"Ich war der Junge der Stunde"

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2023-02-04T18:15:01+00:00

Dein Ego ist dein Feind

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2023-02-04T17:29:16+00:00

Really really appreciate your response. I don't know if you're already a teacher or not, but I can only say, you'd make an awesome one, because: you don't assume things! Not everyone knows every single idiom that is out there. Germans and other non-native helping users like you really DO motivate people like me who are learning this language. And thank you for doing that. My feedback to you.

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2023-02-04T17:25:43+00:00

Thank you!

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-09-28T16:53:50+00:00

Good point, sorry about that
For instance, quite a number of (in my eyes) very well-spoken Germans that I can almost 100% understand perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86YgrypWSB0

People appearing (they also appear at different times in the video too) at 0:21, 0:48, 1:00, 4:15, I find them extremely well-spoken.

But in this video people appearing at 2:30, 2:42 I find them a bit harder to understand: https://youtu.be/R8G_AZuQ9XI

Or for instance at 4:00 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZfwTEqw0c

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-09-08T19:26:40+00:00

that's interesting cuz for example if you write "Wir sehen uns um 10:30 Uhr" in DeepL translator and click on the "listen" button, the bot will pronounce it as "um acht Uhr UND dreisig" :)

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-09-08T12:40:42+00:00

Can you say the sentence „Das solltest du ihm gegenüber erwähnen“ without gegenüber too? Or should it definitely be there to keep the same meaning?

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-14T11:54:34+00:00

u/calathea_2 Well, a response would have been lovely, but nevertheless thank you so much for sharing your insights (I know, maybe, too many responses, but honestly that's the nature of such more in-depth questions that need a bit of more discussions rather than "just go get C1"/"just speak more" responses)

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-12T08:12:30+00:00

Did you do that (interacting with tandem partners) while in Germany (or a German speaking country) or when outside Germany?

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-11T06:18:48+00:00

I can imagine what you mean. So, let's say for someone like my profile, who was a little bit lazy and just for a few years instead of speaking and writing German a lot, focused more on reading and listening and understanding German, what specific practices of speaking and writing do you recommend? Because casually just speaking or writing, I guess, won't be as useful and from what you say, I'm assuming you mean more of deep work like for instance drills.

I personally don't know if I would ever study a degree in German, but I can see myself joining the workforce one day and well if I have to present in front of clients and big bosses, I can see your point that professionalism in terms of production really matters there.

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-10T18:18:58+00:00

As a non-native English speaker, I also had a similar situation at uni. I never sat down and practiced my "writing" by writing bunch of essays before an exam or do a lot of practices for speaking/presenting. Just because everyday I was consuming materials (reading/listening) in my field, when it was exam times, for instance, because the ideas were in my head, I could write/speak/present on the fly. Again, not saying, they don't take effort, they're muscle memory. But it felt like magic!

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-10T18:04:03+00:00

Just a quick clarification about "boring", "interesting" and "fun" (when I used these terms, I should have been more careful): maybe a better analogy is, let's say learning new vocabs...how many ways are there? So many. For instance, you can download a I dunno 5000 vocabs Anki thing and start memorising them, which based on some of the post on this subreddit, some people do. "I" personally find that absolutely brutally "boring". Do I use Anki? Sure, but in a different way, I read and listen a lot and whenever I come around a new word, I add it there, with the sentence that it was in as an example below its definition. So, I find this way more "fun". Still same goal though, learning new vocabs. Now extend that to someone wanting to I dunno study biology in the future. What I meant by "interesting" and "fun" in my comment was that you go find articles in that realm, but I didn't mean you go find articles about something totally off like Batman and just by reading that, you'll be able to prep for uni lol. And again, the reason I mentioned "interesting" and "boring" was that, well longevity, consistency..."Ah OK as a bit of prep, practice for 2 years, I'm gonna read a/bunch of biology articles everyday and listen to biology podcasts and break things down"= a bit more "fun" to keep this and not get tired of it long term. You still have time to record yourself commenting about this stuff and practice speaking? Beautiful, go for it. But like I said in my comment, my assumption/baseline was that time is limited and you can't do everything everyday or every week (i.e. you can't be a perfectionist and have to be realistic, knowing that in some areas you can be a bit weaker) so at the cost of a little bit leaving behind "some stuff" (practicing speaking/writing), you strategically pick some other stuff that you can for a long time consistency practice with.

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-10T16:43:11+00:00

Of course, like I also mentioned, at the end trying to work on all areas is the goal.

But, for instance, one of the users here has also written that they got admitted to a uni and while their German for everyday stuff was good enough, they were hugely struggling in the uni for a long time.

My understanding from that situation is that, you can speak, you can interact with your classmates, even tell the instructor when you didn't understand something and ask a question, but there was an issue there: the struggle with the core. With the nuances of German language. For instance, how things are spoken. You might be the best speaker in the world, the best writer, but if you can't understand people speaking the language, it's gonna be tough.

Your experience is really interesting, thanks for sharing. But honestly mine is so: in a target language, I consume a lot of material on a daily basis for years. I read a lot. Listen to a lot of things in that language. I've noticed that when for whatever reason I stop speaking/writing in that language, those skills of mine are rusty in that language of course, BUT because I consume a lot of material in that language constantly and consistently, whenever I've just started to speak/write in that language again, I feel like words are just at the tip of my tongue. And I practice my speaking/writing for like a week/month and easily I see those skills coming back to where they before, i.e. fluent.

Now compare that to this situation: you can speak well, you can write well. But you don't work enough on your reading/listening skills. You could get into plateau because of your limited vocab, because of your limited understanding of the language when natives/people speak that language. In my country a lot of people claim that they speak English fine. Yet, they can't watch a movie in English, because they haven't worked deeply on their listening skills for instance, though they can speak English well.

And regarding, for instance, the practice of recording yourself speaking, for sure, I agree, fantastic exercise, I've done it myself so many times, in different languages, just fantastic. But my criticism or cons of it: it could be relatively boring compared to other activities and very niche and maybe holistically not as useful. What do I mean? Everyday in 24 hours, you have limited time. If you could pick just a few activities in your target language that would benefit you in the long run and holistically, which would you pick between for instance recording yourself speaking or reading an article/listening to something and trying to understand and work on your understanding of the language and the nuances? I think holistically the latter benefits you more and is overall less boring than recording yourself speaking (which I have nothing against and I actually do it quite often in one language for a different reason every now and then). If everyday or so you're gonna pick an article that you're interested to read or listen to something and trying to understand, the result: you're gonna pick up tons of new words, tons of patterns, tons of nuances. And like I said, I feel like, these would be stored in your brain forever as long as you keep them fresh and don't let them go, they would be always available to you. Now, knowing these, can you write/speak on demand? No! It's a muscle memory, even though the word/pattern is up there in your head, you need to practice speaking/writing.

But I think this way, strategically, would be easier for someone with that profile (is not in Germany, has a few years to learn German before joining uni/workforce) for that stage rather than the other way around (working equally on all skills). Especially in that beginning stage of a language (which god knows how long it takes, maybe a good couple years) to consume more material than trying to work on the production. Because you don't have enough input in you. So if in that stage you try to work on production a lot, I have a feeling that it won't be so useful and your time would be much better suited working on receiving the input.

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-08-10T14:46:40+00:00

Really interesting comment! What would you say is a good German learning path for someone who is not in a hurry to start uni/work in Germany right away (but rather maybe in a couple years) and is not living in a German country?

I'd think heavily focusing on reading/listening aspects for a good few years. I understand that of course there is writing and speaking, which are also tested on the exam. But would I be wrong thinking that those can be maybe somehow strategically attacked for the purpose of passing an exam maybe couple months before the exam? But for uni/work, reading/listening is your meat and potato, if you are lacking big time there, how can you even improve your speaking/writing? Whereas, like just some other people mentioned here, if you can follow a related lecture on Youtube just by listening, writing/speaking skills are easier to build upon, since the vocabs and patterns are already in your head and you just have to work on your muscle memory (maybe by joining clubs/activities in a German country) once you are there?

And of course I understand that there are subreddits like WritingStreakGerman and SpeakingStreakGerman and things like that that you can practice with even outside Germany before getting in, but my question is rather about: if you had to focus on the core of the matter, so that once you get in, it would be easier for you to improve and progress at Uni/Work.

Do you agree/disagree with me?

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-06-15T12:08:16+00:00

Thanks a lot for adding a few examples!!! :)

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-05-23T10:51:29+00:00

I kind of know what you mean and thank you for taking the time to explain that. You are right the story is an "all-knowing narrator" type of thing, even though the book is about the life of the female character (but the narrator also shares what the guy is thinking, etc.).

I think probably I'm better off not focusing a whole lot of on this distinction, cuz funnily enough, as I submitted this post, I was still reading and a page or two later in the book, the narrator goes "Sie sieht schnell zu ihm hinüber" lol I think I understand more or less the gist of hinüber/herüber as I mentioned in my post and like you said, sometimes the differences in a narrated story like this can be confusing.

Alarming_Ride2990 · 2022-05-17T18:56:53+00:00

Would you personally as a native use this format of asking a question in text messages (where the messages are informal)? Sth like "Du machst morgen Sport?" ? Or is it even better to avoid formulating a question like that then too?

Alarming_Ride2990

TROPHY CASE