Das Faultier der Deutschen Sprache

[WalkingAlone13]

I've been quite busy thus far this week, so I've not really had sufficient time to make another entry when I would've liked. This will be another short post just to remind myself that I have still managed to keep up with my German.

Memrise
I have been steadily adding between 15 and 30 words every day.
I review my main German "course" every day.
I am approaching the 2,800 mark on the 5k words course.

Readers
I haven't read as much as I would have liked but this is mostly due to time restrictions.
I aim to do quite a lot of reading tomorrow to make up for this. (Remember to charge your kindle overnight, WalkingAlone13!)

Audio
I have made this my main focus for the time being as it's something I can keep up with despite various other commitments.
Michel Thomas German 1 *Complete*
Michel Thomas German Advanced *Complete*
Pimsleur German 1 *Complete + recapped a few lessons*
Pimsleur German 2 *Complete*

Misc.
Assimil lessons 1-10
HelloTalk - far too many conversations

Skype
This has not ended up too well for me this week...
^Tomorrow I have a session for German, followed by Polish...then Finnish. It's as if everyone is suddenly only available on the same day all of a sudden I am strangely looking forward to this dependant on how well my interviews earlier in the day go.

Random notes
I am actually really enjoying doing the odd bit of Polish here and there again, hopefully I'll be able to get to where I was previously in the not so distant future.
I realise that I seem to talk about Finland way too much (in life)
Amazingly, unless everyone I've been speaking to as of late has just been being incredibly kind to me, I seem to be making far less errors in my German now. Yay!

[WalkingAlone13]

I've decided I don't have enough videos on here, well, any for that matter. None is not enough. I am quite a big music listener, I also attend many gigs and sometimes travel quite far to do, so music is quite a big part of my life, and sometimes my learning.

Here's one of my new favourites for the beautiful Polish language, I'm sure a lot of you have heard it as it was somewhat of a Summer hit in Poland.


Now, for Finnish, I have quite a few favourites. I remember going to see Happoradio at an intimate gig in a club. These guys had been one of my first favourites and I had been listening to them for a long time before I got to see them play. Here's a fun song for you all
(I even chose a lyric video so you can sing along)



Again, one of my favourite Finnish bands Next we have Uniklubi, and one of my favourite songs.


I probably have too many favourites, but I'll throw in a couple more for the hell of it. So next we can go with some Jonne, lead singer of a band called Negative, also a great band - especially if you like your ballads This particular song resonates very strongly with me.



I had better move on to German before I run out of room
I'll start of with something a little heavier in terms of music, but you'll find the lyrics are deliberately quite humorous Here's some We butter the bread with butter! (I mean, clearly rebels and not wanting to substitute for a healthier alternative!)



Now for something a little different, I guess I'd probably describe as pop rock? I'm not sure, not so good with genres as I usually mostly listen to post hardcore type stuff in English. Here's some Christina Stuermer



I'll cut it short and just finish with some of my favourites that sing in English for anyone that might be learning English, or just fancy a change up.



And finishing with some Mayday Parade as I've already got my tickets to see them play in February...for the 6th? time. They are also great if ou like your ballads, one of my main change ups when I feel like something softer.



Now to see if any of these will actually be displayed. I usually suck at using tags and whatnot. Here's to hoping.

* Bleh, didn't work, feel free to let me know what I did wrong, I don't mind looking silly

[daegga]

You should only put the code after v= between the tags, not the full URL ;)

[WalkingAlone13]

You should only put the code after v= between the tags, not the full URL

Es Funktioniert. Danke, Daegga!

[WalkingAlone13]

I'm not sure why I remembered Pimsleur German 3 being so difficult when I checked a week or so prior, but for the last couple of days I have been going through it and it seems easier than the second. It uses "du" instead of "sie" in almost all of the lessons so far (I'm on 8 so far) which is great for me as although "sie" is important to know, because I speak mostly with friends it ends up as a bit of a hindrance at my low level, I usually automatically go to say something formal and have to stop and rethink to say it in the informal way. I hope that once I get better I could use either without having to think about it but for the time being that's not likely.

The realisation that I am running low on audio courses has only just struck me. Once I finish Pimsleur German 3, I think I have one left and then I'm out. I've already finished the MT German courses, twice in the case of the first one. I've tried FSI a few times but I never really get on with it, it's strange as it's not because I find it boring, it's more that I find some lessons really easy and then others extremely hard. It doesn't follow any order, though, for example, I could do 3 lessons, all of which very easy, the fourth lesson could be very difficult and the next but then the following very easy. So, once I finish my current course and the following one in the series, I'll probably only be doing Assimil.

I remembered a friend recommending me a German tv series a while back and as my listening comprehension seems to be getting better, I decided to buy the series so that I can watch some Native German as opposed to purely dubbed. I'm hoping this will push me as I currently use English subs, regardless of whether I can follow along with the audio or not. I'll probably start off with German subs just for the extra comfort but hopefully once I get going I might be confident enough to try without, of course this is entirely dependant on how my vocab holds up.

Speaking of vocab, Memrise seems to have introduced a new feature that is somewhat of a negative for me. I liked Memrise because it didn't matter what state of mind I was in, I could be browsing the forum or shopping on Ebay or Amazon and then drop by Memrise learn some new vocab and go back to the previous sites. Now, however, that is no longer the case, because of my audio problems (I have sound now due to a temp fix but I can't use headphones, the sound still comes out as normal) the new feature that makes you listen to a clip before listening to the clips below, in order to choose the correct one that correlates to the sound in the question, means that I can only do this if I happen to be by myself. I can review everything without the annoying feature but that's not going to help me progress in expanding it. I really hope they give you an option of turning that feature of in the near future, or my sound problems magically resolve themselves.

My reading has been going pretty well, I even started reading one of my physical books and managed to follow along well enough to understand the story. There was a lot of vocab I didn't know, but this definitely did not come as a shock to me, the shock was how much I did understand.

[WalkingAlone13]

This last week has been quite scary for me, I've been toying with the idea of going to university to study German but was always quite unsure as I assumed everyone would be a high level. The courses stated that no previous knowledge is needed, so it swayed me and I decided to apply, I was accepted and told that most students have already studied German at school and college, so that's A level in England. I believe it's around the B2 level in terms of the CEFR scale, this is quite scary as I have only really been studying properly for around 5-6 months, and most of that was not organised amazingly well. I was given two placement tests to determine my level and have completed the first without much trouble, now it's just the advanced (post A level) to go, so the B2 one, and I'm curious how badly I'll do but I am actually quite pleased at how quickly managed to complete the first one, I guess I hadn't noticed that I have been making progress despite my thinking otherwise.

I've been mostly progressing with Pimsleur as regards active study, I try to complete at least two lessons a day which seems to work quite well for me. I also read a thread posted on the other HTLAL about a member completing Assimil in two weeks, and because I seem to have trouble doing a lesson each day (they are too short) I decided to attempt the same. Yesterday I completed lessons 1-9 which entailed me listening to the audio once, reading the English text once, reading the German text once, closing the book and listening once more, reading the German text aloud twice, listening once more and then stopping the audio after each sentence and repeating aloud. This seems quite doable at the moment, though I can fully imagine this getting incredibly difficult as the lessons progress.

Memrise have introduced a new feature which has temporarily caused me to stop using it as I don't like using audio when I am learning new vocab and this feature (apparently only for premium members) currently cannot be turned off. They are working on making it an option to use if you want it and to choose to discard it if you wish, so instead I went back to my Duolingo account for a few days and have been going over the lessons I had already completed. It's so much easier now than it was when I first started on the course. I do still review on Memrise and today I managed to learn another 20 words or so, but I'm still waiting for the new feature to go away.


I have been thinking about how I'm soon out of audio material and that there isn't anything really to listen to once Pimsleur is finished, of course Assimil counts but I don't count it as I can't really use it while I am taking a stroll or riding my bike. I remembered about the Deutsch Welle website and its audio courses which I am eager to try, however I discovered why I had not yet used them. Unfortunately it seems I can only download the audio if I use ITunes and as I attempted to use ITunes before and it reacted adversely on my laptop, I'm not keen to try again. I'd really like to give these courses a shot, especially if I can go through the A1 to B1 courses to see how I do.
I don't suppose anyone knows where I might be able to download these without using ITunes? (I only ask as the content is free anyway)

Speaking of free, I recently stumbled upon this site which has quite a nice collection of free resources categorised by individual language. Some of the resources actually seem quite interesting, especially for Korean and a few other languages. Here's the link if anyone is interested

http://www.openculture.com/freelanguagelessons

[WalkingAlone13]

Recently I've been trying out the Assimil experiment I read about on the original HTLAL and it's been going quite well, but yesterday the difficulty suddenly got ramped up quite a lot. I decided that I'd drop down to 5 lessons per day as otherwise by the time I review the previous lessons, the time spent on Assimil has already been quite substantial. So five a day seems much more feasible, especially as once the active phase starts up it will get very difficult to keep up with everything.

I'm probably going to go quite vocab heavy for the next week or so, I've yet to decide how much vocab per day I will aim for but it's likely to be at least thirty words per day, but hopefully nearer the sixty new words per day mark. Vocab doesn't usually strike me too hard as I usually do at least one lesson of Pimsleur, or a few of the "Warum Nicht" starter course which is now available to download directly from the site without having to use ITunes. Yay. I quite like Warum nicht so far, but the elf has a slightly annoying voice. Perhaps the voice is deliberate to ensure you don't do more than one lesson per day?

My Türkish für Anfänger arrived yesterday so I felt compelled to give it a watch even though I'm yet to finish Stargate. I was a little taken back by the fact it doesn't have German subtitles. You can watch the series on youtube...with subtitles, but I thought it would be more comfortable to watch it on my dvd player and seeing as the complete series only costs about £20 inc. postage, I figured warum nicht? In a way this is good as it really forced me to rely entirely on the audio, I actually surprised myself by how much I can understand...even more so as I am currently fighting a rather persistent bug that's not making studying very easy.

[WalkingAlone13]

German
So I've now finished Pimsleur German 1-3 and had a look at the first three lessons on the Pimsleur German plus, which in all honesty, I find too boring to continue. I liked 1-3 quite a lot, but plus seems to be purely about somebody writing a book, trying to sell the rights to the book and deciding on a new name as the publisher does not like the name. As you can tell, it's riveting.

I finished the first 26 audio lessons of Warum Night, I'd be starting on the others if I managed to remember to actually download them. It's not too bad once you get going, although Ex does still irritate me on occasion, but not enough to put me off using the series. I like the pace of the course so I'm hoping the remainder of the lessons, which I think is another 26 lessons, will carry on at the current pace.

I've been continuing with my Assimil experiment but I kinda want to change it up a little as I recently got the 2013 edition which seems a lot more in-depth. The one I am currently using you're unlikely to find a dialogue with more than 8 sentences, the 2013 one you're unlikely to find less than 11 but more often than not around 13. I am quite curious how different the vocab between different editions of the same course would be? Does anybody happen to know how much different vocab there is between the 2012/2013 and 2014 edition, for example? The same with the 50's version, actually. I have the book and audio on my mp3 player, but mostly just listen to the audio as I worry my book will fall apart. This definitely seems more difficult than the newer editions, the start is nice and slow but it quickly picks up in difficulty.

Now that Memrise has finally enabled the annoying audio only questions to be disabled for 30 minutes at a time, I am able to use it again instead of reviewing my old stuff on Duolingo. I might still use Duo now and then but I always feel as if I am using far more English than I am German.

I also just finished reading King Kong in German, not the proper edition as I'd imagine it'd be too difficult but I have a reader which is quite fun. Plus it's a physical book so I can just leave it on the sofa and pick it when an advert comes on that I particularly dislike.

For about a week now I've been doing one lesson of Pimsleur Polish a day, which I quite enjoy as I've wanted to try Polish again for a long time now but never really did. This is mostly due to resources. I bought a textbook to use and when it arrived it was too difficult for me, so again, I didn't start yet. I started using Michel Thomas Polish but found it really hard right from the start...again, massive confidence knock and I put it off again. But Pimsleur seems fine at the moment, not too hard, quite useful vocab, etc.
I've only used Michel Thomas for German previously and I do not remember it starting off very hard at all, is this exclusive to Polish? I was going to use Michel Thomas with some of my later languages but this has put me off a bit. Plus the vocab in the first lesson has some stuff I can't really imagine being able to use yet, even if you can say it.

[WalkingAlone13]

Unfortunately not a lot has happened since my previous update. I've had three days of being stuck on the phone sorting things out, and then to top it all off, my laptop decided it wanted to play up and I spent a further day restoring and backing up. Fun times.

However, although my studies have been dramatically decreased as a result of the above, I have still managed to learn at least 15 new words a day on Memrise, go through a lesson or two of Pimsleur, and I've also still been watching Tuerkish fuer Anfaenger evey day, usually 2-3 episodes. I've also finished the first 26 lessons of Warum nicht and have since started the second lot of 26, I believe I'm currently on lesson 12. This is all I've been able to do for German, but hopefully I can pick up shortly and reintroduce a more substantial routine. Ideally I'd be able to do something like this;
Assimil 2013(1-2 lessons per day)
Assimil 2014 (1-2 lessons per day)
Pimsleur 1-2 lessons per day
Michael Thomas (refresh at my leisure)
Warum nicht (1-2 per day)
Menschen kursbuch (couple of pages? per day)
TV series (1-2 episodes)
Music (Listen whenever)
Readers (1-2 chapters per day?)

I've still been attempting at least one Pimsleur lesson a day for Polish, it's a shame the course only has ten lessons as I usually get on quite well with Pimsleur as it really does cater for absolute beginners. I have also been doing Michel Thomas Polish but my pace is nowhere near the pace at which I went through the German equivalent. I'm currently just repeating the first disc over as the pace seems to be too fast for me. It could just be me, perhaps it is, but it seems as if this isn't aimed at complete beginners, maybe more so at those who have studied vocab at the very least, prior to starting the course, or have had some lessons.

I did manage to find a useful youtube series, although I've only watched episode so far but I think it's actually pretty good, and more of a beginner course than Michel Thomas, so that'll benefit me. It's here for those that may find it interesting. I do warn you, though, it's definitely not current...
[
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIGcOh1-Teg

It should have 30 episodes but I can only find the first 15, from 16 onwards I believe it's the start of the advanced course, so that's the one I can't seem to find.

I started off with something very similar in German and it was a massive confidence boost being able to understand what was being said. I came back to it a week or so ago just to see if my comprehension is any better, after all I've watched dubbed series and a German tv series since. Again, here it is for those that are interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhP3OT2hxAE

There's a similar series for English however the English one has hundreds of episodes. Why can't the German or Polish one?

Anyway, next week should be fun. On Tuesday I have an introduction to French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German and Chinese more or less back to back. I don't know how it'll end up but I'm curious nonetheless. I am pretty sure I'll go with Spanish or French but not sure on the third language yet. It's a bit awkward as I still would like to spend my full year abroad in Germany and not divided, but I'll have to wait and see how it goes.

*Edit: I actually did find episodes 16-30 when sharing the 2nd episode here, it's just that you have to search for it by the Polish name.

[WalkingAlone13]

Well, things just got real.
I've been incredibly busy as of late and just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll be starting my new weekend job this week. I used to do A LOT of language study on the weekend, in particular, on Sunday. I'll now be working an eight hour shift on Saturday and a six/7 hour shift on Sunday, so I'm not sure where I'm going to fit the language practise in, or more importantly: how am I going to fit my roast in?

I am not sure why exactly but my DW account seems to be letting me login again, so I've been making full use of this and hope to make some good progress. If the levels are relatively correct I'd say that I'm finally at the high A2 level, though my skills are definitely not spread very evenly. I definitely need to brush up on some grammatical features but my listening comprehension is pretty good.

I think I am slowly getting a routine going with Assimil. I use the 2011 and 2014 courses concurrently, this is so that I will hopefully fill in any gaps in vocab I may have ended up with from using one by itself. I quite like this so far, the topics are completely different and having a skim through the lessons, they seem to stay that way throughout.

My audio courses are going pretty well. I've almost finished Warum nicht the second lot of lessons, then I'll start on the remaining two. I've not really bothered with Pimsleur since completing 1-3, despite my initial plan of recapping 2-3. I have been going through Michel Thomas again as the duration of a CD is quite good for my usual bike ride.