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Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:34 am
by diplomaticus
Hello everyone! I was glad to find the link to this site when clicking around HTLAL. I for one would love to see the site archived just for search purposes since there is truly a wealth of information there. But using it is such a pain!

Anyway, a quick rundown. Today was day 15 of me studying German. In the past I did rather poorly with "learning" some Romance languages that I'd rather not discuss right now :?

Today I finished the Paul Noble German course.

The pros:
Easy gradation
Clear German pronunciation
Lots of revision built in
It had me making many complex sentences

Cons:
I found the end a tad rushed. All that slow build-up and then it was "here is past and
future tense and goodbye!" it felt like. Also, the track of counting was very much
tacked on.

I also disliked how he seemed to fear to use real grammar terms. I take it this
"victim of the verb" thing has something to do with cases? I honestly have no idea
what it means grammatically, and wish he had just said what it was. Does the victim
of the verb thing equate to being the direct object of the sentence?

All in all, a worthwhile course I think. I will report back in a week or so after I read the pamphlet and review with the review cd to see if I feel any better or worse. For anyone wanting to check out what it teaches, here is the link to the pdf from the publisher's site:
http://resources.collins.co.uk/free/PaulNoble/PNGerman_bklet_download.pdf

Outside of this, I have been working with the newest Assimil German course daily. I start each day by listening and repeating going back 6 lessons as a warm-up, and then do the day's lesson.

Sometime this week I hope to complete a short German pronunciation course.

My goals are:
1. To be able to read a German newspaper and books. I have already purchased
Schachnovelle by Stefan Zweig
Transit by Anna Seghers
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

The first two in a German edition and Siddhartha in a Dover Dual Language version with German on the left page and English on the right.

2. To be able to have free-flowing conversation.

3. To be able to watch German TV shows or movies. I know this one is likely the longest-term goal.

I am happy to be part of this community and look forward to being involved in this more user-friendly location :)

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2015 7:12 am
by zenmonkey
Good luck!
We have similar goals with this language. I look forward to reading about your experience!

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:43 am
by diplomaticus
I completed half of How to Pronounce German Correctly this evening. The first half was all the easy stuff that is more or less the same in German and English. Tomorrow I will start off with "r." Hopefully it makes some of the trickier sounds a bit easier.

Today's Assimil lesson (#16) was about catching a train and the time, while yesterday's involved getting/receiving directions. It is sort of interesting as those were some of the final things covered by the Paul Noble course. It is almost as if the language gods laid out what has to be covered in beginner things and they all work their way to it sooner or later!

One thing German has showed me so far is that my English grammar could use some work! For example, I know what an indirect object is, and can suss one out in a given sentence, but it isn't automatic. I may try to work on my English grammar a bit more directly to help resolve this little issue so it doesn't turn into a bigger one.

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:48 am
by arthaey
diplomaticus wrote:I completed half of How to Pronounce German Correctly this evening.

Is this what you're using? Would you recommend it?

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:59 am
by diplomaticus
arthaey wrote:
diplomaticus wrote:I completed half of How to Pronounce German Correctly this evening.

Is this what you're using? Would you recommend it?

Yes, that is it. I will have to wait to tell you how I feel about it after I finish it. The first half was rather pointless. Nothing I hadn't already realized from just using Assimil for the past two weeks.

What are you studying with? That might be a better way to say if it is useful. But, we shall see how helpful/useful it seems on the trickier sounds.

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 3:01 am
by arthaey
My German is currently on hiatus (probably until at least 2017); I was asking for whether it was worth it to add to my "todo list" of resources when I start back up with it.

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:17 am
by diplomaticus
I have a question for those who have finished an Assimil course. Or at least gotten to the active wave. What did you do, exactly? I am unsure how hard it is supposed to be made. Do we:

Just read the English and try to speak and/or write out the German just from that?

or

Play the audio and then read the English and try to speak and/or write out the German?

Something else entirely?

For what it is worth, here is how I've done the passive wave:

First, I review the prior 6 lessons to today's. I flip back to it and read the lesson aloud along with the audio for each one. Takes just a few minutes, but sort of gets my mind in "German" mode.

For the new lesson-
1. Listen with the book closed.
2. Listen and read silently along with the German, and then do the same with the English.
3. Compare the translations sentence by sentence, reading the German out loud.
4. Listen and read silently along with the English, and then do the same with the German.
5. Listen and read aloud along with the German.
6. Listen with the book closed.
7. Read the pronunciation and then grammar notes.
8. Listen to the exercises and repeat aloud after each sentence. Try to guess the meaning, and check against the answers. Then look at the 2nd set of exercises.

Sometimes, if a lesson seems tricky, I insert a step after #4 above whereby I listen, pause after each line, and repeat aloud. But I rarely do that.

Thanks for any input!

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:01 am
by diplomaticus
arthaey wrote:
diplomaticus wrote:I completed half of How to Pronounce German Correctly this evening.

Is this what you're using? Would you recommend it?

Just finished it. It was sort of nice to see rules laid out clearly, but I really don't think German is the kind of language a course like this is necessary for. I've only been studying it a few weeks, and most the tricky sounds just seem like things that will get easier with practice. If this were French or something, maybe I'd feel different.

I did like exposure to some new vocab and hearing them all spoken by, presumably, a native. Though they pronounced ich like "ish," which is not how it has been in Assimil. The narrator speaking English also pronounced "loanwards" in a goofy way. It made me suspicious!

One nice aspect is a few page cheat sheet at the back of sounds of all the German letter.

Really, though, I'd only recommend this if someone had no exposure to German audio and really needed help while using a course by themselves. If only to ensure they weren't pronouncing everything in an "English" way.

I hope this helps!

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:40 pm
by diplomaticus
Two questions today for the crowd:

First, if one wants to say "You cannot come today," is it equally correct to say either of the following?

"Du kannst nicht heute kommen."

or

"Du kannst heute nicht kommen."

Second, does Assimil continue teaching new aspects the entire way through the course? Or at a certain point, have you covered all the grammar and things they want you to see and it is just about reusing vocab/grammar in different patterns? Today I finished Lesson 20 of the passive wave. It is kind of crazy how much German I have been exposed to the last ~3 weeks! Though, I worry it will eventually get overwhelming. The grammar explanations for each lesson are many times as long as the lessons themselves, haha. For now I am just going with the idea of continuing to move forward and hoping it comes together later. I suppose one might never finish the course if they waited until they had each lesson and its rules 100% memorized. This is just a departure from how I traditionally learn things (mastery and move on). Anyone else experience similar feelings? If so, how did it turn out?

Re: Mein Deutsch Logbuch

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2015 9:49 pm
by diplomaticus
Just found out German for Reading, a well-regarded old book for learning to read German is getting re-released next month!
http://www.amazon.com/German-Reading-Jo ... 0745X/ref=

More poking around to try to learn more about the new edition led me to this gem:
http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rfburger/la ... 20Reading/

It is the original version of the course, available in PDF by chapter!