German group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
Cavesa
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Thu May 11, 2017 3:55 pm

Prohairesis wrote:
Cavesa wrote:I think there is a major discrepancy between the assignment samples in the preparatory books, and the real ones. Not in terms of content, the same subjects get regurgitated over and over again, at least in the science version. But rather in the form of the assignment.


I completely agree with this. For the compréhension et production orales part of the DALF C2, somehow the audio clip I had to summarize and base my arguments on seemed artificial and policé. The general pace was just a notch slower and my notes were surprisingly very complete !

The production écrite part of my exam was more challenging though. The theme was "Des vertus de la paresse", for which I had to write a piece about how work can be a personally-enriching experience but at the same time prohibitive and that we all need to put our work and professional duties into perspective by committing ourselves to socially-beneficial activities.


Well, I think the main discrepancy, and the only one I am complaining about (it is in general completely ok to have different stuff in the preparatory books, as it keeps the exam more objective in regards to the real level of the candidate), is theallowed amount of creativity. In French writing, it is the alfa and omega. Lycéens get failing grades for striving too far from the topic, for including too much of their own material, when it comes to some genres (of course, it is needed for the others). And when preparing, the assigments are usually quite clear like "Make a synthèse. Mix these documents meaningfully together, lead it to some conclusion, but don't you dare to add anything of your own". Similarily, you know pretty clear that you are supposed to write a compte rendu, or a résumé, and you know that suppressing your creativity and staying mostly away from personal opinions, knowledge, or writing style are crutial parts of writing here.

Then in the exam, I was asked to write a magazine article (not sure about the exact wording) about an issue (internet privacy, or the internet of things or something like that), based on the dossier. An article. My main problem: "Are they just using a nicer word for synthèse, or am I actually supposed to write a full longer magazine article, including some the non-synthèse bits (what we seen in the magazines: an introductory anecdote, adequatly incorporated opinion or opening further questions of the reporter based on his specialty), am I allowed to branch out and include knowledge from the tons of other recent articles on the issue, or add a quote by someone not in the dossier texts?

The problem is not the task being hard, that is correct. The problem is not that there was nothing exactly like that in the books. The problem is being trained for a few very specific genres, and than given a different one requiring sometimes the exact opposite from the practiced one.

This is why I love experience of other people, I am especially interested in the preparatory books and similar resources they had used, and their comparation with the real experience. From what I am reading here, it looks like the German books may be much more faithful to the exam itself.
..................
AlOaf, thanks. This was a great piece of information to draw from. It must have been awesome, to get such a motivating and challenging speaking partner.

If only it was easy to find such more often. I trully think German and English are two major exceptions on the market, due to the sheer amount of learners (German mostly in Europe, ok) and the developped support system for the more advanced learners (compare with French, which got the first officially C level general coursebook just a few years ago, where there are few C2 candidates, and the general idea many courses and teachers further spread is "French is such a hard langauge, you are unlikely to learn it well anyways, at least without moving to the country."). The Germans really take learners seriously.

When I was trying to find a tutor or a speaking partner before my C2 French exam, I had a real problem. Even if I wanted a group class, which I didn't, there was none. Most tutors (both private and in langauge schools) were the "I am very patient and awesome for beginners" kind, sometimes officially saying they prefer lower levels (at least they didn't pretend anything). Many tutors had lower qualification than the C2 exam, only a Master's degree in French. Yeah, it is officially supposed to be C2 (+tons of literature and cultural theory), but the students of the program that I've met trully didn't seem to be that far. Getting an exchange partner is almost impossible for a native Czech. And there were no were obviously no other C2 preparing students around. Even the tutor I got, who was much more competent than the rest (a native, an engineer (therefore confident about my Science version choices, unlike all those tutors with humanities degrees), having prepared people for other exams and inteviews). But still, I was his first DALF C2 student and another guy his first DALF C1 student.

Yes, great quality tutors, study buddies, practice and exchange partners, those are great. But unfortunately, those are pretty rare (there was recently a long thread about it), and the rest is useless.

This is something I love about learning German. All the resources. I am much more likely to find study buddies, to find advanced resources, to find even a capable tutor, should I want one. :-)

schlaraffenland wrote:
Cavesa wrote:I would be curious to know, how many candidates do each of the exams, the levels, and the results. There surely must be some statistics, I just doubt they're publicly available.


Those statistics would be really interesting to me, too. I have absolutely no clue what's typical, except for anecdotal asides from my teachers in Germany here and there, very much based on gut feeling.

Exactly. It is weird as there would be absolutely nothing bad about publishing the data, it could even be a nice marketing touch (Instead of "it is useful, many people take the exams", it would be "12635 learners considered the exam useful last year, 12598 put their success on the CV, join their ranks". And CEFR is a european project, the bureaucracy in general loves tables, doesn't it? And aren't Germans stereotypically supposed to be meticulous about data keeping and organizing? :-D
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gsbod
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Re: German group

Postby gsbod » Thu May 11, 2017 5:26 pm

schlaraffenland wrote:Do you learn your vocab with flash cards? If so, what do your entries for nouns look like? For every single noun card, I always note the singular and plural forms up 'til this day, no matter how obvious they may be after having learned thousands of words ("die Schönheit, die Schönheiten, f."). When I study these cards, I mutter both forms aloud (behind my hand, if I'm on public transport ;) ). If no plural form exists, I make sure to note that as follows: "der Bü­ro­be­darf (m. sg.)", and then I know I shouldn't go trying to pluralize it. In other words, tying the plural form of each word inextricably to the singular, and repeating them in tandem, seems to have ingrained the correct plurals into my mind after some time.


I have used flash cards quite heavily in the past, although not at present. At various times I either included the plurals or didn't. I think to start with, trying to memorise both gender and plural together was just too much information at once. Over time, my hit rate for the genders became pretty good, but the plurals were just a disaster. But now I am at a different stage in my studies, perhaps I should give the flashcard approach another go. I think I need to convince my brain to care about the plural form, much like I have had to do for the genders!
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schlaraffenland
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Fri May 12, 2017 9:03 am

AlOlaf wrote:
schlaraffenland wrote:I think that's a formidable accomplishment, and something to be very proud of. I know for a fact I never could've performed like that, nor improved in such a short time, to the extent that you describe here.

Thank you for the supportive words, but I somehow find that second sentence hard to believe.


Meh... I'm a slow learner. And the classroom setting, with its pressure to produce an instantaneous answer, has been very stressful to me since childhood.

One of my biggest pet peeves in the classroom setting continues to be people who blurt out the answer when the actual person called upon takes just an extra moment or two to think about it. :roll: And I generally need a moment or two to think about it, not because I didn't understand, but because I must digest. The blurters are generally well-intentioned people who just happen to be excited that they know the answer and who are self unaware, I think. But it's a bit irksome.

Aaaanyway :D
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Easily_confused
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Re: German group

Postby Easily_confused » Sun May 14, 2017 11:41 am

Hello everyone!

I'm restarting German having got a ropey A2 with A1 speaking then losing all motivation due to depression for over a year so I've lost pretty much everything. I'm using Assimil and Hugo 3 months as my main texts, my reading consists of Janosch's Baer and Tiger books for my intensive reading/scriptorium, Harry Potter as my extensive as well as Tim und Struppi. I've just started watching my mini DVD collection with what I've gathered. I'm just watching them dubbed/native with subtitles to get the flow. Just did Ghostbusters. Ridiculously fast speech with truncated subtitles but I didn't find it off putting. Something I had/have a big mental block about is speaking. I managed to do a lesson on italki last time but I was so bad it completely put me off the language. This time around, I'm going to try and arrange some exchanges in a few months, once I have more vocabulary and grammar- November is my deadline. My language log is at viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5814 What I'll mainly be using this forum for, hopefully, is correcting my written language. So here goes- please excuse the multitude of problems- my excuse is that I've only been back on it a week.

Gestern, sehe ich, "Die Jägermeister". Ich habe mich diese Film amuesieren. Die drei wichtiges Figur viel spaß machen and ich mag gernewie die is ein Lieblingsbrief zu New York Stadt. Die nur zwei Probleme sind das Peter Venkmann ist schrecklich sexistisch für diester Zeit. Außerdem, armer Numer vier wem Name ich kann nicht erinnern. Er hat keine wirchlich Rolle. Ich empfahlen diese film zu andere. :?:
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Cavesa
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Sun May 14, 2017 4:21 pm

Easily_confused wrote:Hello everyone!

Hi, welcome to the forum and to this group. Glad to have you.

schlaraffenland wrote:Meh... I'm a slow learner. And the classroom setting, with its pressure to produce an instantaneous answer, has been very stressful to me since childhood.

One of my biggest pet peeves in the classroom setting continues to be people who blurt out the answer when the actual person called upon takes just an extra moment or two to think about it. :roll: And I generally need a moment or two to think about it, not because I didn't understand, but because I must digest. The blurters are generally well-intentioned people who just happen to be excited that they know the answer and who are self unaware, I think. But it's a bit irksome.

Aaaanyway :D


Yes, this is very true and much of a problem. And I say it as one of the usual fast thinkers in language classes. However, I learnt quite early to tune down my excitement. This is one of the biggest problems of classes. They need to be a compromise between a setting good for the slower learners, or I would prefer to say "slower answerers" as being able to blurt out the answer doesn't say anything about having or not having learnt something, and for the fast ones.

As a result, both in classes for adults and for the kids, noone is happy. It is frustrating to be a fast answerer, who is constantly pressed to slow down, who is either being held back by the teacher as a kid, or held back by our own self-control as adults. It is not just being self unaware usually, it is also due to the frustration of being forced to underperform all the time, especially when one pays to be pushed forward. Imagine. We, fast answerers, rationally see we need to tune down a bit. We don't want to disrupt the class for others. But it feels like being forced to live without using one hand. And like not getting enough for our money.

It is also frustrating for the slow answerers, as they hate the fast ones, and as they feel much less capable, than they actually are. It is not just the excitement, but just imagine feeling like you're wasting 1/3 of the paid classtime just because others take an eternity to answer basic questions. Of course I can hold myself back and not to annoy people, of course I know the slower answeres are not inherently worse learners than me. But it is actually one of the most important reasons why I am highly unlikely to ever sign up for a langauge class again. And it is as well unpleasant to see some of the slower answeres (adults!) judging me for not settling for less, they basically considered my honest efforts to do my best to be just an attempt to become a teacher's pet and to brag.

It is also a problem for the teachers, who usually fail to see the discrepancy between the real knowledge and the speed of answers. The classes for kids are much more painful to watch. I have observed my sister's classes twice, so that I could advise my monolingual parents what to bring up at the parents meeting, and to stop the non-obligatory paid classes (the teacher was horrible). The fast answering kids were being discouraged all the time, they were basically being punished for trying their best. The kids who were slower and quieter or more shy to answer (my sister was in the second group), those didn't get encouraged enough, because the teacher obviously considered them to be less clever. For example, she didn't encourage them or give them time to put together a sentence anymore, she didn't expect them to do better than just to repeat a word she has just said. And she was busy discouraging the faster kids majority of the time, instead of giving them something to do and give more time to the slower ones. The same happens in the adult classes, but in much less obvious ways, as all the students have had many more years to practice dealing with their natural settings and learning how not to annoy other people. And the teachers don't dare to behave this bad towards them. But it is basically the same problem.

The only way to deal with this that I have found is avoiding group classes. Either learning on my own (which works fine), or 1 on 1 lessons (which come with their own set of troubles). Or perhaps classes that would be put together not only based on the level, but as well based on the desired speed of progress, desired amount of homework, desired level of "patience" for each other, but that is a utopia :-D
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schlaraffenland
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Tue May 16, 2017 1:58 am

Cavesa wrote:Yes, this is very true and much of a problem. And I say it as one of the usual fast thinkers in language classes. However, I learnt quite early to tune down my excitement. This is one of the biggest problems of classes. They need to be a compromise between a setting good for the slower learners, or I would prefer to say "slower answerers" as being able to blurt out the answer doesn't say anything about having or not having learnt something, and for the fast ones.

As a result, both in classes for adults and for the kids, noone is happy. It is frustrating to be a fast answerer, who is constantly pressed to slow down, who is either being held back by the teacher as a kid, or held back by our own self-control as adults. It is not just being self unaware usually, it is also due to the frustration of being forced to underperform all the time, especially when one pays to be pushed forward. Imagine. We, fast answerers, rationally see we need to tune down a bit. We don't want to disrupt the class for others. But it feels like being forced to live without using one hand. And like not getting enough for our money.

It is also frustrating for the slow answerers, as they hate the fast ones, and as they feel much less capable, than they actually are. It is not just the excitement, but just imagine feeling like you're wasting 1/3 of the paid classtime just because others take an eternity to answer basic questions. Of course I can hold myself back and not to annoy people, of course I know the slower answeres are not inherently worse learners than me. But it is actually one of the most important reasons why I am highly unlikely to ever sign up for a langauge class again. And it is as well unpleasant to see some of the slower answeres (adults!) judging me for not settling for less, they basically considered my honest efforts to do my best to be just an attempt to become a teacher's pet and to brag.

It is also a problem for the teachers, who usually fail to see the discrepancy between the real knowledge and the speed of answers. The classes for kids are much more painful to watch. I have observed my sister's classes twice, so that I could advise my monolingual parents what to bring up at the parents meeting, and to stop the non-obligatory paid classes (the teacher was horrible). The fast answering kids were being discouraged all the time, they were basically being punished for trying their best. The kids who were slower and quieter or more shy to answer (my sister was in the second group), those didn't get encouraged enough, because the teacher obviously considered them to be less clever. For example, she didn't encourage them or give them time to put together a sentence anymore, she didn't expect them to do better than just to repeat a word she has just said. And she was busy discouraging the faster kids majority of the time, instead of giving them something to do and give more time to the slower ones. The same happens in the adult classes, but in much less obvious ways, as all the students have had many more years to practice dealing with their natural settings and learning how not to annoy other people. And the teachers don't dare to behave this bad towards them. But it is basically the same problem.

The only way to deal with this that I have found is avoiding group classes. Either learning on my own (which works fine), or 1 on 1 lessons (which come with their own set of troubles). Or perhaps classes that would be put together not only based on the level, but as well based on the desired speed of progress, desired amount of homework, desired level of "patience" for each other, but that is a utopia :-D


100% agree. It's a shame that people like your sister have had to face instructors who aren't as empathetic about different learning styles as they should be. I wish the first cutoff for those interested in a pedagogical career were a test designed to establish one's ability to empathize. But that's a whole 'nother topic....

To be fair to the fast answerers, I have no problem with fast answering when the question is put to the group at large: "Who can give a way to define jdm. nichts anhaben können?" But when it's "Schlaraffenland, how would you define abkapseln in this sentence?" and someone barks out the answer as if I don't exist, that's irksome. I've noticed that it happened with above-average frequency with English- Russian-, or Spanish-speaking males in their early 20s. :lol: So I think there are some cultural and age-related factors to explain it. Fortunately, I think a lot of people without situational social awareness grow out of it eventually.

But, yeah, classes are no longer my preferred first line of attack when it comes to languages, unless certain very specific criteria are met. So, thank goodness for so much good self-study material, and nice groups of fellow learners out there on the internet :D
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perfektesLeben
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Re: German group

Postby perfektesLeben » Mon May 22, 2017 4:34 am

Interesting, that you have had these experiences with in class language learning. I'm taking classes at the Uni to be a language teacher even though i already speak german. Hope i'm not like the teachers you described above :D
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gsbod
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Re: German group

Postby gsbod » Mon May 22, 2017 5:00 pm

Can anybody help me with the following sentence in a text in my B2 textbook:

"Falls Schulkleidung darüber hinaus dem verbreiteten Markenwahn entgegenwirkt, umso besser."

I understand (I think) the general meaning of the sentence, i.e. "If school uniforms counteract the widespread brand obsession, so much the better."

My question is, what is the role played by "darüber hinaus" in this sentence?
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Finolia
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Re: German group

Postby Finolia » Mon May 22, 2017 7:20 pm

gsbod wrote:"Falls Schulkleidung darüber hinaus dem verbreiteten Markenwahn entgegenwirkt, umso besser."
[...]
My question is, what is the role played by "darüber hinaus" in this sentence?


"darüber hinaus" means "furthermore" and refers to an information in the previous sentence(s). It's like a positive side effect of something mentioned before.
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perfektesLeben
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Re: German group

Postby perfektesLeben » Tue May 23, 2017 7:47 am

Finolia wrote:
"darüber hinaus" means "furthermore" and refers to an information in the previous sentence(s). It's like a positive side effect of something mentioned before.


Yeah that's what the "da" word is referring to, something previously mentioned. ^^ wie schon erwähnt.
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