Road to Fluency

Day 60 of learning German. A long way to go still. Goal: solid A2 by September 1st. Goal: B1 by November 1st. So A1 --> A2 in 1 month. A2 --> B1 in 2 months. 

I’ve also abandoned “Der Kleine Prinz’ - too many unknown words, so it was not enjoyable and too time consuming. I’ve bought a lot books and audio by Andre Klein. I can actually understand the majority of text without looking up too many words,these books are far more enjoyable.

I know that after only 7/8 weeks of learning German my accent is not going to be great, or that I’ll that I be mistaken for a native. However, it is a bit frustrating that when I play back recordings of myself speaking I can hear a very distinctive English accent. I can’t help but think that I’m possibly pronouncing the words incorrectly, even though I try to mimic the sounds of the speaker. I’ll post a video later and would appreciate constructive criticism! 

It’s interesting, I’ve just listed the German verbs I know and can use which is about 61. I thought it would be something like 10, so I am quite pleased. I can’t really estimate my vocabulary size because that would be a much harder task, but I’m still quite please.

Will update soon!

 I think I might try this method over the next fews days. I’ve read that some people have used this method for 10-15 hours a day for 2 weeks or more, which seems extremely intensive. I know this this method is supposed to be used intensively, but I don’t think I would be able to put in that many hours a day.

I forgot to post my day 30 video of learning German on my tumblr, sorry! Quick update: School is over and I have more free time each day to learn German - yesterday I did 2.5 hours. My current method is completing 2 Assimil lessons a day and reviewing older lessons. I plan to spend 45-60 minutes a day listening and reading and putting words/phrases into Anki. I also want to speak to a native speaker for 30 minutes, several times a week. My trip to Germany is in 5 weeks time, so I'm quite motivated!

My iTalki lesson via Skype was great. We worked on pronunciation - which has really helped, I hadn’t realise I had been pronouncing some letters incorrectly... especially ä, ö and ü! Then we covered a bit of grammar but not much as most of the hour was working on pronunciation. I’ve already book a my few iTalki sessions with the same tutor. My goal is to have 3 hours of structured iTalki lessons a week and possibly just a language exchange on Mixxer for an hour a week. I am using LingQ a lot more and I’m really enjoying it. Assimil has been but on the back burner a bit - my main focus is just grammar though. I want to be able to construct sentences that are grammatically correct, rather than speaking like Tarzan. I may do 4/5 Assimil lessons a week rather than 7 and use LingQ more and learn grammar with grammar videos (smarterGerman) and my tutor as well as my textbook. So far progress has been slower than initially expected, I think that due to mean missing a couple of days or other days just doing the minimum I said I would do, which is 1 hour.  Also, I underestimated the effort it takes to learn a new language. What I have learnt: learning your first language is hard, but still achievable. 

 I chose a tutor that offers structured lessons to help me with my grammar. It seems as though every update I’ve done I have complained about German grammar and so it’s something that I’ve needed to really work on. My lesson starts in 15 minutes, so I will update soon.

I am finding that when I read sentenced like "In fünf Monaten beginnt meine Arbeit" - I understand what they mean instantly, but it would take me a while to form a sentence like that on my own which is frustrating. Although I am trying to reassure myself it's part of the learning process. German word order is confusing me a bit too. For example "ich will in Deutschland arbeiten" I understand what it means but it confuses me how in English it translates to "I want to in Germany to work". I accept that's how it should be written, but it's bugging me not knowing why and the rules behind it. My understanding of German grammar needs to improve and I'm hoping it will over the next few weeks.

So this is a video of me practising my pronunciation. Of course it's not going to be perfect after just under 2 weeks, but I think I did okay. I thought I would just post this video, so that I can see how my pronunciation improves as time goes on. Will update my blog in the next couple of days. So far I've just been using Assimil, I'm on lesson 15. I haven't memorised every single world because it takes too long and is a lot less fun. I did use lingq for the first couple of days, but I've been concentrating on assimil. I haven't really used Anki either, I am just hoping repetition will mean that I learn the new vocabulary.

In terms of learning grammar there are example sentences and exercises, and I am making notes on my computer of the essential information in the book. I think I will incorporate 15m-30m of grammar into my routine a day. Although I do like Assimil approach of learning grammar and patterns in the language through exposure and repetition - it can frustrate me. So in order to solve this problem, I think it would be best to supplement with both specifically designed to teach basic grammar.

Day three of my learning German challenge. Technically it's day two because I've been revising for my exams. I've used the app HelloTalk and I am speaking with native speakers in German. I can can understand some words, but I have to use a dictionary for a surprisingly large number of words. My grammar is bad, so I speak a bit like Tarzan, but that is not stopping me from trying.