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.
Kraut
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Re: German group

Postby Kraut » Sat Mar 31, 2018 12:53 pm

@DaveBee
The use of synthetic phonics to teach reading in the first language now has official blessing and there is no reason why the same approach can’t deliver similar success when learning other languages.


There is an approach similar to this in Germany called "lesen durch schreiben": they give the child that "possesses" already its phonemes the letter that "mostly" corresponds to that phoneme in the "Anlauttabelle": sound /A/ corrresponds to letter A like in "Apfel". Like a phonetic alphabet represented here through normal letters plus mentioning a few exceptions.
When this is done the child with the help of Anlauttabelle is expected to learn all the corrrespondences on its own and write little texts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Hf1E6qxBE

The results have been so devastating that some Länder have banned the method.
Children write MUTA instead of MUTTER, FATA for Vater, FEANSEA for FERNSEHER etc

https://www.huffingtonpost.de/2017/08/2 ... 09220.html
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https://www.news4teachers.de/2018/01/st ... rttemberg/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... J9HZjYBJXY
Die "Anlauttabelle" (Serie)

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"Lesen durch Schreiben" (LdS)-Konzept und "Schreib wie du sprichst" (Serie)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePSjUTLllPU
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schlaraffenland
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:20 am

A charming article on jetzt.de, with sentiments that will be familiar to many of us here: Eine Liebeserklärung an das Sprachniveau A1
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renaissancemedici
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Re: German group

Postby renaissancemedici » Tue May 08, 2018 8:18 am

renaissancemedici wrote:I'll join in as well. Hello!


I'll give a proper introduction, now that I've dealt with all the unavoidable wanderlust issues.

First my resources:

These links
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7842
The basic German was what I was taught in the only classroom experience I've had with German (about 2 months a couple of years ago). It's a nice book actually.

Assimil with ease, which is my main textbook right now.


First book in German
https://archive.org/details/firstbookingerma00chil
an old book that I thought will be useful as a complementary source.

The internet archive site is a favorite of mine, but the books are old. However you may find some real gems in there.

I also have a couple of German courses that are a bit old, but they are from Greek publishing houses and they are not something that you might be able to find. They are basic but quite good, and I will use them for vocabulary and exercises.

My plan is to follow the Assimil book, so as to be able to communicate right from the start, and add things from my other sources as I go along. I like reading all sorts of books, watching movies and documentaries, so according to several specific interests I will add the vocabulary etc. I also like to read the news and when the day comes I'll buy a German newspaper and read every single line in it. This will get me into the language of news.

My relationship to the German language has been a rocky one, but I will tell you only about the good things that include:
-the German poetry, litterature, philosophy etc, very deep and interesting
-the fact that I find similarities with ancient Greek, and the rich dialogue between the two languages through texts over the centuries
-the fact that in Greece I've never met a German person I didn't like, a thing I can't say for all tourists...
-simply that I like the language

My log you can see under my username :)
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I use Assimil right now as a starting point, but at the same time I am building the foundation for further studies of German.

Assimil German with ease: 8 / 100

demri
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Re: German group

Postby demri » Thu May 17, 2018 5:04 pm

Hello everyone. A quick question - why is braten conjugated as du brätst and not du brätest. I thought all stems ending in t add an extra e in the second and third person singular? Or it's not applicable to stem-changing verbs?
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Ogrim
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=873
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Re: German group

Postby Ogrim » Fri May 18, 2018 9:49 am

demri wrote:Hello everyone. A quick question - why is braten conjugated as du brätst and not du brätest. I thought all stems ending in t add an extra e in the second and third person singular? Or it's not applicable to stem-changing verbs?


You have answered your question yourself :) . Strong verbs with stem vowel a changes this to ä and with e it changes to i in present tense. In these cases the extra e is not inserted in the ending.

Other examples are:

halten - du hältst
raten - du rätst
treten - du trittst
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Systematiker
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Re: German group

Postby Systematiker » Fri May 25, 2018 12:27 pm

So what’s everyone been reading or watching in German lately? I think these study groups would benefit from occasionally having all of us share cool stuff we find.

I don’t watch as much German as I used to, but recently finished Babylon Berlin, and started Charité. They’re both on Netflix in the US, and I’m sure Babylon Berlin will have some more seasons before too long, as there’s like five already in Germany. I’ve thought about getting the books it is based on, too.

I started reading to fill some of the holes in my experience of German literature, but after some Fontane, Woyzeck, and Bahnwärter Thiel I’m wondering at the wisdom of this plan. Bleh. Time for something that’s not about the wretchedness of humanity.

Who’s next?
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Ogrim
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Re: German group

Postby Ogrim » Fri May 25, 2018 1:41 pm

As I mentioned in my log some weeks ago, at Easter I started reading Fjord by Halvar Beck, a crime novel set in Norway. I put it on hold halfway through, as I did not find it extremely interesting and I turned to reading stuff in Swedish instead. I should try to finish it though.

I am just about to start reading the biography of Thomas Mann by Klaus Schröter. I really enjoyed Buddenbrooks and Doktor Faustus when I read them many years ago, so I am intersted in learning more about the author.

A number of German classics are on my reading list as well, but I always seem to end up reading non-fiction whenever I pick up a German book.
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schlaraffenland
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Sat May 26, 2018 6:34 pm

Systematiker wrote:So what’s everyone been reading or watching in German lately? I think these study groups would benefit from occasionally having all of us share cool stuff we find.


Late last year, I finished Robert Menasse's Die Hauptstadt, which I found subversive and funny. Though I read in German daily, that was the last substantial thing I've read other than a couple of plays -- it's now late May?! My daily reading tends to consist of the national newspapers and Der Spiegel. I miss books and plan to get back on the wagon soon!

I haven't watched much of anything in German for ages. My principal problem is finding things I enjoy (in any language). I find the vast majority of prestige series on Netflix to be too violent or dark for me to begin caring about the story. I look a couple of times per week on Arte to see if anything has come up that intrigues me, but it's been a while since I have felt my interest piqued.

German podcast game is decent, though, and I tend to be caught up every week with Zeit Online's "Servus, Grüezi, Hallo," Deutschlandfunk's "Hintergrund," et alia.
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gsbod
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Re: German group

Postby gsbod » Mon May 28, 2018 12:33 pm

I have been reading Martin Suter's Small World since January! It's not exactly a difficult read, but the theme of dementia is somewhat depressing, so I am struggling to pick up the pace. I really ought to start reading something else because it has been far too long since I finished a German book.

I have been holding out on Babylon Berlin because I want to read at least the first book, Der Nasse Fisch, beforehand. So given the paragraph above, maybe now is the time to pick it up...
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Prohairesis
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Re: German group

Postby Prohairesis » Mon May 28, 2018 11:58 pm

I have mostly been watching German news channels and ARTE documentaries on Youtube, even though I am well aware that what I really need to work on (based on my C1 test scores) are my reading comprehension skills. Schlaraffenland's suggestion about Deutschlandfunk's Hintergrund is definitely worth a try, as I enjoy having a transcript to fall back on in cases where I miss out on something in audio. In this regard, I would also like to further suggest Aus Kultur- and Sozialwissenschaften on Deutschlandfunk, which produces very good in-depth feature articles/audio commentaries about various historical as well as contemporary social and cultural topics : http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/aus-kultu ... 47.de.html

In the past I have pointed out that I'm not an avid reader of novels in German, and that I was more accustomed to reading academic journals about EU border policies (I had my Political Science course to thank for...) than actual interesting stuff. Recently though, I have started reading Die Unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende which, I have been told, is a favourite among Germans and has been made into a film. After this, I am thinking of getting a copy of Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers in the original German, which I have read in English way back in 2010.

As you may notice, I am only reading elementary literature at this point, but eventually I hope to allocate much more time to reading more complex novels and non-fiction works in German -- even though the great German classics are not part of the picture yet at this point !
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