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
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4957
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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German group

Postby Cavesa » Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:28 pm

Dear friends,

as we've already got a French and a Spanish group, I believe it is time for a German one. I am being partially selfish, as one of my main reasons is pushing myself further and to keep myself from abandoning this langauge so often (I need to make this option so shameful that I'll just keep going despite the obstacles).But I hope more people will find value here, and we'll enjoy learning German together. Anyone learning German is welcome, any level, any method of learning. Join us whenever you want, take a break whenever you want (but I hope we'll collectively try to keep you from it :-D ). I find it appropriate to not wait for someone else to do it this time, so I am simply starting.

Rules:

1.As was said, everyone is welcome. Use your first post to tell us a bit about your German journey so far. Your choice whether briefly or in detail, please include a link to your log (if you have one). Of course, advanced learners and natives are extremely welcome too, as their advice and example is very inspirative and helpful. If you are not learning German yet, feel free to ask any questions and observe our excitement. Perhaps you'll join the dark side too.

2.The language of this thread will be unfortunately English, for the same practical reasons Iguanamnon described well in the Spanish group thread. Of course German posts are welcome, but provide a translation or overview for the beginners among us.

3.Please, tell us about resources you have personal experience with, or when you know someone with the first hand experience. Later than second hand info is of limited value. There are tons of generic lists on the internet, many of us could guess a large part of their content before the webpage loads. We can all just google "learning German". Here, we have an opportunity to trully share direct experience, both good and bad. Warnings against crappy resources are very useful too. I will update the post with resources, but cannot promise how often.

4.I hope following the forum rules is selbstverständlich. (I know, I might be breaking the rule number two right now :-D )

5.Again something selbstverständlich: Let's read each other's logs, when the time allows it and it doesn't lead us away from actually studying German, be supportive, and criticise politely and constructively. There is no shortage of demotivation all around us, we don't need more of it here.
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Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4957
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:29 pm

Learning resources we've been using and can recommend: (this post will be ordered a bit better, once I have time for it)

Hueber's Übungsgrammatik für Fortgeschrittene (Systematiker)
Begegnungen A1, A2, B1 (gsbod)
Assimil (many of us)
dw.de (lots of resources, lots of people recommending it)
German Demystified (Jimjam)
Studio C1 (aokoye)
podcasts from Deutsche Rundfunk (aokoye)
German Grammar in Review by Kimberly Sparks (aokoye)
Grammatik Aktiv (gsbod)
Themen Aktuell (Cavesa)
Teach Yourself (Keth)
Pimsleur (WalkingAlone13, rumpetroll, M23)
Michel Thomas (WalkingAlone13, rumpetroll)
Hueber Lesen und Schreiben (WalkingAlone13)
Schritte neu (WalkingAlone13)
Schritte international (WalkingAlone13)
Menschen (WalkingAlone13)
Klipp und Klar by Klett (WalkingAlone13, Cavesa)
Methode 90 (Anya)
FSI Programmed Introduction (Brun Ugle)
Übungsgrammatik Deutsch als Fremdsprache A, B, C (Brun Ugle)
GLOSS (Brun Ugle)
Chung's recommendations on resources from Hungary (I'll post the links later)
Schaum's Outline of German Grammar (Chung)
German Grammar Drills (Chung)
Hammer's German Grammar and Usage and Hammer's Practising German Grammar (Chung)
Practice Makes Perfect workbooks (Chung)
FSI German Basic Course (Chung)
Hueber Grundstufen-Grammatik für Deutsch als Fremdsprache (Aokoye)
http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/grammar.html (Aokoye)
http://www.deutschakademie.de/online-de ... s/english/ (Aokoye)
German Made Simple by Arnold Leitner (M23)
Die Audiolinguale (ALM) und Audiovisuelle Methode (AVM) (Speakeasy)
Lingvist (Aokoye)
Duolingo (lots of people)
German Step by Step (CarlyD)
Mittelpunkt C1 Neu (Aokoye)

Online (or not) dictionaries:
LEOS (whitecastle)
dict.cc (Aokoye)
Beolingus (Aokoye)
Duden (Aokoye)



LAST UPDATE: AFTER PAGE 7
Last edited by Cavesa on Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4957
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:29 pm

reserved for input recommendations

reading:
Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik (Jimjam)
Die Welt (Systematiker)
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung (Systematiker)
Die Zeit (Systematiker)
Der Spiegel (Ogrim)
a series of readers by Andre Klein (WalkingAlone13)
Tintenherz (Elenia, Brun Ugle, Cavesa, the whole bookclub)
Star Trek novels in translation (Brun Ugle)
Donald Duck comics (Brun Ugle)

a list by gsbod
Der Kleine Prinz, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Der Vorleser, Bernhard Schlink
Kafka am Strand, Haruki Murakami
Couchsurfing im Iran, Stephan Orth
Eine Unbeliebte Frau, Nele Neuhaus
Taxi, Karen Duve
Mordsfreunde, Nele Neuhaus
Russendisko, Wladimir Kaminer
Verblendung, Stieg Larsson

listening:
http://www.ardmediathek.de/tv (Systematiker)
ZDF https://www.zdf.de/ (Systematiker)
SWR http://swrmediathek.de/index.htm (Systematiker)
BR http://www.br.de/mediathek/index.html (Systematiker)
various shows (Systematiker): Doctor's Diary; Der letzte bulle; Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten; Alarm für Cobra 11; Danni Lowinski; Der Bulle von Tölz; Pfarrer Braun; Genial Daneben; Mario Barth; Ciny aus Marzahn; Bülent Ceylan
Schloss Einstein (Keth)
Charmed (WalkingAlone13)
Turkish für Anfänger (WalkingAlone13)
Extr@ auf Deutsch (rumpetroll)
online lectures http://timms.uni-tuebingen.de/#Pagestart and http://www.online-vorlesungen.de/ (Theodisce)
Stefan's list of tv sites, I'll add the links later
Star Trek: Voyager - The Full Journey Limited Collector's Edition (WalkingAlone13)
In aller Freundschaft - Die jungen Ärzte (WalkingAlone13)
Ich liebe Deutsch , Deutsch-lernen und noch mehr (CarlyD)

Music:
Christina Stürmer (WalkingAlone13)
Eisblume (WalkingAlone13)
We butter the bread with butter (WalkingAlone13)
Silbermond (WalkingAlone13)
Warner Musik DE (WalkingAlone13)
Lacrimosa (Cavesa)

LAST UPDATE: AFTER PAGE 7
Last edited by Cavesa on Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4957
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:30 pm

Where else to join the group:
Duolingo club EYFAD7
Memrise group http://www.memrise.com/group/132199/
the usual Super Challenge website includes a lot of us too


Our stars, in order of appearance (I'll complete the links later):
Systematiker
Walkingalone13 viewtopic.php?f=15&t=742&start=90
Theodisce viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1435
Aokoye viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2935
gsbod viewtopic.php?t=1152
Jimjam viewtopic.php?t=1789
Egwene viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2955
Ogrim
Keth
Elenia viewtopic.php?t=708
Anya viewtopic.php?f=15&t=754&start=40
Brun Ugle viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5170
rumpetroll
Soclydeza viewtopic.php?f=15&t=758
M23 viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2186
Speakeasy
CarlyD
whitecastle


LAST UPDATE: AFTER PAGE 7
Last edited by Cavesa on Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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WalkingAlone13
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Posts: 242
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 3:03 pm
Languages: English (N) German (B2) Finnish (beginner) Swedish (beginner) Polish (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... f=15&t=742
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Re: German group

Postby WalkingAlone13 » Wed Dec 14, 2016 5:56 pm

Oooh, I was hoping a German group would establish itself at some point. I always find the support a group others to be very valuable, not to mention the embarrassment factor of not having anything specific to share. It is also a bit of a coincidence seeing this as I just had a big German exam today...I shall withhold judgement on how that went as I currently have no idea. I hate it when exams feel like that. I would rather feel like I did well only to find out I didn't than be completely unsure either way.

Needless to say, I would be very happy to join. I can recommend some resources and such later on. It would be a little tricky at the moment as you are already advanced from what I remember, and I can only really suggest materials for beginners anyway.

My log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=742&start=90
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Systematiker
Blue Belt
Posts: 823
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 6:09 pm
Languages: ENG (N); DEU (C2+) // SWG (~C1); BAR (~C1); SPA (4/3); FRA (~C1); SCO (~C1); NLD (~B2*); LAT (Latinum Bavaricum); GRC (Graecum Bavaricum); CAT (~B2*); POR (~B2*); SWE (~B2*); HBO (Hebraicum); DAN (~B1*); RUS (~A2); KOR (~A1); FAS (still a raw beginner)
*Averaged for high receptive skill
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
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Re: German group

Postby Systematiker » Wed Dec 14, 2016 6:03 pm

I'll hang around and try to help with some recommendations, as I've been living at least part of my life in German for some time now. Off the top of my head, Hueber's Übungsgrammatik für Fortgeschrittene is wonderful once one is advanced enough to get value out of it.

I'll probably mostly recommend media, etc. for input, the process by which I learned German was so convoluted that half the time I can't figure out how I did it.
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Theodisce
Orange Belt
Posts: 239
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:18 am
Location: Krakauer Baggersee
Languages: Polish (native), speaks: English, Czech, German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian. Writes in: Latin, Portuguese. Understands: Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Slovak, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian/Croatian. Studies for passive competence in: Romanian, Slovene, Bulgarian.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1435
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Re: German group

Postby Theodisce » Wed Dec 14, 2016 6:44 pm

Thank you for starting this. I will be pleased to share my experience and read about the things other German learners do.

I attended German classes as a schoolboy but it was one great failure, most of pupils being not interested in learning the language and teachers being not really interested in teaching it. At the beginning of my Master studies I decided I will devoted the coming year to German. It was December 2013 and my chart instructs me that at that point I had devoted 200 hours of study (comprehensible input) to German. During 2014 I was able to do about 760 of input, but at the end of that year I began to devours large amounts of Russian content. In the first half of the 2015 I was still consuming German content, my focus being Russian. This changed at the beginning of June 2015 as I became aware of a job opportunity in Germany. So I refocused on German and, having virtually no experience in speaking the language, hired a tutor with whom I had 10 hours of conversation just to have a warm up before the job interview. Es hat geklappt and I've been living in Germany since November 2015

Since the beginning of my German adventure I've devoted 2700 hours of study (mostly input) to my German, which is at this point surpassed only by my English. The weekly average number of hours I devote to German varies between 14 and 30.

As for resources, I would recommend Audible, although I would advise against using the German versions. The Audible.de files are extremely large when compared to both Audible.com and Audible.fr (which both split their audiobooks into smaller parts). But there is a lot of stuff to listen to in German.

Other than that, I found Michel Thomas German extremely useful for syntax and structure.

If you happen to live in Germany it will be probably useful to get Amazon Prime account.

My log:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1435
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BCS 400+ : 48 / 50
RUS 2800+ : 74 / 100
SPA 1500+ : 128 / 100
CZE 1900+ : 94 / 50

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aokoye
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1818
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:14 pm
Location: Portland, OR
Languages: English (N), German (~C1), French (Intermediate), Japanese (N4), Swedish (beginner), Dutch (A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19262
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Re: German group

Postby aokoye » Wed Dec 14, 2016 6:53 pm

I'm totally down for this! I was actually just thinking about starting a German group last week but you beat me to it :) I will save my introduction for later this afternoon but as you know Cavesa I have a lot of resources, or at least ISBNs to share.
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gsbod
Blue Belt
Posts: 838
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:22 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native)
German (advanced)
French (intermediate)
Japanese (intermediate)
Spanish (learning)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
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Re: German group

Postby gsbod » Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:46 pm

Yes! At last a German group! Thank you Cavesa!

I started learning German in summer 2012 when I decided I was going to take a short summer holiday in Berlin. I loved Berlin far more than expected, went back to Germany in 2013 but this time to explore some cities in the west and the Black Forest. Very different to Berlin, but I loved it there too. Since then I have been back to Germany maybe half a dozen times.

German was competing for my time against various other languages between 2012-2014, so progress was neither quick nor linear, but by some time in 2014 I started focusing almost exclusively on German.

I started out mainly using Assimil, plus some of the free courses on dw.de (Mission Berlin, Radio D, Warum Nicht?) I then started using the Begegnungen A1 textbook, which answered a lot of questions Assimil wasn't helping with. I started attending an evening class, which despite the slow pace manages to combine a decent teacher, a good, well-structured curriculum and motivated students so has proved to be worth the money. Outside of turning up to class and doing my homework, my study these days involves dipping in and out of textbooks as and when the mood takes me, getting as much exposure to native materials as I have time for (sadly precious little this last 3 months or so) and attending a meet up group for conversation practice.

My level right now is definitely B1, not sure how close to B2 I am yet.

German is, for me, a language which ticks all the boxes. I am never short of books to read, TV to watch, radio to listen to, music to sing along to - and all of these are things I would enjoy on their merits alone and not just because they are in German. Plus I get regular opportunities for conversation and travel. As a result, it is the only language I have attempted to learn where all skills are reasonably well balanced.

My log: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1152
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Jimjam
Yellow Belt
Posts: 86
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 4:14 pm
Location: Canberra, Australia
Languages: English (N), Japanese N4, German B1
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1789
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Re: German group

Postby Jimjam » Thu Dec 15, 2016 1:11 am

I'm very excited for this group! I've been so jealous of the french speakers and their group so I'm glad someone made one for german!

I'm not as advanced as the other posters so far but as I am moving to Germany at the end of January for a year studying abroad, I hope to progress much quicker than I have been.
I have been dabbling in german for the past 2 years or so while mainly focusing on other things so reached a level around A1 by around september this year when I found out I have been accepted to go on exchange. Since then I have stepped up my studying a bit and am now at an A2 level (though with weak production skills), and my plan is to strengthen my skills enough to be comfortable in the B1 class which i'll be starting in February.
My main study method has been to flounder around in a pile of textbooks and remember things here and there. My main resources have been German Demystified which is a beginner friendly grammar course that I highly recommend, and Assimil German with Ease (I have only used it up to around lesson 45 but the effects on my reading ability and pronunciation were amazing). I'm also slowly working through Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik, and occasionally listen to some of the harry potter audiobooks. I have many more resources but haven't used any consistently enough to warrant mentioning.

If you would like to follow my chaotic learning process then my log is: viewtopic.php?t=1789
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