To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

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GermanIsHard
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To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby GermanIsHard » Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:11 pm

Hi everyone,

I'm a native English speaker, who is unfortunately monolingual. I've wanted to learn German for many years, however, I'm currently A1 at best. I've gone through the first 30 lessons of Assimil and some online resources, but this was several years ago. My goal is to finally achieve a B1 level in the language, as it is something that I've always had my eye on.

I ordered the newest copy of Assimil which arrived a few hours ago, and from what I can tell, it is much better than an older edition that I had purchased previously. I've briefly looked through the first twenty lessons or so, and they seem relatively straight forward although there is some new vocabulary in there. However, I am going to start from lesson 1, using the Luca Lampariello method and maybe a bit of shadowing.

I am excited to start again, and I'm grateful that I have some free time before university starts again in October. Hopefully, I'll be closer to my goal before term starts again!
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Le Baron
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Re: To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:38 pm

Before you think about doing anything else just go through the Assimil course. All of it.
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GermanIsHard
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Re: To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby GermanIsHard » Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:42 pm

Le Baron wrote:Before you think about doing anything else just go through the Assimil course. All of it.


Thank you - I am not going to side tracked this time, like I did last time :lol:. My intention is go through the whole course
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GermanIsHard
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Small Update

Postby GermanIsHard » Tue Jun 22, 2021 9:36 pm

A very small update. The grammar/vocab that was introduced in the first 7 lessons was very straightforward, so I've completed those. Will probably do ~3 lessons a day until lesson 20 or so, because the vast majority of content presented is not new.
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sirgregory
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Re: To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby sirgregory » Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:40 am

I restarted Assimil German about a month ago after a long layoff, so we are in a similar position. I will be through lesson 49 this week. You are right that the first lessons are easier. With my restart, I was able to move through the first twenty or so pretty quickly. It also helped that I still half-remembered some of them.

Pretty much everyone has their own twist on how to do Assimil. I've been experimenting a bit and I have found myself using it differently this time around (just throwing this out there if you want some ideas, not suggesting you need to do what I'm doing):

1) I treat the lessons as a weekly batch of seven (e.g., this week is 43-49) and I'm not strict about doing lesson X on a particular day. Yes, it's pretty much the same thing yet for whatever reason I do better thinking about the week's lessons as a group. Before I would miss days and would never make it up. Now I preview the whole batch on the first day and I stay on track pretty easily.

2) I've started doing my main study sessions with just the book and I've started intensively analyzing the German text. Before I was mostly doing passive listening and reading*, but given that these are short, simple texts, I find I can crack them open more easily with a direct attack.

*Something like what is described here: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wiki/Assimil#How_to_use_Assimi

Here in one of Luca's videos you can see a few shots of his Danish Assimil book and you can see that he has written all over the TL text. Lots of circles and lines and arrows everywhere. Hard to tell for sure but it looks like he attacks the TL pretty intensively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AFHXbw6s-g

3) I do a lot more reviewing and previewing than I did the first time. I've been using the audio on the go to do most of the review which is really convenient. The first time I definitely didn't do enough review. (I can't really remember but it might have been that my listening comprehension wasn't good enough to use the audio by itself at the beginning. Whatever the case, I think that once the listening skills are sufficiently developed to use the audio by itself it makes reviewing a million times easier).

I started the active wave/translation into L2 last week. So I have my week 6 for passive paired with week 1 for active (this is fairly similar to the official book which has you pair lesson 50 with lesson 1). So far the active is a piece of cake because I have only done the early lessons.

I know Luca does bidirectional translation and often starts his languages with Assimil but I don't know if he does the passive wave thing or just does bidirectional translations right from the start. It seems like a good idea to stagger it some just so the dialogue isn't too fresh. Otherwise it would be more short-term recall.
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GermanIsHard
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Re: To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby GermanIsHard » Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:09 pm

sirgregory wrote:I restarted Assimil German about a month ago after a long layoff, so we are in a similar position. I will be through lesson 49 this week. You are right that the first lessons are easier. With my restart, I was able to move through the first twenty or so pretty quickly. It also helped that I still half-remembered some of them.


That's pretty interesting the way you approach your lessons. My technique is slightly different, and I do bidirectional translation, annotate each lesson and then listen to the audio quite a few times. It's also exciting that you are half way through, how hard are you finding the latter lessons?

A small update:
Life got in the way over the past week, so I am only on lesson 12, and I'm hoping to do 13-15 tomorrow, considering that 14 is just a review lesson. My goal Sunday by the 4th of July is to have up to lesson 30 done, as I've briefly looked through the lessons, and there isn't a huge amount of new vocabulary that I don't know. However, the aspect that will slow me down will be the grammar. I am aware that is ambitious, but I'd rather set a goal that was more out there and fall short, rather than set a very small goal.

On a side note, I also tried the DIALANG reading test, and got a score of 428. Not too sure what that score means, but nevertheless reminded me just how little German I actually know.
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sirgregory
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Re: To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby sirgregory » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:53 pm

The middle lessons are longer. The grammar still seems fairly basic to me but every lesson usually has a couple of words I don't know and a few I maybe have seen but don't really know. The dialogues seem pretty balanced in terms of introducing new words and working in old ones. The main challenge I think is that the vocabulary accumulates as you go and you have to retain the stuff you covered a few weeks ago. For now, I intend to continue with the 7 lessons/week pace. If at some point I'm not retaining enough, I will probably take a review week.

One other thing with Assimil is that unlike a grammar book with straight sentences they use very idiomatic German. They use a lot of little filler words like "doch" and I feel like it takes a lot of practice to get a handle on what some of these really mean.
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german2k01
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Re: To B1 and beyond... (beginner German language log)

Postby german2k01 » Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:47 pm

After completing the Assimil course from start to end, what level are you expecting to achieve it ?
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