I've been feeling more lazy with studying. I don't think I'm making up for it with immersion but I still make sure to watch and listen to German every day.
But otherwise I'm taking a mental break right now. Or at least, focusing on stuff at work. I do think that deep studying interferes with my mental state work (and vice versa).
I do expect to come back to studying ASAP, once my current sprint is complete.
A lot of children songs have cartoons or dances associated with them.
The traditional German song Himpelchen und Pimpelchen has a little finger dance that represents the two characters climbing up a mountain for example (or for us Americans, basically a more German / different version of Itsy Bitsy Spider).
I got my start in German with Tschu Tschu wa, a song for maybe pre-schoolers thats like hands out, on the shoulders (etc. etc.).
So I guess what I'm saying is.... I don't really have mnemonics per se. I have dance moves or finger movements that represent different prepositions or verbs.
I have to imagine a lot of pre-school level (3 to 5 year old) songs have these dance moves. Like Baby Shark in USA had little dance things to represent the different sharks.
I'm old enough that I'm willing to learn like a 5 year old again. It's an effective means of memorization!!
There aren't much German speakers here in the USA. So I can't get that much conversation practice. But I do want to be conversational, eventually. I regularly go to a club for that.
But again, I'm A2. I'm seeking the conversational level but I'm basically a beginner in the great scheme of things.
I agree with you that conversations I've had seem to have a lower count of vocabulary. But all of these nuanced meanings of words used in practice are different between the textbook and real life conversations.
Ex: I'm glad I looked up the word halten (hold, also "Halt") in a real dictionary. It really shows how flexible the word would be used in a conversation.
I agree that there are some words better for conversation, and other words better for reading. But in all cases, studying the dictionary and being aware of the variety of uses (even if it's nearly unreadable) is useful to me.
For instance: I could make a card with sapo on one side and the dictionary definition anfibio anuro de cuerpo rechoncho y robusto, ojos saltones, extremidades cortas y piel de aspecto verrugoso on the other.
Oh no. That's not what I mean at all.
Again, I CANT read a dictionary yet. I'm A2 lol. But it's still useful!!
Read what you can. At A2 level you should have already mastered the words noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition (etc. etc). How many categories is the word in?
How many definitions? Is this a flexible word with 50 definitions or is it a simple word with 3 related definitions under one subheading?
What's the frequency count of the word? Are there any synonyms or antonyms that you recognize?
Are there any "related" prepositions with the word? In German, it's "helfen bei" (which is different than English "help with"), the native level dictionary makes it clear which preposition is closely associated to the word.
Even though I can't read definitions, there's still a TON of information here that I learn from.
I NEVER make the Anki card from a native dictionary.
No, I make very simple Anki cards. I then spend lots of time in the dictionary (native and bilingual) to learn more about the word. Anki remains a simple one definition per word flashcard.
Don't use Anki for this. Instead learn meanings through reading (including reading the dictionary in the target language).
I see Anki as the bridge between ignorance and immersion. You should only study the most common meaning to get started in the language. But you must always review the word in the dictionary.
At A1 or even A2 you aren't strong enough to read a native dictionary however. But at B1+ (well, I'm at A2+) you will suddenly notice that the native dictionary isn't so bad anymore
At A2+ I can read the example sentences and different meanings. I don't understand it all but I can learn from dictionaries now..
A2+ meaning I completed A2 months ago but am still very far away from B1.
Anki is just good enough for seeding your understanding. The hard work happens at the immersion step. Don't try to make Anki do something it's bad at.
Use a dictionary. Seriously. If you aren't strong enough for a native dictionary use a bi-lingual dictionary instead.
The Kontrollverlust (150 songs) download from their website was a huge boost to my music collection, but most of the songs ended up being English covers. I still got dozens of German songs out of it though.
The Disney songs in German are far more approachable today than before. I know I've improved even if I'm not fully understanding the nuance.
I might be ready to try watching a Disney movie or other kid-friendly simpler German movie. Or maybe not, hard to tell. I probably should focus more on my textbook though ...
I've actually learned a lot from books, exercises, and raw memorization.
I'm pretty bad at raw memorization compared to my peers (it always took me more time than my classmates or other people I knew). But it's a good crowbar, a way to convert raw effort into plausible results.
No, raw / rote memorization will never lead to ultimate learning. But I use it as a stepping stone before the real learning happens. With more stuff in my rote memory banks, I'm able to more quickly look up or get a rough idea of what a paragraph or page says when reading.
I do think my overall speaking skills are weak for my level, but I've also been told that I'm learning at a rate faster than many others and to be kinder to my self-expectations.
Obviously it's not the way of learning for everyone. I played a lot of fighting games like this. I sat down and memorized all the frame data and then played games with the frame data memorized. Then I could use my memory of frame data to learn which moves had priority (and how) over other moves.
Did anyone else learn like this? Yeah, one or two. But most just learn from the video game directly. And that's also fine. We all learn differently and knowing that we are all different is part of the process.
In any case, I am a book learner. So that's how I'll stay learning.
While my studies in my textbook progress slowly, I've actually been listening to a lot more German music... as I'm "feeling a level up".
I'm suddenly understanding a lot of songs I didn't think I could understand. "Völlig losgelöst" has been seemingly outside of my level for a while, but today my brain is beginning to understand it. So that's been inspiring me to listen to a lot of music and Youtube videos to try to understand.
I've been listening to a lot of Plankton videos because I find him funny but "above my level". Today, suddenly I'm watching "with understanding". It took a few rewinds and one or two pause + look up words on Wiktionary... but I actually fully understand this German pun + get the humor.
I was hoping to do ~3 full sections a month, but I'll be lucky to get 2 sections done in July. Ah well. Slower through this B1 book than I expected but maybe I'll pick things up / go a bit faster moving forward. 6 months to finish B1 is just a number I threw down. If it takes me longer, no biggie. But I'll still kinda-sorta aim at this as my goal.
From what I've seen in German C1 and C2 topics, the grammar and vocabulary merge at the highest levels.
In English for example, the word 'have' has an incredible number of structures. C1 and C2 really goes into very nuanced usage and no longer surface level.
In German, natural sounding sentences seemingly break B1 or B2 level rules in these special vocabulary forms (ie relearning that haben has a new grammar), and then learning these special grammars.
Or in other words: Natives don't follow the rules as written at B1 or B2. Learning the special exceptions to all kinds of words is C1+ level. So it's both vocabulary (knowing that words have new meanings), but ALSO grammar because it is complex enough to change the sentence structure.
I've been complaining about the word list 1950 words long for a B1 level course book. I did some reading (in German) and apparently only 750-ish of those words (the ones in bold) are actually part of the B1 test.
As such, I've decided that while I'll translate all words... I'll only put the B1 test words inside of Anki. This should give me a good compromise between vocab drills and course book progress.
Last week was way too much vocabulary not enough course progress.
B1 book has absolutely a ton of vocabulary. I'm only 4 exercises in but over 150 new Anki cards (over 75 new words).
I'm estimating about 1950 new vocab words for this textbook. I'll only be able to do this if vocabulary gets easier than it has been.... But I think that is going on.
A substantial number of words are compound words or otherwise related to words I already know.
Clearly I need to accelerate my words per day by significant levels. I'll trust in the process and the book but it's scary.
I'll also need to spend less time per card. The cards are somewhat less important than the reading, listening and writing exercises after all. So my Anki cards are dropping their already relatively spartan style to even more basic.
IE: do more vocabulary but maybe less effort put in. Cover more words but less deeply, and hope it works out?
Language club and Community college class continue to be helpful at speaking practice. This really is my weakest skill so anything I do helps.
I'm stronger than basically everyone in the community college class. But I'm the weakest one at the language club table. Certainly a weird feeling to go back and forth between them....
My current plan is to focus mostly on getting ahead in my vocabulary. Get all these words into Anki, start drilling them so I'm familiar with the words before doing exercises. Then I do the exercises.
If I'm always studying words from 'future' sections (a few pages ahead of where I am in the textbook), then that gives me time to Anki drill as a startup.
Then I do the Kursbuch exercises a few days later. (Lecture problems / exercises)
Then I do the Ubungsbuch exercises about a week after that. (Practice problems).
That gets me multiple times of review and practice for every word and concept. I'll be aiming at 6 months to clear this book... though frankly I'm already behind schedule.
I got stuck in Grammatik aktiv A1-B1. I reached the B1 levels and it's not really explaining these concepts well
Soooooooo.... I've decided now is the time to pull out my B1 Kursbuch and actually begin working through B1. It's much harder level of listening and I'm very slow with these exercises. I'm hoping that my brain gets used to this increased difficulty and that I'll progress to a faster pace.
But day 1 is ROUGH. It's like I'm rather stupid again and need to look up a ton of words all the time to make any progress
I did look at Pokemon Weiße Edition again and my brain is much much better today. I'm able to read, albeit with a TON of lookups. But I can actually make a lot of the way through without lookups and guessing the meaning of the words. (Am I correct? Probably not. But it's kinda fun going through this with kinda crappy understanding lol). Maybe that will be a fun little reward when things get tough at this level.
I'm not a Japanese learner. But I'm aware of this.
For everyone who is unaware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eVhwP2G6OU . If you listen carefully, the numbers all have a different word depending on the situation. To help teach this concept, the Japanese have nursery rhymes.
English does have specific words to describe other things. Ex: Reams of paper. Sheets of paper. But its not a full counting-system like in Japanese. A bakers dozen (13 donuts, rarely used for things outside of cooking/baking). A gross (144 items). Dozen (12, very common). So I'd say English has specific words that are "alternative names" for numbers, but its not really the same at all.
You'd never say "Bakers Dozen" outside of bread, donuts or cupcakes. This "special number" only applies to baked goods.
I've only ever heard of a "Ream" used for counting sheets of paper (500 sheets).
A "Spool" of chips is 3000 chips for computer manufacturing.
These words get increasingly technical. Only computer engineers / electrical engineers would ever ask for a spool == 3000 chips. Bakers dozen is itself a rare word (13), rare enough that some English Natives don't realize it means 13 !!
German discussion class at community college was weird. It was maybe the first time I've met students who are "weaker" than me, or even anywhere near my level.
Despite spending 9 months so far learning German, my journey has been through self study, a German tutor, live practice in Berlin and finally a free club. At every situation, the other German speakers were far better than me in German across all skill levels.
But now that I've signed up for an at level class, I'm finding other students who (like me) struggle with prepositions, die/der/das, Nebensatz and so forth. It's somewhat eye opening to see the struggles of fellow students.
I've bought a few more German songs (mostly covers to anime songs I've appreciated over the years). I probably should start looking for traditional / mainstream German pop / rock bands however, to get more "normal" music that typical Germans listen to.
I've been feeling more lazy with studying. I don't think I'm making up for it with immersion but I still make sure to watch and listen to German every day.
But otherwise I'm taking a mental break right now. Or at least, focusing on stuff at work. I do think that deep studying interferes with my mental state work (and vice versa).
I do expect to come back to studying ASAP, once my current sprint is complete.
A lot of children songs have cartoons or dances associated with them.
The traditional German song Himpelchen und Pimpelchen has a little finger dance that represents the two characters climbing up a mountain for example (or for us Americans, basically a more German / different version of Itsy Bitsy Spider).
I got my start in German with Tschu Tschu wa, a song for maybe pre-schoolers thats like hands out, on the shoulders (etc. etc.).
So I guess what I'm saying is.... I don't really have mnemonics per se. I have dance moves or finger movements that represent different prepositions or verbs.
I have to imagine a lot of pre-school level (3 to 5 year old) songs have these dance moves. Like Baby Shark in USA had little dance things to represent the different sharks.
I'm old enough that I'm willing to learn like a 5 year old again. It's an effective means of memorization!!
Hmmm, German speakers here in USA seem to be mostly retired folk. I wouldn't say lonely but they are all like +20 or +30 years older than me.
I'd be nice to have someone closer to my age but I welcome any practice.
I mean, I plan to learn everything I can.
There aren't much German speakers here in the USA. So I can't get that much conversation practice. But I do want to be conversational, eventually. I regularly go to a club for that.
But again, I'm A2. I'm seeking the conversational level but I'm basically a beginner in the great scheme of things.
I agree with you that conversations I've had seem to have a lower count of vocabulary. But all of these nuanced meanings of words used in practice are different between the textbook and real life conversations.
Ex: I'm glad I looked up the word halten (hold, also "Halt") in a real dictionary. It really shows how flexible the word would be used in a conversation.
https://www.dwds.de/wb/halten
I agree that there are some words better for conversation, and other words better for reading. But in all cases, studying the dictionary and being aware of the variety of uses (even if it's nearly unreadable) is useful to me.
Oh no. That's not what I mean at all.
Again, I CANT read a dictionary yet. I'm A2 lol. But it's still useful!!
Read what you can. At A2 level you should have already mastered the words noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition (etc. etc). How many categories is the word in?
How many definitions? Is this a flexible word with 50 definitions or is it a simple word with 3 related definitions under one subheading?
What's the frequency count of the word? Are there any synonyms or antonyms that you recognize?
Are there any "related" prepositions with the word? In German, it's "helfen bei" (which is different than English "help with"), the native level dictionary makes it clear which preposition is closely associated to the word.
Even though I can't read definitions, there's still a TON of information here that I learn from.
I NEVER make the Anki card from a native dictionary.
No, I make very simple Anki cards. I then spend lots of time in the dictionary (native and bilingual) to learn more about the word. Anki remains a simple one definition per word flashcard.
Don't use Anki for this. Instead learn meanings through reading (including reading the dictionary in the target language).
I see Anki as the bridge between ignorance and immersion. You should only study the most common meaning to get started in the language. But you must always review the word in the dictionary.
At A1 or even A2 you aren't strong enough to read a native dictionary however. But at B1+ (well, I'm at A2+) you will suddenly notice that the native dictionary isn't so bad anymore
At A2+ I can read the example sentences and different meanings. I don't understand it all but I can learn from dictionaries now..
A2+ meaning I completed A2 months ago but am still very far away from B1.
Anki is just good enough for seeding your understanding. The hard work happens at the immersion step. Don't try to make Anki do something it's bad at.
Use a dictionary. Seriously. If you aren't strong enough for a native dictionary use a bi-lingual dictionary instead.
The Kontrollverlust (150 songs) download from their website was a huge boost to my music collection, but most of the songs ended up being English covers. I still got dozens of German songs out of it though.
The Disney songs in German are far more approachable today than before. I know I've improved even if I'm not fully understanding the nuance.
I might be ready to try watching a Disney movie or other kid-friendly simpler German movie. Or maybe not, hard to tell. I probably should focus more on my textbook though ...
I've actually learned a lot from books, exercises, and raw memorization.
I'm pretty bad at raw memorization compared to my peers (it always took me more time than my classmates or other people I knew). But it's a good crowbar, a way to convert raw effort into plausible results.
No, raw / rote memorization will never lead to ultimate learning. But I use it as a stepping stone before the real learning happens. With more stuff in my rote memory banks, I'm able to more quickly look up or get a rough idea of what a paragraph or page says when reading.
I do think my overall speaking skills are weak for my level, but I've also been told that I'm learning at a rate faster than many others and to be kinder to my self-expectations.
Obviously it's not the way of learning for everyone. I played a lot of fighting games like this. I sat down and memorized all the frame data and then played games with the frame data memorized. Then I could use my memory of frame data to learn which moves had priority (and how) over other moves.
Did anyone else learn like this? Yeah, one or two. But most just learn from the video game directly. And that's also fine. We all learn differently and knowing that we are all different is part of the process.
In any case, I am a book learner. So that's how I'll stay learning.
While my studies in my textbook progress slowly, I've actually been listening to a lot more German music... as I'm "feeling a level up".
I'm suddenly understanding a lot of songs I didn't think I could understand. "Völlig losgelöst" has been seemingly outside of my level for a while, but today my brain is beginning to understand it. So that's been inspiring me to listen to a lot of music and Youtube videos to try to understand.
Another example: this Plankton short-video was mostly understood by me: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-1SU2j6ggyg
I've been listening to a lot of Plankton videos because I find him funny but "above my level". Today, suddenly I'm watching "with understanding". It took a few rewinds and one or two pause + look up words on Wiktionary... but I actually fully understand this German pun + get the humor.
I was hoping to do ~3 full sections a month, but I'll be lucky to get 2 sections done in July. Ah well. Slower through this B1 book than I expected but maybe I'll pick things up / go a bit faster moving forward. 6 months to finish B1 is just a number I threw down. If it takes me longer, no biggie. But I'll still kinda-sorta aim at this as my goal.
Everyone liked the hyper-realistic heavy Spartan Armor from 300. Amiright?
They seemed to all be cool with the sword-armed troll in 300.
From what I've seen in German C1 and C2 topics, the grammar and vocabulary merge at the highest levels.
In English for example, the word 'have' has an incredible number of structures. C1 and C2 really goes into very nuanced usage and no longer surface level.
In German, natural sounding sentences seemingly break B1 or B2 level rules in these special vocabulary forms (ie relearning that haben has a new grammar), and then learning these special grammars.
Or in other words: Natives don't follow the rules as written at B1 or B2. Learning the special exceptions to all kinds of words is C1+ level. So it's both vocabulary (knowing that words have new meanings), but ALSO grammar because it is complex enough to change the sentence structure.
I've been complaining about the word list 1950 words long for a B1 level course book. I did some reading (in German) and apparently only 750-ish of those words (the ones in bold) are actually part of the B1 test.
As such, I've decided that while I'll translate all words... I'll only put the B1 test words inside of Anki. This should give me a good compromise between vocab drills and course book progress.
Last week was way too much vocabulary not enough course progress.
B1 book has absolutely a ton of vocabulary. I'm only 4 exercises in but over 150 new Anki cards (over 75 new words).
I'm estimating about 1950 new vocab words for this textbook. I'll only be able to do this if vocabulary gets easier than it has been.... But I think that is going on.
A substantial number of words are compound words or otherwise related to words I already know.
Clearly I need to accelerate my words per day by significant levels. I'll trust in the process and the book but it's scary.
I'll also need to spend less time per card. The cards are somewhat less important than the reading, listening and writing exercises after all. So my Anki cards are dropping their already relatively spartan style to even more basic.
IE: do more vocabulary but maybe less effort put in. Cover more words but less deeply, and hope it works out?
Language club and Community college class continue to be helpful at speaking practice. This really is my weakest skill so anything I do helps.
I'm stronger than basically everyone in the community college class. But I'm the weakest one at the language club table. Certainly a weird feeling to go back and forth between them....
My current plan is to focus mostly on getting ahead in my vocabulary. Get all these words into Anki, start drilling them so I'm familiar with the words before doing exercises. Then I do the exercises.
If I'm always studying words from 'future' sections (a few pages ahead of where I am in the textbook), then that gives me time to Anki drill as a startup.
Then I do the Kursbuch exercises a few days later. (Lecture problems / exercises)
Then I do the Ubungsbuch exercises about a week after that. (Practice problems).
That gets me multiple times of review and practice for every word and concept. I'll be aiming at 6 months to clear this book... though frankly I'm already behind schedule.
They say that B2 is roughly Youth Literature level, in that you should be reasonably comfortable with reading Momo or "Die Unendliche Geschichte".
Also the books are apparently approachable even at A2 but you know, a lot more lookups needed. B1 is a weird slog for sure.
I got stuck in Grammatik aktiv A1-B1. I reached the B1 levels and it's not really explaining these concepts well
Soooooooo.... I've decided now is the time to pull out my B1 Kursbuch and actually begin working through B1. It's much harder level of listening and I'm very slow with these exercises. I'm hoping that my brain gets used to this increased difficulty and that I'll progress to a faster pace.
But day 1 is ROUGH. It's like I'm rather stupid again and need to look up a ton of words all the time to make any progress
I did look at Pokemon Weiße Edition again and my brain is much much better today. I'm able to read, albeit with a TON of lookups. But I can actually make a lot of the way through without lookups and guessing the meaning of the words. (Am I correct? Probably not. But it's kinda fun going through this with kinda crappy understanding lol). Maybe that will be a fun little reward when things get tough at this level.
I'm not a Japanese learner. But I'm aware of this.
For everyone who is unaware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eVhwP2G6OU . If you listen carefully, the numbers all have a different word depending on the situation. To help teach this concept, the Japanese have nursery rhymes.
English does have specific words to describe other things. Ex: Reams of paper. Sheets of paper. But its not a full counting-system like in Japanese. A bakers dozen (13 donuts, rarely used for things outside of cooking/baking). A gross (144 items). Dozen (12, very common). So I'd say English has specific words that are "alternative names" for numbers, but its not really the same at all.
You'd never say "Bakers Dozen" outside of bread, donuts or cupcakes. This "special number" only applies to baked goods.
I've only ever heard of a "Ream" used for counting sheets of paper (500 sheets).
A "Spool" of chips is 3000 chips for computer manufacturing.
These words get increasingly technical. Only computer engineers / electrical engineers would ever ask for a spool == 3000 chips. Bakers dozen is itself a rare word (13), rare enough that some English Natives don't realize it means 13 !!
German discussion class at community college was weird. It was maybe the first time I've met students who are "weaker" than me, or even anywhere near my level.
Despite spending 9 months so far learning German, my journey has been through self study, a German tutor, live practice in Berlin and finally a free club. At every situation, the other German speakers were far better than me in German across all skill levels.
But now that I've signed up for an at level class, I'm finding other students who (like me) struggle with prepositions, die/der/das, Nebensatz and so forth. It's somewhat eye opening to see the struggles of fellow students.
German Discussion class starts Tuesday.
I've bought a few more German songs (mostly covers to anime songs I've appreciated over the years). I probably should start looking for traditional / mainstream German pop / rock bands however, to get more "normal" music that typical Germans listen to.