German B2 next for s_allard

[s_allard]

...

So do you think it's okay for people to stop learning at a B2 and be fine with it? Or is it just another "waystage" level to break through? Because I've been reading more and more lately that it's acceptable for people to stop at whatever level they feel necessary. I personally would be happy with a B2 in a language I know I'd not get a lot of interaction with.

Actually, I think people should find their own level of satisfaction. I personally find that I have the tendency to want to go "all the way" just because the challenge is there. But this requires a huge investment in time and effort. Here I've made a conscious effort to limit myself to B2 although I feel the constant urge to become really good or even great in German.

[s_allard]

Just a quick update on my experience with the Albert Learning e-learning platform for unlimited one-on-one 30-minute tutoring sessions over Skype for very low monthly prices.

I detailed in my last post how the system is a somewhat devious in that it is very difficult to get more than two sessions a day because you can only book another lesson after having started or finished the previous lesson. This means that it is virtually impossible to have any kind of regular schedule, especially with the same teacher. You have to take your chances.

The solution to this problem is available at a rather steep price from Albert Learning. For 40 euros - the price of a monthly subscription - you can buy something called Fast-Booking that allows you to reserve up to 10 lessons in advance. So, let's say I want to have a German class every day at 7 am for 30 days, the duration of my subscription, and I don't want to take any chances, I must buy three Fast-Booking packages (3 X 10 reservation) for 120 euros!

This is how it was explained to me, and I hope I understood properly. This changes everything. That cheap monthly rate for unlimited courses has now become rather expensive, like around 160 euros a month. Admittedly, not many people would buy three Fast-Booking options in a month but one can see how the system limits access to strongly encourage people to spend more money.

Having said all this, as in my previous post, I believe that for language learning, this platform is still is a good deal. My experience with the tutors for German has been very good. If you are aware of the limitations, you won't be fooled by the marketing. And you have to admit that one or two lessons a day for 40 euros a month is still a very good deal.

[smallwhite]

... you can only book another one after having started the previously booked session...

... Fast-Booking that allows you to reserve up to 10 lessons in advance. ... I must buy three Fast-Booking packages (3 X 10 reservation)...

Seems you can early-book 20 lessons by purchasing only 10 Fast-Booking lessons?

1. Book 10 consecutive daily lessons via Fast-Booking
2. After lesson 1, book lesson 11.
3. After lesson 2, book lesson 12.
4. etc

Or even further lessons:
5. After lesson 11, book lesson 21.
6. After lesson 12, book lesson 22.
7. etc

?

[s_allard]

... you can only book another one after having started the previously booked session...

... Fast-Booking that allows you to reserve up to 10 lessons in advance. ... I must buy three Fast-Booking packages (3 X 10 reservation)...

Seems you can early-book 20 lessons by purchasing only 10 Fast-Booking lessons?

1. Book 10 consecutive daily lessons via Fast-Booking
2. After lesson 1, book lesson 11.
3. After lesson 2, book lesson 12.
4. etc

Or even further lessons:
5. After lesson 11, book lesson 21.
6. After lesson 12, book lesson 22.
7. etc

?

It sounds interesting but I'm not sure it would work. In the first sequence, I don't think one could book lesson 12 without having a started or finished lesson 11. I imagine the system differentiates between the Fast-Booked classes and the regular classes. In any case, one would have to try.

[s_allard]

Woche 11 - Ein Fortschrittsbericht

1. As mentioned in the last post, I've been very busy because of a death in the family. I haven't touched my German for four days. Looking at the web site of the Goethe Institut here it seems that the B2 exam is offered only on demand Auf Anfrage. I'll drop by later today to find out what that means. What I would like to do is put the exam off for about a week or two in order to make up all the lost time.

2. The little I've done since the last post has been very encouraging. What I find very useful is reading or listening to a very wide variety of materials. This allows me to see the same words or structures in many different situations. I always think of Paul Nation's statement that you have to see a word 12 times in order to memorize it.

This is important for two reasons. First, you to keep seeing or hearing the same words. This is why I've put up flashcards and posters around the house.

The other reason is that one progresses in a language one realizes that many words, especially the most common one, have different meanings and uses that depend totally on the surrounding words. I thinking of words like: doch, erst, jetzt, dann, denn and gerade.

In my opinion, this is also the key to sounding idiomatic, i.e. like how a native speaker would sound.

3. The grammatical case system is definitely the hard nut to crack. If you attempt to analyze too much, it becomes totally discouraging. What I've been doing is kind of ignoring it in the sense that I always attempt to learn nouns in the context of the dative or accusative case construction. For example, just today I learned An deiner Stelle wäre ich, If I were in your place. I learned that as a chunk without worrying about the case agreement here.

4. I found some interesting recorded dialogues with transcripts on Youtube. It's interesting how this material is showing its age. Prices in Marks are of course a dead giveaway, but there are also things like no mention of the internet or smartphones. But these dialogues are still quite useful.

[s_allard]

Update for the exam

I dropped by the local Goethe Institut today and set the B2 exam for Friday April 13th, 9 am - 1pm. I'm not suspertitious. Now the final sprint is on. When i went to the Institut, I didn't have the guts to speak all in German but I heard the receptionist speak to the person responsible for the exams, who came out to meet me. I probably should have conducted everything in German but I didn't have the nerve. Next time.

[renaissancemedici]

Good luck with your exam. As for speaking German, definitely do it next time.

As for learning things as a chunk, I also do it sometimes, particularly in common phrases I know I'll probably be using. German grammar and syntax are labyrinths, discouraging is an understatement.

You seem to have things under control! Your comments are very helpful.

[smallwhite]

I know you like an intellectual challenge, and you have presented this B2 in 3m as a challenge, but I'm afraid I'm not quite getting - what exactly is the challenge?

At first I thought it was the B2 in 90 hours bit, low study hours, but you said you would study outside of that. I thought maybe it was the March 29 and paid upfront bit, to make enough time by then and to learn enough by then with no turning back, but this actually gets postponed as well, and you mentioned the possibility of cancelling. So it seems you're just going to take the exam when you feel ready, like everyone else?

B2 is great, it's my default goal for a language, and I love your progress reports, too, but I'm wondering what it is exactly the challenge aspect you have in mind for this undertaking?

[s_allard]

Woche 12 - Ein Fortschrittsbericht
1. Things are back on track after all that funeral business. As for smallwhite's question, I had paid for the exam thinking that it was set for March 29 because that was the date I read on the website. I since then found out that at the B2 level and above, the test can be taken at any time. So I've postponed it to April 13. My original idea was to do it in about 90 hours or average an hour a day over three months. So far I've been averaging about 44 minutes a day for a total of about 62 hours so far.

Despite the recent setback, I'm extremely pleased with the results so far. I don't think I'll reach 90 hours by exam time. And who knows if I'll pass the exam.

2. The big challenge in this final push is the writing test. This is by far my weakest skill. I have been doing things at the sentence level but I haven't really been practicing writing entire paragraphs. The plan here is to write something like a short text every day for the tutor.

3. The big temptation I've found so far is to spend too much time on listening because it is so much fun. I've found that the auto-generated subtitles in German are surprisingly accurate. This makes transcribing quite easy.

4. For exam purposes, I'm choosing vocabulary items that I think correspond to the typical topics that typically come up on the sample tests I have seen so far. I've been looking at things about health, social change, consumer behaviour, social media, etc.

This has meant discarding lots of interesting things that are too specialized. Just yesterday I saw a great video on choosing a mattress. The language was crystal clear and I happened to be interested in the topic but decided it was not really worth the effort learning about the various kinds of springs and foam used in mattresses today.

5. I've been using Google Translate and DeepL a lot for understanding written material. One has to be careful with these automatic translations but I have found them accurate enough for my purposes.

[s_allard]

Woche 13 - Ein Fortschrittsbericht
1. This is the final stretch for the exam at the end of next week. I can't say I'm more than cautiously optimistic. The big challenge is going to be written production.

2. As I've said in nearly every progress report, the learning process is becoming more enjoyable than ever. I guess that's only natural. That's what learning a language is all about. What was just a stream of incomprehensible sounds a few months ago now makes sense.

3. What is really even more exciting is to speak and make sense in a way that is somewhat natural. My fundamental goal is to a) sound fluent, i.e. least disfluencies and hesitations in connected speech b) speak grammatically correctly as much as possible and c) talk about simple topics in a natural way.

My approach to this is my core language strategy that I've discussed ad nauseam at the old HTLAL site and a bit on this site before I usually get shouted down by various naysayers. In a nutshell, the idea is to learn to use very well the high-frequency and the high-value grammatical constructions and content words rather than trying to master vast numbers of words. It goes without saying that I think this whole business of having to learn thousands of words to speak a language well is waste of time.

To be more specific, my Excel spreadsheet of German language items that one could probably call word families now contains around 700 items and is growing slowly every day. Right now I'm concentrating on content words, nouns and verbs. The other categories are growing very slowly because the key high-frequency elements have been identified.

A very important category of forms is something I call connectors. These are the words or expression that bind the other words into phrases or sentences. It's a mixed bag of things like als, auch, auf jeden Fall, da, dort, davon, dabei, davon, dass, mal, na ja, noch, oder, sondern, wenn, sobald, obwohl, je nachdem ob, soforn, vor, etc.

At this point I have 50 of these in my spreadsheet. The neat thing is that these forms appear all the time in all forms of speech and writing. They are key to articulating connected speech. But rather than try to learn all of these forms to perfection, I'm concentrating on those that are really very common.

The same strategy applies to all the other categories. Right now I have 200 verbs in my spreadsheet. That's not a lot when one considers that German must have thousands of verbs. But that's enough for my purposes, and in fact I'm working on really mastering a smaller number - 50 to 100 - of the really high-frequency verbs.

4. Something that I've noticed recently how I'm much more attuned to idioms or more complex multi-word units of speech. Just the other day I heard the rather vulgar form Das geht mir an Arsch vorbei meaning I don't give a shit. Not something I intend to use in the exam but nevertheless interesting. One thing I do intend to place in the exam is Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof "I don't understand a thing".

5. Now that this experiment is coming to an end, I starting to think of what next. I'm giving some thought to continuing German to an even higher level because it is so enjoyable. The problem is that I have no need and no use for it. It is really an intellectual pursuit. Russian and Chinese would be far more useful in the sense that I would have opportunities to use them regularly. I'll think about all that later.