In my experience, trying to learn a language without being committed has lead to... nothing! Recently, I have tried to use the books and the movies to teach myself, but I was having little success and was struggling with correct pronunciation and actual specking. Never the less, the German language has always been an important part of my life and my childhood. Some of my fondest memories are of visiting my aunts, uncles, and cousins in Kempen, Germany. Over the next few visits, I found that my cousins were becoming increasingly fluent in English and I still only knew "Ich Leiben Dich" which is "I love you" in German. Something had to change. With this book I have been able to start slow and learned to recognize and understand words that "crossover" from German into English. The "crossover" words are words that look the same in both languages when written, even though they sound slightly different. In this book, Edward Swick wrote that learning a language is like learning to play a piano, no matter how hard you work, just learning the structure, phasing, and key signatures is not going to make you a master musician. He says you actually need to speak the language out loud or play the a real piano.Who knew!
I used this piece of advice and read the German aloud to myself. This was a great help for me and I feel I retained much more knowledge by reading aloud. As I was studying my mom and my Oma, who are both fluent in the language, offered their help. Together we worked on my pronunciation and accents and recognizing umlauts. My mom was a huge help and "Hearing the sounds pronounced by a native" (Swick, 13) changed how I was reading German and how I was speaking it as well.
So far, I have only learned the basics of German but using the knowledge I have accumulated I was able to read pieces of a letter sent to me by my Tante Hildegard. It was really important for me to be able to read and understand my Aunt's letter because it made me feel more connected to my family a world away. It is such an amazing feeling to be able to understand at least some of my family's native language. I circled and underlined the words I was able to read.
My next step in learning is to incorporate the CD. I wonder if other people find CD's helpful when learning a language?
Swick, Edward, MA. The Everythig Learning German Book. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Avon: Karen Cooper, 2009. Print. The Everything.
I've used those Speak in a Week CDs before to learn Spanish - they were not nearly as effective as practicing while immersed in the language, but it was amazing to me how much of it stuck when I was traveling in Spanish-speaking countries.
I've attempted to use CDs when I tried to learn a couple languages, but they've become obsolete; so I can't use my laptop to listen to the CDs and I don't have a portable CD player anymore; so they're not really helpful. I compensate this by using apps on my smartphone and on the computer that teach me languages. But I think one of the best way is to speak the language with someone who's native to it.
I've never tried CDs when I was learning Chinese but what I really recommend is that you should watch shows that are in German with or without subtitles. As weird as it sounds, I sometimes like watching this really popular kids cartoon show called Xi Yang Yang (Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf). It has no subtitles but I was able to learn a few new words from it. Learning a language is always hard, I'm really interested in how you're able to learn your language at school (is it ASL?) and how you're able to learn German too! It takes a lot of determination and that's an awesome thing to have.
Thank you so much! I have taken your advice and have begun to watch some German films. It is actually going to be the topic of my next post And thanks Cheryl, ASL is mostly manual so it has not been a huge challenge to learn German at the same time. :)
I've used those Speak in a Week CDs before to learn Spanish - they were not nearly as effective as practicing while immersed in the language, but it was amazing to me how much of it stuck when I was traveling in Spanish-speaking countries.
ReplyDeleteI've attempted to use CDs when I tried to learn a couple languages, but they've become obsolete; so I can't use my laptop to listen to the CDs and I don't have a portable CD player anymore; so they're not really helpful. I compensate this by using apps on my smartphone and on the computer that teach me languages. But I think one of the best way is to speak the language with someone who's native to it.
ReplyDeleteI've never tried CDs when I was learning Chinese but what I really recommend is that you should watch shows that are in German with or without subtitles. As weird as it sounds, I sometimes like watching this really popular kids cartoon show called Xi Yang Yang (Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf). It has no subtitles but I was able to learn a few new words from it. Learning a language is always hard, I'm really interested in how you're able to learn your language at school (is it ASL?) and how you're able to learn German too! It takes a lot of determination and that's an awesome thing to have.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! I have taken your advice and have begun to watch some German films. It is actually going to be the topic of my next post
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks Cheryl, ASL is mostly manual so it has not been a huge challenge to learn German at the same time. :)