Hallo Freunde! Week 2 is over and we are into week 3. I'm starting to really feel like we are gaining some traction now and the difference between week 1 and week 2 are substantial. I have made a few more adjustments:
1. The daily word lists did not seem to be working and I gave up on them after a few days. It was difficult to find the time to produce them and even more difficult to find the time to study them. My wife and I both work full-time and it did not seem to be taking advantage of the precious time that we did have.
2. I put together flashcards of the most commonly used nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. I started with 20 or so, then put together more each day. I also put together flashcards for short phrases that I thought would be useful (like "What is the matter?", "I'm tired", "see you tomorrow", "Are you hungry?", etc). Altogether I have made over 100 flashcards. We go through them each night before bed and right now we are getting about 80% consistently right. I haven't done any flashcards for verbs yet, but that will come this week.
3. I've been listing to some beginning German podcasts Radio D by Deutsche Welle and they have been very helpful.
4. I do a large portion of my work from home and so I have the convenience of being able to have the television on in the background some of the time that I work. To take advantage of this, I have taken to having German language movies on Netflix playing while I work. Sadly, the German language selection is very poor and so my choices are limited. I have found that listing to German movies really helps my mind to get "in synch" with the rhythm of the language and I confess that I get pretty excited when i hear words that I recognize.
5. I put together a "Study Guide" of sorts that is about 60 pages or so and contains full conjugations for about 30 verbs, lists of the top 25 adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions, a pronunciation guide, a list of 500+ essential nouns, and some other things I put together. I bring this study guide with me when I run errands and try to spend time with it whenever the opportunity presents itself. It is a great reference guide for the basics and could almost pass as a very simple German dictionary and grammar guide.
6. I have really been making an effort this week to actually speak the language out loud. I try to imagine myself in certain social situations and verbalize what I would try to say. I have found it to be quite helpful because it has made me really try to express myself with a very limited vocabulary. The key is to speak out loud. No mater how much you memorize or study, you will never be able to speak fluently unless you speak. I have really come to the conclusion that there is a significant amount of muscle memory involved in speaking a language and unless you speak it regularly, you will always stumble and stammer with words that your mouth is not accustomed to saying.
So, my progress? Significant. I would say that:
I have a firm grasp on about 100 or so vocabulary words.
I have about a 4 year old level of grammar and sentence structure.
I could probably get my point across to someone who spoke only German (though it may take some "creative" means to do so)
I am about where I want to be by week 3.
Some great internet resources I found:
ielanguages.com Great tutorials
Top words Lists Top 25 lists for verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions
Fluent in 3 months Cool blog by Benny Lewis - The Irish Polyglot
Thanks for reading and come back in a week when I will have more updates as we approach the end of the first Month.
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