Soclydeza's German and French

[jennybenny25]

I'm glad French is going well and well done with the studying!

I'm only using duolingo and first French reader but will look into a textbook cd type resource -also listening to artist called zaz and that's helping with pronouncing words

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[jennybenny25]

Oh and using lingvist too forgot to add that :s

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[Soclydeza]

Oh and using lingvist too forgot to add that :s

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Very good! I really like Linqvist and currently use it from time to time. I used Duolingo for a while and really liked it but decided to switch up my routine since it was becoming stale. How do you like First French Reader? I just looked it up and it looks good, I might add it to my routine eventually.

[Soclydeza]

My language learning has been going really well lately; unfortunately, classes start again in a few days and my routine for both languages will have to be stripped down.

DEUTSCH
Marktplatz - I've been doing Marktplatz (from DW) for the past couple of days and I really like it so far. I'm learning a lot of words regarding economics/business, plus a bit about the German economy (at least what it was like whenever this was written, which seems like the 90's).

FSI - I finished Unit 8 (I may have one more section left, I don't remember) and have decided to put this down for the time being. The reason is that I won't have too much time and FSI is a very involved course. The great thing about FSI is that I can go back to it anytime for grammar drills, so I think I will treat it as something that I will pick at over time.

Semester Routine
A new semester is starting, which means that my language learning will be minimal, but I believe I've devised a routine that's both goal oriented and simple enough that I should be able to stay constant with it.

Markplatz, Native Materials

Marktplatz - There are a total of 26 lessons. My goal is to complete all of them by the end of the semester (May), which would mean doing about 2 lessons a week (this is accounting for a couple of weeks where I get busy and won't have time). I thought this would be a breeze, but the lessons can be kind of long (at least with the way that I go through them) so it might be a bit of a challenge. However, I do think that this will bring me to the next level. It contains both a reading section and listening sections, as well as interactive exercises, so this will be the staple of my routine.

Native Materials - My goal is 20hrs or watching native materials by May. These will probably be primarily shows off of ZDF, but may be movies as well. I've been watching Küstenwache lately again, which I'm starting to understand a lot better.

I have some other resources, like Readlang, Deutsch Aktuell, Perfekt Deutsch, FSI, usw., which I will sprinkle in, but Marktplatz and my movies/shows goal will be the main elements so I can make sure I remain consistent.

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FRANÇAIS
French has been going very well. I've probably been studying more French than German lately, but that's probably because I have a lot more formal study materials for French at this point.

Assimil - I finished lessons 27 and 28 earlier today. I hope to finish 29 and 30 tomorrow. After tomorrow, I will bring it back down to one lesson per day. I'm loving Assimil at the moment; I'm really learning a lot with it and am enjoying it.

FSI - I have one more section of Unit 3, which I will finish tomorrow. Like with German, I will be putting FSI down for a little while and maybe sprinkling it in here and there.

Semester Routine
My routine will be pretty basic, but it should be good enough to put in a good position in a few months.

Assimil NFWE, Babbel, grammar

Assimil NFWE - Nothing new here; my goal is to finish the whole thing (the passive phase) by May. From there, I will go on to Using French (unless my French is still atrocious, in which case I will think about doing another version of the regular Assimil).

Babbel - This should be simple enough for me to complete a lesson or so per day, which I can do anywhere on my phone/tablet

Grammar - I have the Schaum's and Practice Make Perfect grammar books; I will go through these as needed but not regularly.

Native Materials - I am in no way ready for native materials yet, but once I get to the latter half of Assimil I will start watching some shows/movies to start exposing myself to it.

I also have some other resources (Lingvist, Pimsleur, podcasts), but I'll worry about these later.

[Soclydeza]

It's been a while since I've updated, but I've been keeping things going.

DEUTSCH
My German routine has been a bit erratic lately. I've been working on media consumption and have also been reading a bit more, as well as familiarizing myself with unfamiliar grammar structures; but I feel like this might not be getting me anywhere (though I'm sure it must be slowly but surely.

However, I did finally schedule an Italki lesson for this week. I was able to find a tutor to fit my schedule that will help me with a mix of conversation + grammar. This should really get me moving in the right direction.

My media (video) consumption has consisted of watching Küstenwache, movies from Netlix and sometimes other shows. For reading, I've been reading der Zaubercode. I already listened to the audiobook; my plan is to read the whole book, then listen to it again, then read the sequel, then listen to that.

I've also been using Readlang, though not as much as I would like.

Oh, and I've been slowly working with FSI as well.
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FRANÇAIS
My French has been consistent: one Assimil lesson per day + vocab review. This is the only thing I've been doing with French, but it keeps me busy for at least 30 mins a day, so at least I know I'm moving in the right direction. I also think I will start Pimsleur up again soon. I also wanted to start doing French lessons on Italki, but between that and German it will cost too much. German take precedence, since I'm at a point where I need to focus on actually using the language.

[Soclydeza]

I haven't updated in a while, but I've still been working with both languages

DEUTSCH
My German routine has been a little shaky since I'm not really following a routine, but I have some stuff going on. I've been working steadily on Pimsleur V, but I don't consider that a main staple of a routine, more like a review, though I am still learning some stuff with it.

Pimsleur V - I'm currently on Lektion 23, so I've got about a week left with it. I have been learning some new stuff with it, practicing sentence structures and such. It's been a good experience so far.

Italki - I started doing Italki conversational lessons again (just finished my second week) and they've been going well. It's only once a week, due to time and money constrains. We generally talk about anything that comes up and I also bring up questions about material that I've been self studying that I need help with.

Deutsch Aktuell - I just started doing DA again. I'm doing them a bit more slowly now to let myself absorb the material and to not stress myself out. A general method for DA that I've come up with:

Part I
1) Listen only, once or twice
2) Study the highlighted vocab, put into SRS and practice
3) Listen again in full
4) Listen again, stopping and replaying troubling sentences and sentences that contain highlighted phrases
5) Listen again in full

Part II
6) Listen while reading
7) Read, extract extra vocab, put into SRS and practice
8) Read in full out loud

Part III
9) Practice selected words/phrases in context (make my own sentences, look up other example sentences, etc.)
10) Practice listening, reading, SRS, example sentences until I feel fully comfortable

-Note anything that I can ask about during my lessons for further explanation
-Do a quick listening/reading/SRS review before starting next article
-Do a quick listening/reading/SRS review at some later time

The idea being that I split the listening, reading, practicing parts into separate days and allow myself to absorb new material. This may seem like a pretty slow process, but I think I will really get a lot out of it if I continue this for at least a few months.

Native Materials
I've been a bit slow with this lately, but I do watch episodes of Küstenwache periodically, plus I have a movie, Don't Look for Me, that I will be watching right after I'm done writing this.

I also purchased a bunch of German and French books (native) from an old bookshop that I was at today. While I have quite a bit to go before I start using native materials for French, this will give me more incentive to read more German; reading on my tablet is great and it makes things a lot easier, but I find physical books to be much more welcoming when reading.

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FRANÇAIS
My French has been going very well, I've actually been spending more time with it than German, probably because it's easy to keep up with doing an Assimil lesson everyday, whereas I didn't really have any grounded programs that I've been using for German.

Assimil - I finished leçon 67 today. I wrestled with the idea of dropping SRS altogether but I'm changing my general Assimil method so that it will make SRS more worth it. My basic attack approach: I break everything up into sections every 7 lessons (6 lessons + 1 review). I continue studying and adding vocab to my list for each of those sections. When I start a new section after a review, I start a new list

Main Passive Wave
Do the lessons, add to SRS accordingly, practice SRS before and after every lesson

Second Passive Wave
I go back 50 lessons and do a quick review, typically just listen once, then listen and repeat each sentence. If I have trouble, I will review the lesson itself. During this time I will be reviewing the entire respective list for this section before each review

Active Wave
I do the basic active wave for the section that precedes the section I am doing for the second passive wave. No SRS here (for now).

I figure this should help me get the most out of Assimil and really hammer things in without requiring too much extra time.

Italki - Well, I finally started taking actually lessons with a native! So far I have learned that I have a loooooong way to go with spoken French. My accent is good, but I get lost easily when speaking, but that's expected (I think my mind thinks I'm speaking German, where I can somewhat freely express myself and when I realize I can't yet in French is comes as a shock haha). We typically practice basic conversation, do some reading, describing things, etc. I was originally going to do these twice a week to help boost my progress, but, with time and money constraints, I'm dropping down to once a week.

Pimsleur III - I will start this again after I finish German V. I think I left off around lesson 20, but I will probably go back to lesson 10 to give myself a little review. Hopefully this won't be so mentally draining as much as before, not that my vocabulary and spoken-written understanding has drastically improved (I like the see the words in my head when I hear them).

Complete French Grammar - I will be working through this to shore up and strengthen grammar points. I found that they have an online audio component for the exercises, so this should be really helpful. Today I just did some exercises on conjugating -er verbs; I generally know this stuff somewhat intuitively by now, but I like to have a understanding of structure to fall back on if I need it.

Movies/Shows - I think I am at a point that I can start exposing myself to native movies/shows. I have my Netflix delivery setup so that it goes German-French-German, etc. I also have streaming which I will utilize as well.

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Overall, I am very happy that things are moving along the way they have been. I'm also happy that I've been able to keep somewhat consistent during my busy semester.

[Soclydeza]

Things have been very turbulent and I've been going through some tough times lately, but I haven't forgotten about my languages.

In general, I've changed my approach to studying and started using the Pomodoro method. I've started thinking about language studying in blocks of 25mins; this way, even if I don't have much time in the day, I can at least get one block done and still feel like I accomplished something. And if I can get multiple blocks in per language, all the better.

DEUTSCH
I'm still kind of lost as to a general routine and every time I devise one for myself it ends up falling apart, so here's what I've been doing in general:

Slow German, Deutsch Aktuell: I study these like an Assimil lesson; I'll do an SG episode, then a few days later a DA article, usw.

Memrise: I study premade vocab lists (I'm on Intermediate German 2 now) here and there throughout the day.

Reading: I try to read when I can. I'm currently reading Die Reise zum Mittelpunkt der Erde, which I am enjoying. I have another book/reader lined up after I finish this one which has an audio component so I'm excited to finish this current book to start that.

Also, I'm signed up to take an Advanced German course at university this fall, which I'm excited for. All of my German has been learned solo (aside from tutoring and actually talking to people), so this should be interesting and hopefully introduce me to a bunch of other German learners.
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FRANÇAIS
My French routine has been stripped down but it has been consistent and going very well.

Hugo in 3 Months: I just finished Week 6 and am currently taking a few days to review weeks 1-5. I try to do this for at least one block per day (25 mins) and I can usually get through one "week" (chapter) in a few days.

Memrise: I've been doing the official Memrise A1 French course. To be honest, it's been super easy so far and a bit repetitive, but I have been learning new words here and there with it. I might be better off studying a word frequency deck instead, but I've been enjoying this so far so I'll stick with it for now.

My plan is to finish Hugo and then pick back up on Assimil (I left off at lesson 73). If everything goes smoothly, it would be nice to have both finished by the end of the summer, but I have a lot going on in life at the moment so I'm not gonna force it.

[Soclydeza]

I've recently added Lingq (I tried it and decided to get the full membership) to my routines and I am currently using for both German and French.

DEUTSCH
I've pretty much made Lingq the staple of my German routine (in term of studying). I treat is kind of as a looser, yet more in-depth, version of Assimil; I'll go over the script, make note of the words that I don't know and add them to Quizlet. I study some of the words more deeply and look up example sentences and such. Sometimes this process helps to yield other words that are variations of other words, which I study as well (z.B. weichen und ausweichen. I typically only do this with words that are used in an unfamiliar way or that I think are important. So now I have a list of sentences in Quizlet that I can translate. Within these sentences are other unknown words and/or grammar structures that I feel I need practice with.

With this system I have listening, reading, vocab and sentence dissection down. I do plan on continuing with my readers (though I've been kind of slow with the one I'm using lately) and watching native materials.

I also signed up at a new website that allows me to write journal entries and natives will correct me (I haven't used it in a week and I forget the name!), so this will hopefully have me writing more and generating output.

I don't really have anyone to speak with anymore, so I'm lacking in the speaking department, I have to find a solution to that.

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FRANÇAIS
French has been going very well.

Hugo in 3 Months - I finished Week 8 and the review. I've been pretty busy the past few days but I will start on Week nine soon.

Memrise Official Beginner Course - I've been doing this every day and it is good practice in some ways, but I think kind of a ways a waster of time. It has me repeating structures that I know already over and over and over again. The reason I stick with it is because of the occasional unknown word that comes up and also, it's a way of seeing full sentences, even if they are somewhat basic.

Lingq - I started using Lingq for French too and am liking it. I plan on using this as a supplement to Hugo and also to get myself used to hearing spoken French (this isn't a very easy language to aurally understand).

I do plan on finishing Pimsleur eventually, but I use my driving time now to listen to audiobooks/podcasts on other interests that I have so I'm gonna hold off on that for now.

[Soclydeza]

Been a while since I updated, quick overview of the past few months:

I took an Advanced German class at my university, which was easily my favorite class of the semester. It focused mainly on using the language, which the bonus of learning about various topics (psychology, history, politics) in German. I had to write a few essays in German (my first time writing something that long and in that style), which was a good experience. I felt like taking this class was an awesome and very beneficial experience in my learning, but unfortunately I don't have the funds to take the second level in the spring, so I will be back to self studying.

On top of the class, I've also been doing weekly conversational lessons (one hour each) on Skype, which I feel has also accelerated my learning. Between the class and the conversational lessons, this amounted to roughly 4+ hours of speaking/listening a week. I will be continuing the conversational lessons and, if funding permits, maybe up it to 2 hourly lessons per week.

As for French, I continued with Assimil and Pimsleur IV but hadn't done much from maybe mid-Novermber up to recently. I was also listening to L'avis de Marie podcasts just for general listening practice as I was taking the bus from place to place.

The semester has ended and I have gone back to full self-study of both languages.

DEUTSCH
Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten - I've been going through these, picking out new vocab and listening a lot; I treat them almost like Assimil lessons, a little each day (I also found that they do these articles at normal speed, which is helpful since I don't want everything to be slowed down).

FSI - I decided to give FSI a shot again with the goal of developing automaticity. The reason I stopped before is because the audio quality for unit 9 was absolutely horrendous, I couldn't make anything out (the audio for the whole course is bad, but manageable; but unit 9 was REAL bad). I skipped 9 and went straight to unit 10 today and everything went well, so I will continue moving with this course for the time being.

Native - I will be trying to watch shows daily on ZDF (starting after this post), multiple if I have time. I will also be sprinkling in some book reading on my Kindle.

Italki - I've been doing weekly conversational lessons (one hour each) and will continue. If time permits, I will bump it up to two lessons per week.

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FRANÇAIS
Assimil - I previously reached lesson 101 in Assimil but the lessons became so difficult (very colloquial, lots of filler words, weird word orders, etc), which was not compatible with my typical Assimil routine, so I need to develop a new approach to those lessons. I'm currently doing a review up to lesson 100 (I'm up to lesson 70 now, I try to review a few a day) while also doing the active wave (I just finished lesson 33 today). I have to admit that I'm really becoming jaded from Assimil, but I know how beneficial it is so I will continue until I cry mercy.

FSI - This will be the main program of my routine for now. I've been spending at least an hour a day with it and it is going great so far. I just finished 3.4 today, I will do 3.5 tomorrow and review before moving on to 4.1.

Pimsleur IV - This program is a hit or miss with me at this point. Some days I think it's really beneficial, other days I'm just damn tired of doing it. But again, I know that it can be very helpful so I will stick with it.

Native - Though native materials are out of my league for French, I would still like to start exposing myself to them. Unfortunately, there is no ZDF of France (at least that I can find) and movies seem inefficient, since the percentage of actual speaking in movies is pretty low compared to regular shows.

Italki - Once funds permit, I would like to start doing Skype lessons and actually start practicing speaking. I will hopefully be able to start this within a month.

[Soclydeza]

DEUTSCH
DW - I've been working my way through Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten and general Deutsch Aktuell articles. This has been great for jump-starting my vocabulary acquisition and listening, not to mention learning some general news and cultural aspects of Germany. This is probably the staple of my routine at the moment.

ZDF - I've been watching Die Deutschen on ZDF (just finished the 3rd episode today). This is great not only for general native listening material, but also for the content; I've grown an interest in medieval history over the past year and this show is great for combining that interest with listening. Each episode is 43min each.

FSI - After another attempt and finding that I'm having trouble responding in time during the translation parts, I'm wondering if it is worth the effort. I may just drop this altogether.

Italki - I went to schedule a lesson too late and my tutor was already fully booked, so no lessons this week.

Reading - I've been slacking on reading lately

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FRANÇAIS
Assimil - I've grown real jaded of Assimil lately and I think I'm just going to push it aside for now. I will replace it with Lingq.

Lingq - I've had a paid Lingq account since the summer and haven't used it in a few months, so I figured I'll start using it again for French. I found a good podcast site (http://www.podcastfrancaisfacile.com) with short texts and dialogues and audio that I will be using for this. My goal is to go through one podcast a day on here (aside from the occasional day off).

FSI - I'm still enjoying using FSI French so this is still a main part of my French routine. I just finished tape 4.2 today.

Pimsleur IV - My driving will be limited for the next couple of weeks, which means I'll have limited time to do Pimsleur, so I might just hold off on this until I can do it regularly again.

Easy French (youtube) - I've been trying to watch one of these a day. I don't study them rigorously or anything, maybe watch it once or twice. I'm just trying to expose myself to some rapid/colloquial French.

Italki - I plan to start Italki lessons by the end of the month. I still don't have really any live conversational experience, so I feel that this is necessary and will help me improve drastically once I start.

My goal is to just keep working until I can make that leap into native materials.