Das Faultier der Deutschen Sprache

[WalkingAlone13]

So things have been as stressful as I had anticipated, two family members dealing with cancer at the same time is never going to be easy, unfortunately. However, I have ended up going into a language overdrive whilst planing further for my ever encroaching year in Germany.

I have been planing as much as possible based on my previous experience last month, and since then I have been on the lookout for one bedroom apartments in the vicinity of the university. I cannot really commit until the middle of august due to monetary constraints so it is currently an exercise in futility as I see places that would be excellent, followed by viewing them online daily hoping they remain available, to the inevitable sale of them. So I have seen several come and go. One of my favourites is still available but it only has a hob as opposed to an oven. I love baking so it's a bit unfortunate as I do not really see any possibilities of baking with only a hob, unless they allow me to purchase an oven myself.

Anyway, in terms of university I finally have a little more information available to me. I now know that my Vorbereitungskurs will run from the 18th of September until the 6th of October. This was optional for us, but it carries credits with it, and with four hours per day for 14 days, I cannot really see how it can be a bad thing. I will also be undertaking a few courses in the Volkhochschule as I had previously planned, the only difference from previous incarnations of this same plan. The main difference is that I am planning on changing my Slavistiks choice in uni to romanistiks, so that I can study Spanish instead of Polish in uni.
My logic here is that even if I have four hours a week of Polish I do not think, even with self study as much as possible outside of uni, that I will reach a level that I can write home about. Whereas, I have recently rediscovered a certain flame for Spanish and it seems more likely that I could reach a reasonable level with a year's worth of lessons, plus extra at the Volkhochschule and self study.

So my new Volkhochschule timetable looks a little like this;
Montag 4te Sep 17:00 A1.4 (Schwedisch)
Montag 11te Sep 18:40 A1.1 (Spanisch)
Dienstag 5te Sept 17:00 A1.2 (Schwedisch)
Dienstag 12te Sep 18:40 A1.1 (Schwedisch)
Mittwoch 6te Sep 18:40 A1.3 (Spanisch)
Donnerstag 7te Sep 17:40 A1.2 (Spanisch)

All of the above courses run for a total of 30 hours each, and each lesson is roughly 90 minutes in length. The lower level Swedish courses will not really be of that much use to me in terms of things that I do not know, but I am using them as an opportunity to hopefully speak some Swedish. I never really got to actually speak Swedish. So before when I could read novels and write to friends and such without too much difficulty, I could never actually speak it.
Spanish on the other hand, well, I am having quite a lot of fun with it at the moment, only with Duo and Spanish, nothing difficult but I still feel a sense of accomplishment so far.

I used to have trouble using Memrise for more than one language as it felt too "confined" but since the change in the design of the app, I now find myself using the app purely for Spanish and the website for German and Swedish. I also have three seperate windows open for Duo, so that I can have a mental separation between the three. It is nothing to do with interference as I do not have that problem with the three languages, it is just a psychological thing that I sometimes get when it comes to studying. Anyway, it is helping so far.

I have a better idea of my uni timetable now as well and I am pretty excited. It is basically all reading, listening, writing, grammar, vocabulary and a few other things, some a little more complex delineating the level of the student. So I have all of the above at a B2 level, as well as some scientific subjects and cultural ones also all in German. Everything that I have chosen will be taught entirely in German, and I believe the Volkhochschule languages I am taking will also be taught in German.

All in all I am feeling pretty optimistic in regards to the improvement I can see myself making over the coming year. I had achieved my B2 goal ahead of time in German, so if I can reach a C1 level by the end of the year I will be very happy. I do not realistically know what to aim for in Spanish as I do not know how many hours of it in uni I will have just yet. Outside of uni it is four and a half hours plus my usual Memrise and Duo and that should boost my time spent on the language by at least another seven hours per week. Then if it is four hours at uni (I am just guessing) that would be roughly fifteen hours per week.

Swedish is more of a "wait and see", I do not have any goals as such for it other than actually having the opportunity to speak it and improve that aspect of it.

And yeah, I either wanderlust under stress or stop for a month at a time. I did cut Polish, Croatian and Norwegian from my Volkhochschule plan, so I count that as a success!

Rough study plan for my German outside of uni consists of the basics;
Write a blog update daily (It will not have to be long, probably just detailing how uni was to start with)
Read a chapter throughout the day of one of my Buffy books.
My usual Memrise
My usual Duo
Watch two episodes of something (Still toying with the idea of getting Netflix over there - hoping it might allow me access to something in Spanish as well, and perhaps there is something in Swedish available...but I doubt it.)

I do not have any plans for speaking as such but I will be speaking throughout the day...so, yeah.

I do not have a plan for Spanish or Swedish really.
Possibilities would be
Assimil Spanish
Assimil Swedish (I have both 1 and 2 with German as the base language)
Nya Mål (1 - 3) These are my favourites. I have Rivstart after seeing it receive such high praise from everyone here, but I do not really understand the hype and find Nya Mål so much better. Still, different books work better for different people.
I also have Välkomna and the Spanish equivalent (both by Klett).
Several novels in Swedish and Spanish.
Youtube videos (Both of these languages are awesome for availability of vlogs)
Youtube music videos (I am having a lot of difficulty finding Spanish pop, preferably female singers - will check out the Spanish groups later on tonight in the hope of finding some) Swedish is not too bad, but could still do with some more.

And that's pretty much it. I am trying to keep my resources to a minimum this time around, as with German I ended up with so many resources I just never actually got around to using.

And I am pretty sure I have just out-waffled a waffle factory with this post so I shall end it here.

[WalkingAlone13]

Things continue to get worse, with there now only being one family member with cancer. My mood has been a little off as of late, so my language routine has been equally off, but not necessarily bad. I have still been hitting Duo pretty hard, I almost closed in on Jeff, so I count that as a success. In actual fact, I only have 35 more categories to complete...it does not sound as good when I write it down, but looking at it on screen it looks impressive for just over a week of Spanish.

I wrote about the new additions to the Memrise app as well, and I honestly really like them, again assuming they are indeed new, I had not used the app in a very long time, so I cannot say for sure. But whatever they are, I am enjoying them being there. I take back any implication of them being easy however. I actually got stuck on one of them for a while. I had to arrange my date with, I do not actually remember her name so it was destined not to go as planned, but I did not know how to pose the question they wanted me to pose and you only get one shot with each step. So you have to get them all right without any errors in order to finish the lesson. They do seem to be optional though, so it does not interfere with you completing the vocab section of the course.

If I add the two Spanish courses that I have been taking together, I have so far learnt a total of 313 words. According to the graphs on Memrise that equates to Aula internacional 1 - 3 hours 59 minutes and 1 second and Spanish (Spain) 1 - 2 hours 38 minutes and 12 seconds. So I guess that works out at around 44 words a day, which is not too bad considering my somewhat lack luster mindset, and that also includes my time watering everything on them and the grammar and other functions on the Spanish 1 course.

I have neglected my German a little in all honesty. Again, according to Memrise I have spent a mere 19 hours 50 minutes and 44 seconds on 400 German words by frequency over the last 60 days. The majority of that is also just watering so it's a bit meh. I will make more of an effort now that I have seen that.

Not really done too much else, I have a lot of stuff ingrained in my daily routine already, and generally speaking even here back in the UK I am speaking more German than English. Most of my youtube time is spent in German and recently also quite a lot in Spanish. I also recently stumbled upon Mi vida loca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSyJDa0 ... pfreload=1
Which is a mini series of 23 episodes made by the BBC. I did not feel like watching the series I used for German for Spanish, despite the new actors. I watched the first two or three but it just wasn't the same as I already know the story. So the above series works as a nice little filler in its place. Besides, who doesn't like a little urgency to force recall. The first episode involved me nearly being hit in the face by a frying pan.

Oh, that's what I forgot to mention despite it being the reason for me logging in to write this post in the first place. I emailed the Volkhochschule regarding the omission of the Spanisch A1.3 Kurs that no longer displays, as I was worried I had missed out on it. They replied very quickly and assured me that in actual fact it is still possible for me to take it as well as the A1.1, A1.2 and even the A1.4, I need only email again with some personal details and confirmation of the time slots for the courses that I wanted. So I may even end up doing A1.1, A1.2, A1.3 and A1.4 as looking through my Aula internacional 1 book which is purely A1, there does not seem to be anything that I overly struggle with as of yet. I more than likely will, but I am sure if I put in the study time the above courses won't be overly problematic for me, especially once my uni lessons start alongside.
I also asked about Deutsch als Fremdsprache courses and was given the contact details of someone that may be able to help me out on this front, as I could only see integration courses but I will know for sure once I send an email off. I will be off to bed shortly and that means it's almost time for Pan's Labyrinth. Woop.

[Elenia]

I'm sorry to hear this, my thoughts are with you.

[WalkingAlone13]

Thanks, Elenia : )

Sooo, I now believe I have everything that I wanted to aid in my study in order to maximise the efficiency in my concurrent journey with Spanish alongside my German. Seeing as I will be studying Spanish with a base language of German for uni classes as well as at the Volkhochschule, I deemed it necessary to have a crutch just in case. In this case my crutch will be that I have thrown in a couple more resources with an English base, in case I fall behind.

My full list of resources will now be;
Uni
Volkhochschule

Libros
Aula internacional (A1)
Aula internacional (A2)
Assimil Spanish (2014) - Is the earlier edition with the bull on the book significantly different/better? I noticed the German base (2015) is that version, and I have been contemplating adding it to the mix if it is of use.
Assimil Spanish workbook (I used this with German to recap and see if there was anything I needed to pay more attention to).
Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses, Premium 3rd Edition (Practice Makes Perfect Series)
Gramatica De USO Del Espanol - Teoria Y Practica: Gramatica De USO De Espanol + Soluciones - Level A1-B2

The books are basically all through recommendations from here or friends that have personally used them. A friend of mine used the Aula internacional series, for example, when studying translation in Spain. She is a native Spanish speaker, so it's nice to have the nod from her on the series.
I managed to pick up Assimil Spanish a while back now when it was on offer, so did not look too much into it, and the possible differences between the versions of it. I did not know any German at that point, so I did not look at the German base versions - which now seem like a good idea to complement the uni and Volkhochschule resources.
Practice makes perfect and Gramatica de uso del Espanol were from reading a thread on here. I am so used to seeing the name abbreviated for the gramatica, that it never occurred to me that I did not know its actual name. Searching for the abbreviation yields some "interesting" results on Google. Anyway, both books were highly praised, then I read some further reviews and had a look inside Practice makes perfect before opting to buy them both.
I did notice an A1-A2 version, a B1 - B2 version, and then the A1 - B2 version. All of which were the same price, so I am hoping my version is how I took it to mean: a culmination of the two versions.

DVDS
Star Trek The next generation
Star Trek Deep Space nine
Star Trek Voyager

At the moment I am just watching the above in German with Spanish subtitles in the hope of reaffirming the vocab I am picking up on Duo and Memrise.

Not yet purchased but hoping to acquire soon
X-files (The German one has Spanish audio and subs)
Buffy (Sooooo annoying, none of my versions have Spanish. French, yes, Spanish no. I have finally found it at a reasonable price)
Stargate SG-1 (Some of mine have Spanish audio, but it is actually reasonably easy to pick up cheapish second hand)

Youtube
Mi vida loca (BBC series for learners)

Youtube music
La Oreja de Van Gogh
Ha - Ash

I realise Ha-Ash are Mexican, but I figure it should not make too much difference at the moment. Fingers crossed. La Oreja de Van Gogh are definitely my favourite, and for the first time since Finnish, they are a group/band that I like, that actually have a healthy discography. I hate discovering a band that I like only to find out they have only one album or even worse with a lot of English/American bands that I like, which often have only an EP.

Audio courses
Michel Thomas beginner and advanced
Pimsleur 1-4

I started using Michel Thomas sporadically as I can only listen on my laptop at the moment, but I will probably finish it shortly. Not sure whether or not I will use Pimsleur, it depends how I feel once I am back in Germany.

Websites
Memrise;
Aula internacional 1: 268 / 1618 words learnt
Spanish (Spain) 1: 222/222 words learnt
Spanish (Spain) 2: 260/339 words learnt

Duo: 1384/?
I do not find the images used on the Duo course to be that clear. Especially as they are only generally used when a new word is introduced, and annoyingly I am sometimes getting some of these new words wrong by not understanding the connection the picture is supposed to convey. I also recently learnt the word for "hairnet" which I honestly do not see myself using in the near future. There were some other questionable words earlier on but those could at least be linked to Spanish culture, so I did not mind the seemingly obscure nature of those words.

Kindle
The chronicles of Narnia

I bought this a long time ago and only by chance recently happened upon it again. There's little chance of me being able to read it anytime soon, but it is nice to know that I have something for when my reading level actually exists.

I will not go into detail on my German resources just yet as it will all depend on how I feel once there, especially pertaining Uni as everything will be in German anyway. I will be pushing ahead hard though, in case I am giving off a vibe of nonchalance towards my German. Even if that were the case, my log does aptly refer to me as a Faultier

I feel like I need to add something equally as apt for the Spanish section of my language journey.

[WalkingAlone13]

There is definitely a difference in longevity in the Duolingo courses. I usually get a little bored along the way and end up taking a few breaks, but the Spanish course was short enough that I did not face this problem this time. I think it took me just over two weeks to get to the funky trophy stage.



That brings me up to four Duolingo courses complete now;
Duo German
Duo German reverse tree
Duo Swedish
Duo Spanish

The strange thing is, that I never actually liked Duo to start off with and now it seems I have become slightly ensnared by it. Not that that is a bad thing as it works rather well with my Memrise routine. I have not been in the right frame of mind as of late to do anything extensive so I do not have much to update in terms of language. I mostly stick to Duo and Memrise, watch an episode or two of something in the evening and occasionally get some reading in.

I would have (hopefully) finalised all of my accommodation and schedules by the end of today. I received my official status on the Spanish courses I had applied for at the Volkhochschule, so that's at least 6 hours a week now guaranteed. My Vorbereitungskurs on the 18th is ever closing in and so far, regarding my accommodation, I won't receive my details before the 14th. I have been writing a lot of emails, however, and it is looking promising that I might be able to persuade them to let me come earlier. I really want to get there for the 4th at the latest, but I will find out later today if it is okay. Sormet ristissa!

[WalkingAlone13]

So I figure I should do one last update in case I am not able to post for a while once back in Germany. I have my moving in date set on the 6th, so still a few days but I fly out on the 5th, then have to do an all nighter at the train station in Leipzig before catching the train to Erfurt at 4:04 in the morning on the 6th. It used to be so much easier.

Anyway, so once I arrive there and make my way to the accommodation office, grab the keys, sign the documents and move my stuff in, I will be free to try and ease myself back in. I am feeling a little better about things again now, I did not mention it earlier but I had absolutely no energy, so it's amazing I managed to keep any practice going. I mentioned about the funerals, I am sure, but what I deliberately omitted was that I was also facing troubles due to very unscrupulous "housemates". I left to come back to the UK after explicity stating my situation, this was actually before the death, and was assured everything was okay. I did not doubt them as I had no reason to, but the way that private letting is done in Germany can be a very real cause for concern. I never had direct contact with the person letting the property, only with the two people I was sharing with.

I had other things on my mind, and am as always too trusting in people. When I returned to the UK and asked if they had passed on the information, I was met with a lot of ambiguity. This was a cause for concern but again I had a lot to deal with at the time and still did not think anything was particularly amiss. I then started receiving what I can only assume were "carefully" veiled threats, which I saw through immediately and now very annoyed at the way in which I was being treated. In their words, I had left them out in the rain, and they had absolutely no compassion for my circumstances and continuously made threats about getting lawyers and such, forcing me to pay the rent months after I had left. They still refused to pass on my news to the actual owner as they feared they would get kicked out as they had been bad housemates by the sounds of it to those before me as well. The major problem here being, I could not officially move out and without the owner knowing, I would still be expected to pay the rent. It was a very annoying cycle. I think it is all finally over. Needless to say, I could have done without all of that and it really damaged my relationship with German.

Anyway, I am fortunate enough to have some awesome German friends, and although that was a particularly nasty situation and memorable one, I have enough good memories to keep me going and with Uni starting up on the 18th, I will hopefully have ample opportunities to make myriad happy memories to force the negative out.

My Spanish endeavour will also hopefully help. It has worked out that I will have my first Spanish class on the day of my arrival, I seem to like jumping in at the deep end. I am both optimistic and slightly worried. I will be learning Spanish in German with Germans, it's only A1 but still, I can already preempt some embarrassing scenarios should I not get a German explanation. My Comprehension is, according to everyone I have as of yet encountered, excellent, and many do not believe me when I state my "level" as my vocab has a habit of tricking people. This is one of the main reasons I love Memrise. That being said, I freeze in classroom scenarios, so here's to hoping.

Anyway, all that's left to do now is make sure I have not forgotten anything. I have the rest of my books ready and already have most of my clothes over, as well as toiletries and other useful things. I already know my way around the city, so that's a plus. I am probably forgetting something and will probably forget something important when it's already too late to remedy but hey ho.

Here's to a new chapter ;P

[Elenia]

I'm sorry about the housemate situation. As they say, it never rains, but it pours. Good luck going forward! I look forward to your next update.

[WalkingAlone13]

I am probably still alive, although it is Halloween so who knows. I have been wanting to update this with something meaningful for such a long time now, mostly because I kinda wanted to prove that one can be successful during an Erasmus year without having to resort to the usual stereotypes associated with it. That is also part of the reason for my reluctance as I have essentially failed without failing.
In short, it is becoming increasingly clear that although it is perfectly feasible to omit the staying together in your international groups part and make significant gains in regards to language acquisition, it certainly does not do much for ones' well being.

I am almost exclusively in B2 level classes now with the exception of an orthography class and a grammar class, which are both B1 level classes. I have had to fight to stay in the Orthography class however as she seems to think myself and a few others are at too high a level for it and should take something else instead. The problem being is that there are not that many classes as such due to everything getting booked up almost instantly. We did not really have the system explained to us all that well and as soon as classes go up, especially with the popular choices, you have roughly 10 minutes to register for them. I was very fortunate to get my Spanish class for this very reason. Then it transpired that they had overbooked and in the very first lesson she tried to get as many of us to leave of our own volition as possible. Then a fellow exchange student mentioned that she is an exchange student which gave the lecturer the idea that all exchange students should raise a hand so she would know how many of us could be fodder. I, of course, did not hear that part So my place was saved, as enough students left for the class to be "acceptable" in her eyes.

One of the main problems I am having is that, because my German is apparently at the B2 levels, those from my home university/German studies group now resent me and no longer have any contact with me. It also meant that I am on the receiving end of some light bullying via FB, etc. I initially did not even understand why their would be such a void between us in terms of levels, I mean, I studied a lot more in my free time (not really studying as such, but I watched TV series, read books and used Memrise quite vociferously in order to better it) but otherwise we all learnt the same in class as we are in the same class. I also knew from our results that they still had some nice scores in the exams. It turns out that they have very good memories and can somehow cram before an exam and remember almost everything, but outside of it, they have a very tough time. I am more or less over it now. It is not like we would go out together anyway, more just fleeting conversations in the corridor.

I have found a reasonably nice Einraumwohnung which I have already visited and like. The only problem being it is apparently in a very dangerous area and my friends have already warned me not to go out too late should I be successful in moving in. I am viewing another place on Friday which is superior in my opinion, by quite a long stretch, actually, but I am fine with either. I just want a place of my own at this point so that I can invite friends over and actually eat well again. I dare not think about how much weight I have currently lost.

I also had a dental emergency. I will point out that I have a phobia of all things dentist related. I had to seek out an incredibly patient dentist in England to make it that little bit more bearable. Needless to say, having a dental emergency here is not what I would have wanted. Fortunately, I managed to find a very nice dentist here. We understand one another just fine, of course there are specialist words here and there that I am not 100% sure of, but we get there with the use of some synonyms. I should also mention that as long as you have a European health card (ETHIC) it is incredibly easy to register and you only have to pay for certain specific treatments. It only took about 45 minutes to register as an emergency, from just walking in and explaining my problem, showing my card, filling out a form or two and showing some identification.

I managed to make a friend after my billionth attempt via FB groups. Absagen is a word that is slowly driving me insane here so it is nice to have had at least a few meetings come to fruition. I spent the day with my new friend on our first meeting mostly walking around the city, grabbed something to eat at a German restaurant (There are surprisingly few) and then we watched "Es" at the cinema. Our second meeting was interesting to say the least. She invited me to a karaoke night. I shall not go into detail here There was, however, Disney among the mix.

All in all, things are currently pretty miserable at the moment. I have a lot of fun when I am able to meet up with a friend but it happens so few and far between everything else, that I am soon brought back down to the rest of my current troubles. The apartment will definitely help, then it is just one step at a time until I have everything sorted and will be back on top of everything.

Random observation: There seems to be some incredibly bizarre paradox here concerning walking. For some reason the walking speed here is, I honestly have no words to accurately get across how slow it really is, but it is slow. I am a fast walker by anyone's standards but it is one of the first things that come up in conversation with any international student. It is definitely one of the weirder things one has to get used to. The reason I mentioned the paradox is that although the above is very much true, should someone be 200 meters away from the tram stop and see their tram coming, it will 80% of time result in that person sprinting to get to it, despite the fact that the trams are so regular they would have only had to wait 3-4 minutes for the next one anyway.

I do love the ice cream culture here. I definitely got used to that one quickly. There are ice cream cafes here that are still open at 1 in the morning. Instead of a kebab, people will be existing pubs and clubs and heading straight to the nearest ice cream cafe. I was out with a couple of a friends last week, and although it was about 6 degrees outside with a steady cold breeze, a friend of mine insisted on ice cream before going into the pub. I honestly thought she was joking, I was there in just a t-shirt trying my best to refrain from shivering, and despite my friends having just moaned about how cold it is, ice cream was a viable option still somehow. Great selection of ice cream here for any fellow ice cream lovers that may well be reading my summary of recent happenings.

[DaveBee]

I do love the ice cream culture here. I definitely got used to that one quickly. There are ice cream cafes here that are still open at 1 in the morning. Instead of a kebab, people will be existing pubs and clubs and heading straight to the nearest ice cream cafe. I was out with a couple of a friends last week, and although it was about 6 degrees outside with a steady cold breeze, a friend of mine insisted on ice cream before going into the pub. I honestly thought she was joking, I was there in just a t-shirt trying my best to refrain from shivering, and despite my friends having just moaned about how cold it is, ice cream was a viable option still somehow. Great selection of ice cream here for any fellow ice cream lovers that may well be reading my summary of recent happenings.

Replacing kebab vans with ice cream cafes is a cultural exchange I could get behind!

[Elenia]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I'm finding loneliness a real problem too, so I understand entirely. I'm remedying it by volunteering and going to a knitting group. I also hope to start a course in January. I find it very strange that your fellow exchange students are so aggressive/negative about your level - a real shame that you have to deal with their lack of progress in their studies. Hopefully things start looking up with the new place!