Approach to learning German

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Andreas-Hinkel
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Approach to learning German

Postby Andreas-Hinkel » Mon Jan 02, 2023 11:15 pm

Hi everyone,

I've been self-teaching German for the past couple of months with a bit of a scattergun approach in terms of the resources I've been using to do so and I'm looking for a bit of advice for what would be useful next steps.

I began with the circa 3 hour Herr Antrim A1 German video, pausing to take notes in each of the lessons. I finished this a few weeks ago and consolidated by going through some Deutsch fur Euch A1 videos, but I felt her style was less suited for me unfortunately.

Since then, I have been mostly focusing on working through the Incomplete Language Transfer German Course - which I have been very much enjoying - and have around 10 videos left which I should finish over the course of the next couple of weeks, as well as the Nicos Weg A1 module.

I'm going to sign up for an in-person German course that begins in the next couple of weeks, more for the social element than anything else, but was looking for advice on which other resources I'd mostly be suited to given the above.

I've been considering Michel Thomas, as I've heard that it has similarities to the Language Transfer course which I find engaging, but not sure if I'd just be going over old ground.

I've dipped my toe in the water with Pimsleur and although it seems a bit bland i'd be willing to persevere with it if it'd be beneficial

One of the other options I'm considering is Assimil, particularly as I've read some people estimate that it can take you to circa B1 level.

I suppose what I'm trying to get to the heart of is if it's a case of choosing one of these options or combining several or all of them? Would you get diminishing returns from the subsequent courses after doing one of them? Would doing a couple of them concurrently be too overwhelming?

Thanks!
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DaveAgain
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Jan 03, 2023 7:19 am

Andreas-Hinkel wrote:I suppose what I'm trying to get to the heart of is if it's a case of choosing one of these options or combining several or all of them? Would you get diminishing returns from the subsequent courses after doing one of them? Would doing a couple of them concurrently be too overwhelming?

Thanks!
Welcome to the forum. :-)

I wouldn't commit yourself to doing lots of courses in parallel now. Perhaps one self-study course, and the the class course? If you're going to be doing a class, then the teacher may suggest additional activities too.
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby jeffers » Tue Jan 03, 2023 11:18 am

Some people like to use lots of resources, some people say to pick one resource and stick to it until you finish. You have to decide for yourself what works. My advice in this regard is that you need resources which keep you learning. No matter how awesome anyone says a particular course is, if it doesn't keep you interested enough to keep at it, then it isn't for you. The only good course is a course which keeps you learning.

I personally like working a few courses in parallel, choosing courses which complement each other because each emphasizes different skills. You mention "going over old ground". This isn't a bad thing, unless you have fully mastered that ground or if you just do nothing but go over old ground and never learn anything new (which is a mistake some eternal beginners make).

I have used Pimsleur for all of my lanugages possible because it emphasizes spoken skills, and also because it's convenient to work on while I'm driving to work. I really like Assimil courses, but I have to say that for German I got stuck around lesson 40 or so, when I was getting hung up on cases. That's probably the most difficult aspect of German for English speakers, so I guess it's no surprise that I got stuck at that point. The great thing about Assimil is that it has a lot of audio for a book + CD style course. It's really useful to review the audio over and over (dog walking task for me), and also to "shadow" the audio. Shadowing is when you try to speak the audio at the same time as it's playing. I found Michel Thomas German quite useful, but it has a lot of issues which frustrated me, issues which basically came down to the students. However, he really did help me to nail down some tricky syntax (the dreaded "weil" situation).
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sirgregory
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby sirgregory » Wed Jan 04, 2023 12:43 am

Andreas-Hinkel wrote:I suppose what I'm trying to get to the heart of is if it's a case of choosing one of these options or combining several or all of them?

Using multiple resources is fine, just be disciplined about it and only add things if they address a specific need. You don't want to be the guy who does the first five lessons in ten different courses. The main reason to combine resources imo is that certain resources have strengths and weakness and it's rare for a single comprehensive resource to be great across the board. Some have better grammar explanations, some better drills, some have better dialogues and audio. I generally think of beginner resources as falling into three main categories: audio/dialogues, grammar, and reading material. I try to stick to one thing per category at a time.

For German, I sampled numerous resources (which, though not efficient, I do not regret since it was useful for getting familiar with what is available). If I were to do it all over again, I probably would have done something like the following:
Audio: Assimil (or Nicos Weg)
Grammar: Teach Yourself, first generation (YT explanations are okay as a supplement)
Reading: Dino lernt deutsch readers (which can be introduced after a couple of months)

Would doing a couple of them concurrently be too overwhelming?

It depends on how much time you have. A good schedule would be 30+ minutes of book study and 30+ minutes of audio per day. If you have less time than that, you'll probably want to keep your resource line-up very lean (and look for ways to squeeze in German throughout the day).

Another option is to work out some method of periodization. For example, if I am using Assimil and Teach Yourself, both will get harder as you go and the lessons might start taking longer. People often stall on their courses and working them concurrently might not be realistic when things ramp up. To deal with this you can instead work one up to a certain point (perhaps whenever you feel like you're stalling) and then switch over to the other for a while. When you go switch back to other one, hopefully you will blow past the stall point. You end up working through both of them but with the benefit of the reinforcement and getting it from two different angles.
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby Kraut » Wed Jan 04, 2023 4:38 pm

Have a look at the bidirectional translation method. Here is part of Nicos Weg adapted to this method. DavidAllenMartinII, who speaks flawless German btw, calls it Translation Cubed. A contrastive approach like this one seems very appropriate for a language with a heavy load of sentence structure, morphology .. like German.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZOq8Qu ... tion%C2%B3
FREE GERMAN COURSE: Day 3 - Tschüss! - Nicos Weg A1 Lesson 3 - (English and Spanish)
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TopDog_IK
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby TopDog_IK » Fri Jan 06, 2023 2:14 am

My first questions would be, what are your goals? How much time do you have? How important is it to you to have a decent-sounding accent?
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Andreas-Hinkel
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby Andreas-Hinkel » Mon Jan 09, 2023 11:19 am

Thanks everyone for your replies,

I feel like the balance I have just now is weighted about right for the amount of time I can manage without becoming overbearing and a bit of a slog, the combination of daily Nicos Weg and Language Transfer comes to around 45 minutes per day.

I'm coming to the end of Language Transfer so will probably swap that out for Pimsleur when the time comes to try something a bit different. I think Assimil is something I may move onto once I have a bit more of a solid base, I'm not in any particular rush and quite enjoying the process so I'm happy to keep that feeling going as long as possible. I had done a bit of reading on the multi-modal approach mentioned and I do like the general principle of it, I think the last thing that I want is for it to become a chore which, 2 months in, it hasn't become so far.

Regarding what my goals are; they're quite open-ended at this point. There is a possibility that German could become useful for my work down the line but at the moment I'm just aiming to be able to travel to German-speaking areas and communicate confidently in German.
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Andreas-Hinkel
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby Andreas-Hinkel » Wed Jan 25, 2023 4:07 pm

Another follow up question. Have done a bit more reading about FSI and put on one of the tapes out of curiosity. I'm a bit confused, am I supposed to be reading something while listening to it? It seems to just say the sentences in German without providing a translation.
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Re: Approach to learning German

Postby tractor » Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:24 pm

You haven’t downloaded the PDF?
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