with my boys. (Total TV: 1 hour 47 minutes)
• +28 minutes of podcast - SWR2 Wissen - "Götterland Japan" (Total Podcasts: 1 hour 22 minutes)

French

• +50 Anki Words (Total Vocab: 250 words/expressions)
• +15 pages of reading - Chapter 4 of Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers. (Total Reading: 64 pages)
• +8 pages of grammar - grammaire FRANÇAISE 4th ed. It turns out the answers to exercises are in a separate book which I do not possess - will probably need to find a new resource. A pity, since I was really enjoying this book.

[French_please]

Day 5.

German

[list]
[*]+50 Anki Words (Total Vocab: 250 words/expressions)

You were that guy with extreme Swedish vocab learning, weren't you?