Year and a Half of German and French !

[naqvisson]

After getting the confidence of learning languages by myself, I, from today, start a year and a half of German and French learning. The strategy this time will be to learn from mistakes that I made in my first L2 Swedish...

The plan:
German:
Duration: (November 18, 2018- January 31, 2019)
-Assimil New German With Ease + (may be Assimil German 2013)
-Assimil German Without Toil
-An app Top Thema

Later on:
Advanced Assimil
More TV/Films/Newspapers/some Novels

I will be traveling to Germany for two weeks in the end of Jan. 2019 to get myself immersed in the language. Therefore, i need to finnish atleast NGWE before that.


Daily Tasks:
-2 lessons each of NGWE & GWT,
-Active phase starts from tomorrow. I am not going to wait 50 lessons to translate it back.

French:
-One lesson of NFWE & French without Toil daily.
- Try to say something to my friends in France after 21 days of French.

Goals:
After 1.5 years, i.e. by March 2020
German B2 or may be low C1 if I could get a month off in Germany in late 2019
French B2

Active phase begins from tomorrow.

Contingencies:
In case of contingencies, I can slow down my french journey but no compromise on German.

Challenges:
1. To stay focused and consistent.
2. To avoid wonderlust. I have already starting loving Russian, Norwegian. I am a false beginner of Finnish but somehow need to avoid learning it in the next 6 months at least.
3. Stop watching polyglot gathering conference previous videos.

Maintenance: Swedish doing something everyday.

Log updates: once a week!

Edit1:
1: I had already studied about 25 lessons of NGWE early this year but then dropped it in favor of Swedish...so I am a false beginner...

2: Plan is ofcourse flexible...number of lessons per day can ofcourse increase....and new courses ie Linguaphone German /French can also become a daily affair...

3: Language Learning becomes addiction when you learn atleast one language by yourself...i am getting a gut feeling that I can learn any language and will get bored with these 2 languages after June 2019....some other languages can creep in...but atleast till June 2019, no new addition!

The journey begins November 18, 2019!

[Skynet]

After getting the confidence of learning languages by myself, I, from today, start a year and a half of German and French learning.

Congratulations Naqvi! After exceeding your Swedish goals (it's high time that you update your Swedish to at least B1 now), you can absolutely get to at least B2 in both languages in 18 months.

You have a rock-solid language regimen and are just a few weeks behind me with the German Assimils. Hindsight being 20/20, the Assimil: German With Ease (2014): 100 lessons by M. Roemer
is quite disappointing. I doubt that you will miss much.

The most impressive thing is that you're starting the active wave immediately, instead of waiting 50 days. My goal has always been to read, write, speak and listen to a language immediately (with the current exception of Persian) because it makes the languages(s) more ingrained in one's mind.

I shall be watching your adventures with great curiosity.

[naqvisson]

@Skynet

After your recommendation, I have already skipped that 2013 Assimil German. Thanks mate for the valueable input.

What mistakes do you make learning Swedish?

I made tons of mistakes since i was so naive. Following is a short description:

1. Book Hoarder:
I became a hoarder of resources. Whenever I would go to Library, I would bring something to read...ie. På Svenska, Vi-Ses, Assimil (2 , Assimil Svenska and Assimil With Ease), Linguaphone, Glossika, FSI Basic Swedish, Mål 1, Varför inte?, Fokus i Svenska and many more....

Now I learned that take just at the max. 2 resources and just finish them. There is no need of collecting tons of books and satisfying your false ego that look, I have all the books, I will be fluent in the language. No, by hoarding only you do not become fluent. You will have to actually learn the books. Don't decorate your side table with plenty of resources which you will never consume.

2. Output:
You should try to use your language in any possible way sooner the better. Do not wait for next 3 months before output as I did. By output, it does not mean that you need to go and chat with people although better if you do so. You can also write your diary daily in the language that you are learning. Writing also counts as output.

3. Don't Just read the books, use the words:
Last time I was feeling so content that I know the substance in the books that I read and I didn't make my own sentences. This time I will try to play with words from day 2. Language is not that how many words you can learn but how many word you can use when required.

4. Watching videos on the language learning process:
I saw so many youtube videos on the language learning process than actually learning the language. May be, I was in search of some perfect, efficient method which never exits. Now I realized what works for you is the best method for you. This time I am not going to waste time on learning the process instead of learning the language.

5. Comprehensible Input:
Last time I watched all football matches in Swedish but then my swedish was not so good and I could not understand much of it. This time I will try to keep my input comprehensible. Top thema Deutsche Lernen is an awesome app in this regard. So avoid watching TV just for the sake of listening. You should ofcourse but after attaining a certain level. Having said so, i again listened to DW for just 5 minutes. :d

and may be many more...

So this time, I am trying to use only a couple of resources in the first phase, after finishing them, I will use advanced assimil books and then move to bilingual books. If you are interested in the billingual books, you can check http://bilinguis.com for this purpose.

So keep the learning plan simple, not many resources early on and don't procrastinate about learning the language, just do it!

[naqvisson]

Progress after 4 days:

New German With Ease: 20
German without Toil: 18
New French with Ease: 4
French without Toil: 2

A cruising start to German so far but i think i should slow down now...I aimed at doing about 2 lessons of each NGEW+Toil but i managed to do 5 a day and now I am wondering, ist it a race? No, certainly not ...need to spend today and tomorrow to review all the lessons amd will try to make some sentences of my own. Not making sentences of my own was missing last time with Swedish...

Active phase : 10 each of NGWE/GWT

Plus from tomorrow, i will pace my studies @ 1 lesson each of the both books.

On French front, one lesson a day strategy follwed...dropped New French without Toil as i couldnt find its audio "normal"...thry are seemingly very excited at speaking french and the tone is somewhat i couldnt withstand...therefore, dropped that resource after doing abt 2 lessons. Anyone tried shadowing with FWT?

Finally after just 4.5 hrs of sun in first 16 days of November, its getting bright and sun makes you a bit more energetic...Ich lieber Sonne

[Skynet]

Progress after 4 days:

New German With Ease: 20
German without Toil: 18
New French with Ease: 4
French without Toil: 2

A cruising start to German so far but i think i should slow down now...I aimed at doing about 2 lessons of each NGEW+Toil but i managed to do 5 a day and now I am wondering, ist it a race? No, certainly not ...need to spend today and tomorrow to review all the lessons amd will try to make some sentences of my own. Not making sentences of my own was missing last time with Swedish...

Active phase : 10 each of NGWE/GWT

Plus from tomorrow, i will pace my studies @ 1 lesson each of the both books.

Great start indeed! I assume that you are writing these lessons out too? Writing things out helped me figure out how I could arrange what I already knew, to express my own thoughts on paper and orally. If you find out that you're still struggling with sentences, you could consider FSI/DLI drills.

dropped French without Toil as i couldnt find its audio "normal"...thry are seemingly very excited at speaking french and the tone is somewhat i couldnt withstand...therefore, dropped that resource after doing abt 2 lessons. Anyone tried shadowing with FWT?

None of the French learning courses that I went through had anything resembling native speech patterns with the notable exception of some tracks from DLI Basic French and Living Language Ultimate Big-Int's first track (which would be succeeded by a very slow second track of the same recording). However, despite my love for FWOT, I will have to agree with you that some of those voice-actors were ill-trained and sounded extremely unnatural... a vice that becomes more apparent the more you delve into FWOT. I only shadowed my courses as I was going through them, and not as intensively as others describe it. That would certainly have strained my attention and caused me to quit.

We have many people who learned French with just NFWE (zjones comes to mind as an outstanding example). We do not have to be course-hoarding Smaugs to master a language. Speaking of NFWE, how are you finding it?

[naqvisson]

@skynet, as i told you, I wrote the reply 3 times, posted and it wasn't there..anyways, yes I am writing also.

Weekly update:
NGWE: 27
GWT: 24

NFWE: 9

Swedish: just some news from svt.se.

German without toil is tougher day by day...although i am also busy with some studies therefore not concentrating so hard...meanwhile French seems to be a neglected one but again, once december is over and i meet my school deadlines, hopefully i will try to be a little more focused...

[naqvisson]

Weekly Update:
German:
NGWE : 32
GWT: 34

French:
NFWE: almost nothing new...with studies and exams looming overhead, I am not getting the motivation to continue French at the moment....thanks to a discussion with a forum friend, halting French for atleast this month as studies are becoming first and foremost commitment.

Almost 50 more days remaining till my Germany visit thus will try to stay more and more focused on German.

Swedish:
Swedish: Revised about 15 Assimil Lessons of 2011 Svenska.

[naqvisson]

Weekly update:

NGWE 40
GWT 42
FSI Unit 2

Toil is becoming my favorite book btw.

NFWE
Although last week i was thinking of dropping /deffering French for a while but somehow i kept revising and re-listening first 10 lessons of NFWE...and got my interest back in French....made first 10 lessons merged into a file and kept listening it daily while cooking my meals..and it worked!

Discovered that I need lots and lots of listening to get my ear used to French..

As they say that self language learning makes you self aware of your learning style, what I observed is that I need intensive learning early on to develop an ear for the language...so I am not dropping/deffering it but will continue it little by little daily.

Previously i had no strict schedule for learning languages but from this week, i will try to have 5 slots of 15 min each for German, French and Swedish...plus the usual 2 hrs of listening while walking/traveling..

I also realized that while doing Assimil, I need some kind of assurance that I am doing it right...and that assurance comes from either doing Linguaphone or by diving into news websites....ie for Swedish, I kept reading svt.se and whenever I would hit familiar words, it would be making me more confident and happy ofcourse. The sense of learning it right matters!

This time I am thinking to start Linguaphone German as a just leisure reading so see if my German learned with Assimil working or not...i will dive into native materials from Jan.10 hopefully...
No output chances/oppurtunities till now

Finally the snow has arrived and its all bright again...hope it stays till March and the winter SAD goes away...and from bright i remember in German bright = hell ...so hope it stays "hell" in helsinki now onwards !!!

[naqvisson]

Its been a while that i posted in this forum...festivities of new year and christmas are over and the life needs to be back to the routine mode.

German progress:
German without Toil: 66
Warum nicht: 15 lessons

I hv already dropped New German with Ease and any other course as I am in love with the German without Toil.

Tried DW Warum Nicht to take the feel but i think it has sooo much english. I dont know why i didnt find it that interesting.

Meanwhile, perhaps I will add Linguaphone German (1950) .

The new year has been awesome till now..i have cleared my Swedish at intermediate language exam and the result was a huge sigh of relief.

This year target is German, French, Persian and may be little bit of Russian. Still in a fix whether should I take my swedish to Advanced level or should I be happy with the Intermediate one. If i have to take it to advance level, it would eat up quite a bit of time.

On Jan 30, i need to fly to Germany for two weeks to practice my german. Therefore, need to speed up my learning.

From today onwards, I will do 2-3 lessons of GWOT daily. 24,25 days remainaing. Hope I can achieve some basic fluency in those 2 weeks immersion.

[naqvisson]

Its been a while that i posted the update....had been dead lazy with wonderful snow all around...kinda burnt out...what I have done in past few days:

GWOT: 90
Glossika German: 5-6 units/files
a few hours of watching German TV and listening to German songs.

90 is kinds a magical figure for me...I got extremely extremely bored when I reached 90th lesson of Linguaphone Swedish and the remaining 6 lessons took me a month to complete ... the same is happening here in GWOT...I hv been stuck at 90 since past couple of days and I feel no interest, no energy to turn pages of GWOT...perhaps I am kinda burnt out...I reached 90th lesson in around 65 days and may be its time to say goodbye to GWOT for a while...I really need to do something else...may be to make an ice igloo and hibernate for a week or so

In this boredom, I even registered for German 2 course at university...attended one class last week but again, my thesis got proven, I cannot learn in the classes...really cannot...perhaps I need some kind of Language cafe...perhaps I need to now be more focused on the "NATIVE" materials...Kinda lost ...and that too when there are only 5 days remaining for my two weeks visit to Germany ...I feel like I stand no where, I know nothing, German is like k-2 mountain and the weather is crazily bad on the summit...I know I am near but still can't see the summit I wonder how senior members/learners counter such situations...

Perhaps change of materials will help...perhaps I should just quit Assimil altogether and do something else. So just to experiment, lets see, if can do 5-10 lessons of linguaphone 1950-60s everyday...finish it in next 5-10 days and meanwhile in Germany, I will try to impose an English ban on me for 2 weeks...lets see how things turn up