CarlyD's 2020/2021 German Log

[Cavesa]

Ok, I'm trying to the quote thing, and it's (I'm) messing it up. So I'm just doing a direct response.

I love "Escaping the Eternal A1" and I'm totally in. I'm keeping 30 minutes a day as my minimum, but I'm going to do 60 every day--or more--except for Tuesdays and Thursdays, my heaviest work days.

I just got an email from Kirsten Cable (I'm doing her German Uncovered course) and she was talking about when you make your weekly to-do list. Hmm.... I have general goals but I haven't ever done an exact weekly to-do list. I wonder if this is what other people regularly do? I'm going to try this for the 6 week challenge.

My deadline right now is for the end of December 2021. That's a solid 14 months. Can we get to B1 by then?

Ok, 30 min a minimum is reasonable for start. If you keep putting in much more, I'll either work harder too, or we'll have a solid experiment on how much time affects results! The name is good, let's start it.

The weekly goals idea is very good. A few learners around here do it in their logs, I've never succeeded. Which approach is closer to your heart? Minimum weekly goals and exceeding them, or ambitious ones and trying to check as many things as possible?

Yes, your deadline sounds good. We can do it!

[Cavesa]

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16213

Do you like it? If you want to change absolutely anything in the first post, I'll change it asap!

Are we starting this week (starts in a few hours) or next monday?

[CarlyD]

https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16213

Do you like it? If you want to change absolutely anything in the first post, I'll change it asap!

Are we starting this week (starts in a few hours) or next Monday?

I love the new log. Let's start Monday, 10/26, since I was planning that anyway. You're 9 or 10 hours ahead of me? I know I'm 8 hours behind my friend in England.

The weekly goal is going to be a learning curve--I think I'm going to set daily goals for just this first week to see how it plays out and what I can get done. The 6 Week Challenge starts next Sunday, so hopefully I'll have the weekly goals sorted by then.

[Cavesa]

https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16213

Do you like it? If you want to change absolutely anything in the first post, I'll change it asap!

Are we starting this week (starts in a few hours) or next Monday?

I love the new log. Let's start Monday, 10/26, since I was planning that anyway. You're 9 or 10 hours ahead of me? I know I'm 8 hours behind my friend in England.

The weekly goal is going to be a learning curve--I think I'm going to set daily goals for just this first week to see how it plays out and what I can get done. The 6 Week Challenge starts next Sunday, so hopefully I'll have the weekly goals sorted by then.

Ok, that's a good approach. Week one is an experiment, a test run. I'll do a list of weekly goals, not sorted day by day (but the 30 minutes a day stay, that's the most important part. I just don't like to plan too rigidly which 30 minutes will be spent on what)

I am in the same time zone as England, I think. We've had a winter savings time change recently, so I am now rather confused.

[CarlyD]

I just did a lengthy placement test from DW. It says that I fully passed the A1 and should be taking courses for A2.

But here's the problem--the only questions that I got wrong on the A1 were where someone was speaking (hotel, airport, etc.) and I was supposed to glean from it the room number, flight time, etc. I listened to each short recording multiple times and got the answer wrong on almost all of them.

So my reading and grammar are ready for A2, but my listening comprehension is still in the dumps.

I also took the test for A2, but there were a lot more questions based on listening comprehension and I was getting them all wrong, so I bailed.

I was looking at the DW German classes, and they seem to put a lot of emphasis on listening comprehension, so I'm going to take the time I've been using on GermanPod (that I'm still totally iffy is even helping) and do DW courses and hopefully improve my comprehension. I'm starting one tomorrow and then will re-access after the challenge is over.

[CarlyD]

Ok, my apologies to GermanPod, but Rocket German is kind of the same thing and 1000x better.

I've been struggling with GermanPod for what seems like forever. I listen to the conversation more than once, I listen to the commentary where they go over the conversation line by line and at the end, I just click "completed" and move on. I must have learned something, right?

I recently started Rocket German. I started at the beginning, thinking to skip through until I got to where it seemed like my level was. Ok, they do the conversation, then go through it line by line. Then they do flashcards of every word in the conversation. Then voice recognition for every word. Then a quiz of every word. Then you go through the conversation again, role-playing first one person, then the other, again with voice recognition. You don't get out of that conversation until you absolutely know it. That's learning. At least to me. I decided not to skip ahead because I'm seriously working on speaking. Never knew I was dropping the final "r" on words until now.

I started Nico's Weg today, from Deutsche Welle. Again, I was going to skip ahead--but this course is all about listening comprehension, my super poor area. They have a video/conversation, and you go over and over it, listening for words and phrases to answer the questions, exactly what I need. The pronunciation part is lame--you say the word out loud and then rate your own pronunciation, but that's ok. They also have one called Mission Berlin I want to look at.

So, for the 1st day of the Challenge, and the official 1st day of my 14-months to German B1 challenge--looking good.

[lingua]

I just did a lengthy placement test from DW. It says that I fully passed the A1 and should be taking courses for A2.

But here's the problem--the only questions that I got wrong on the A1 were where someone was speaking (hotel, airport, etc.) and I was supposed to glean from it the room number, flight time, etc. I listened to each short recording multiple times and got the answer wrong on almost all of them.

Then maybe consider going through the video and exercises only in A1. They have a number of listening comprehension exercises. You can glance at the other exercises and see if you want to do them or not. It generally take me about 15-20 minutes to listen to the video and go through the exercises in the sub-unit. The number and type of exercises vary a bit. Some are just having you speak or answer questions and then rating yourself on how you sounded.

Edit ... I see that's what you're doing. I responded to the Saturday post before reading today's post.

[CarlyD]

Yesterday I hit a full year with doing Memrise every single day--366 days (due to Leap Year.)

I thought there'd at least be a party.

Oh well, on to Year 2.

[CarlyD]

Sad day. I ended my auto-renewal to GermanPod. I keep complaining about it, but honestly if it had renewed at the same rate ($108 for two years for premium) I probably would have done it and kept trying. But they said $240. Nope.

I'm working on Chapter 10 in my main textbook, German Step by Step. Finishing Datives and getting into Modals. So I'm working through the pages and doing the exercises and suddenly thought--this seems too easy.

Dare I say that I'm getting better?

So I pulled out my Practice Makes Perfect Intermediate German Grammar that I bought hoping for "someday" and starting looking through. And it looked easy too.

This is getting scary.

[CarlyD]

Still doing well on my 14-Months to B1 project for German.

But a couple of days ago, I was looking around on Amazon--always dangerous. They handle languages in a somewhat casual manner--buy a book on German verbs? Here's on for Italian you might like. Same thing, right? Makes me crazy when I just want to see German.

They have a book--looks like for kids--that's a Russian alphabet workbook. It shows you letter by letter how to both print and write each letter, and what it sounds like. Hmmmm..... Russian has been on my far-off bucket list for awhile, but honestly if I were going to reach for another language it should be Slovenian, which I could at least use for genealogy and far-flung family.

But Russian intrigues me. I still watch the stupid driver videos on Youtube and many clips are from Russia and I'd like to at least be able to read some of the signs I see. I guess there's worse reasons for learning a language than Youtube videos.

So the little workbook is sitting in my Amazon basket--for now.

And now back to German separable verbs.