Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

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Sarafina
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Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby Sarafina » Mon May 29, 2023 8:13 am

I am going to moving to Zurich in 60 something days. I only found out last minute as I thought that I would be assigned to one of French speaking cantons of Switzerland. Normally, I should be A2 in German but they waived the requirements in my case. I'm planning on learning German and potentially even enrolling in a German language school if needed. I am not trying to pass an official A2 exam. I just want to be able to communicate in common everyday situations. I have a long commute so I'm heavily favouring resources that are audio based and I can access on my phone. I am hoping to devote 150-200 hours from now to 1st August which I hope will be enough to be at roughly A2 level.

My Study Plan:
To either finish/get through as many lessons in these resources before 1st August:
Pimsleur German 1-5. My aim is to go through two lessons a day (one during my morning commute and another after work)
Memrise Common 1000 words (I can do during my lunch break for fun)

Active/Passive Listening
Heildi (This is just to get familiar with the sound of German and it is always encouraging hearing words that you have studied being spoken out loud in a different context)
Learn German Shorts with Subtitles by Useful German with Chris (it is a playlist of basically 30 secs of dialogue and I plan on using this for intensive listening and practising my pronunciation.

Anki (I actually enjoy using Anki. I have it installed on both my laptop and phone. I am planning on using it for at least 20-30 minutes a day in the evening).

I'm debating buying Assimil German. I have an app which is just a digital version of all 149 lessons but I haven't paid for the full version yet so I only have access to the first 5 lessons. I feel like £45 is a bit steep for a single resource. I am struggling to find a good audiovisual online resource that is ideally available on app that gets beginners from 0 to at least a strong A2. I

I'm trying to find German pronunciation course. I don't want my German to be like my French where I am now spending tons of efforts trying to undone my fossilised French pronunciation mistakes.

I know that I'm missing official CEFR guided textbooks and books devoted to grammar. I am not ignoring it- it is just not my focus for this summer. I plan on doing formal study using official textbooks. I just want to focus on online resources that I can use during my really long commute and lunch break at work during this summer before I go once to Zurich.

I welcome all/any feedback. Please let me know if there is something I'm missing.
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 29, 2023 8:59 am

Well, 60 days is ok for A2ish German with normal communication. 200 hours are definitely enough.

Pimsleur: I personnally don't really like it, but it is overall not bad. Why not, but just don't be too slow about it.
1000 words on memrise, ok.

Not sure about the listening, as you describe it. The "get familiar with the sound" thing never really made that much sense to me, you can do it while also learning more. For listening during commutes, it is very good to relisten to stuff that came with your coursebook, for example the Assimil audio is really good. Sure, why not add something else. But I'd recommend not wasting time on something far too advanced just "to get used to the sound".

Assimil is a good option.

The German pronunciation course: I recommend paying for Speechling. It's the best thing on the market, the only way to get tutors that really are strict about pronunciation and just correct your tiny bits of speaking, the attention is not spread into anything else.

The CEFR coursebooks: well, the A1 and A2 ones are actually teaching exactly what you mention: the normal situations. They are not something totally else, good only for exams. And some have digital versions, some don't. Themen Aktuell is excellent, even though older, and has bilingual workbooks. Or DaF kompakt is good and extremely practically oriented. An I think it has a digital version, but haven't tried that.

But given your goals, Assimil should do, perhaps with a grammar workbook on top of that. Not skipping grammar at first could actually save you a lot of time and suffering and make your goals (communication in basic situations) much easier to achieve.

In any case, I am looking forward to reading of your progress!
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby fromaalborg1 » Mon May 29, 2023 9:12 am

- I don't think you need a dedicated pronunciation course when you use Pimsleur.
- I would wait before buying more material until you have your initial routine down.
- I would add "easy, enjoyable content". Like watching German tv/films with English subtitles and listening to German music.

(I don't know what Heildi is)

Best of luck :)
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby gsbod » Mon May 29, 2023 10:23 am

I didn't get on with Assimil German. I don't get on with the method anyway, I need my grammar instruction up front. If you're the kind of learner who likes figuring things out for yourself, Assimil could be good. If not, I'd go for one of the many CEFR based textbooks. I liked Begegnungen, because of the grammar focus, but that's me!

Also make sure you check out all the free resources on dw.de for German learners, there's lots of good material you can supplement your main study with.

Also, the kind of German you will hear when you arrive in Zürich will sound nothing like the German in your courses. Don't let this put you off!
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby gsbod » Mon May 29, 2023 11:34 am

Regarding pronunciation, there aren't many specific courses out there, but it's covered well enough by the CEFR textbooks.

I did get something published by Schubert Verlag, after having similar concerns to you, but ended up not needing to use it.

German pronunciation is not as troublesome as French, and is mostly very easy to predict from the spelling. The hardest distinction for English speakers is the difference between u and ü, but you've already met this in French (u is like vous, ü is like tu).

Make sure you know the difference between ei and ie as I've seen a lot of learners mix these up and it can confuse people if you do.

Also look up the difference between the -ch sound in Bach and in ich. You'll be understood if you get it wrong, but it's easier to pronounce if you get it right!

Also stress patterns are quite similar to English and much easier to master than French.

Have fun!
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby Deinonysus » Mon May 29, 2023 6:58 pm

I think that's a pretty good plan. I would recommend that for your morning Pimsleur lesson, you review the previous evening's new lesson. I think it's better to cement your mastery of the basics than to get to the advanced stuff quicker.

Assimil is great for listening and reading comprehension. I would strongly recommend it. Listening comprehension is more important than speaking. If you can't think of how to say something in a conversation, you can still figure it out, but if you don't know what anyone is saying, you're lost.

For pronunciation, check out Fluent Forever's video series on German phonology. In particular, listen out for the long vs short vowels while you're doing your Pimsleur and other lessons. German and French phonology have a lot of overlap so it's easy to get stuck on one accent for both languages. That happened to me with Hebrew. Just pay attention to the intonation and you should be fine. Also, note that French is a syllable timed language and German is a stress timed language. As gsbod said, German prosody is very similar to English.
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby Kraut » Tue May 30, 2023 11:53 pm

Nicos Weg (DW) seems to be a very popular and modern language course for learners of German.
https://learngerman.dw.com/de/nicos-weg/a-61693467
They have made the video clips into two films.

Deutsch lernen (A1): Ganzer Film auf Deutsch - "Nicos Weg"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eDoThe6qo
-------------------
Deutsch lernen (A2): Ganzer Film auf Deutsch - "Nicos Weg"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg5P2w_Ro1c

------------------------
Swiss people speak dialect/accent. You will find this out and not like it.
To get the taste: EDGE Browser offers the female voice "LENI" who reads regular German texts with a Swiss-German accent.
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby leosmith » Wed May 31, 2023 4:38 am

Sarafina wrote:I am going to moving to Zurich in 60 something days.

(Critique of your plan: Is your main goal to read? If so, why start with Pimsleur? If not, where is the conversation component of your plan?)

What a coincidence – I will start German in a few days. Let me share. It will be more or less in this order:

1. Regarding pronunciation, I just finished my German pronunciation tool, which is here. You should still watch some YouTube videos and read some more thorough explanations for background, like these:
https://youtu.be/nI77g2VWysE
https://youtu.be/BoFEG5h7d-o
https://youtu.be/oMShkWpe9jM
https://mydailygerman.com/german-pronunciation/
https://www.rocketlanguages.com/german/pronunciation
But after that, you can just use the tool for a few minutes per day, following the instructions, and it should be a really clean way to map the sounds to the alphabet in your brain.

2. Then I’m going to do Pimsleur ($20/month subscription), but only one lesson per day, and only for a month. I got my hands on a transcript, so after the day’s lesson I’ll memorize the new items, stick them in anki, then start reviewing them the next day. I’ll review both directions, so it’s a reading primer too. I’ll write out 5-10 lines of L2 answers by hand in a notebook, so it’s a writing primer. Of course, I’ll read the answers out loud, so it a speaking primer. Pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar...the only thing that’s missing at this point is conversation.

3. I’ll do Language Transfer then Michel Thomas, which are compared here. Also, from this point on I'll start reading and listening to German Conversations. (I'll probably go through a more thorough grammar book some time after LT and MT, maybe Teach Yourself...haven't decided yet.)

4. I’ll do daily 60 min 100% German conversations with italki tutors. My method is to write down everything I want to say but can’t, and things the teacher says but I don’t understand, memorize them after class, put them in anki, then start reviewing them the next day. Based on experience, it takes 1-2 months of daily conversation to reach A2, but I’ll keep going until I feel B2ish.
Last edited by leosmith on Sat Aug 05, 2023 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby Slowpoke » Mon Jun 12, 2023 5:58 pm

Have you looked at Nico's Weg? It's a great resource for beginners!
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Re: Please review my German A2 in 60 days study plan

Postby Axon » Tue Jun 13, 2023 5:35 am

Here's a pretty detailed 90-day plan for ~B1-B2: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7475

Over a decade ago when I began German ( :shock: ) I absolutely loved this extremely cheesy series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... JEeXfWa3wC I watched the whole thing with German subtitles only at the same time as doing Duolingo. I did *not* reach A2 in 60 days, but I sure did learn a lot of German and I was genuinely invested in the story. It was already noticeably aged in 2012, so no pressure if you're not into it. Best of luck!
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