Recite the dialog

I begin each of my FSI units by following along in the book during the Dialog for Learning. The Dialog for Learning introduces each new vocabulary word or phrase prior to saying the line of the dialog (the book and tapes both list words then the dialog line.) As the new words are listed, I create flash cards for them and mnemonic devices. I used to wait until I listened to the whole dialog to make the flashcards, and I used to wait for the drills to reintroduce the words before creating mnemonic devices, Now I do it all in "real-time" so I won't be distracted during the drills. If I forget a word during the drills I can look at my mnemonic device for reenforcement.

When I get to the dialog line I listen to the tape with little comprehension. Then I read the line in the book for comprehension and speak it. The tape repeats each line once and I do the same. The problem is that I recite the line without paying much attention to the underlying structure of the sentence. The better exercise is to actually memorize the entire line and recite it while looking straight ahead rather than down at the book. Although it's possible to memorize something without any comprehension (you remember those kids from the piano recitals,) It's a lot easier to fully comprehend what you're saying and the structure of the sentence. I am beginning to recite all the dialog lines without looking at the book, which enforces the new vocabulary and helps me build mental fluency with the grammatical structure. It's very tedious to memorize every sentence as I go through the dialog. Often the lines are twenty to thirty words, and I can only keep the whole thing in my head long enough to say it a couple times. I think the reward will be great if I persist. I am on the 22nd of 24 lessons of the entire German course. I think when I finish that I'll go back to the start of the first or second book and work my way rapidly through all the units again. I never attempted this with French oro Spanish but it seems needed given my complete lack of speeking experience with German.

Translation exercises should simply be speaking exercises

Here's a big obvious point. When doing the translation exercises, read the English once and then look up and straight ahead at an imaginary person in front of you. Think about the sentence and say it in the target language. This simulates having an idea in your head that you want to say to someone, not simply staring down at an English sentence and translating it.

I'm starting to write paragraphs in German. Here's one I wrote yesterday:

In Meiner Stadt. Jedes mal gehe ich ins Café, ich fange einen neuen Tag an. Wenn ich deutsch studiere, werde ich mehr gluck. Danach muss ich den wenig reizvollen Teil des Tags bearbeiten. An wen kann man diesen Teil denken? Gewöhnlich gehe ich zu Fuss oder mit dem Fahrrad nach der Universität. Aber manchmal würde ich lieber in einen Wald oder in die Berge gehen. Da könnte ich Aufnahmen von wilden Tieren nahmen, wenn ich ruhig stehenbleiben könnte. Der Himmel würde mit weissen dunkele Wollken führen. Schade, habe ich nur eine leichte Jacke! Vielleicht werd es nicht so viel regnen. Es gibt keinen Ton. Alles ist still. Tropfen schlagen mich und ich höre Donner. Niemand ist in der Nähe. Dann höre ich einen Zug. Er kommt durch die Bäume. In dem Wagonen sind viele Leute die mich begrüssen. Der Schaffner macht den Tür auf und bittet mich höflich in den Wagon raufstiegen. Wann ich meinen platz nehme, der Zug fahrt ab. Ich offne mein Reiselektüre aber bald schlafe ich ein. Jemand setzt sich neben mir hin. Sie ist meine Geliebte. Ich fasse sie bei der Hand und wieder schlafe ein.

nichts verstehen

I don't actually comprehend any German outside my course tapes. I watched to some Deutsche Welle video clips about various German topics, and naturally I couldn't grab more than a word here and there. Then I opened the slow news reports that have audio and accompanying text. Dozens of words that I haven't learned show up, so comprehension at any speed is a lost cause. Now here's a newsflash: I'm going to Germany in ten days. I hadn't thought to announce that here since nobody reads the blog, but it's worth noting for my own recollection when I read this over in the future. It would certainly be pleasing at this point to understand a bit of German news reporting, news reports being the easiest thing to understand on TV (there's a lot of context.) I'll have to accept that I will land in Germany with a decent vocabulary and ability to get a sentence out, but I won't be able to understand anything said to me. But that's simply the way I learn. Other people pick up the comprehension quick. I learn the grammar and a couple thousand vocabulary words.

The only real mystery is whether my ten days in Germany will do anything for my speaking and comprehension abilities. I think it will help substantially, but I also expect 95% of my conversations to be in English. My travel partner and I will practice a fair amount of German, and our hosts will likely humor me a bit with it, but I'm not going to run into anyone who doesn't speak English. That's an impossible dream in Germany.

I expect to complete my FSI lessons in the next two months. I've stepped up the sentence writing a bit but I haven't invested at all in comprehension. It's time to work on it. I have my Wise Guy a cappella CDs and many of the songs seem to have German lyrics online. A combination of music listening and the slow transcribed Deutche Welle news recordings should be a good start.

One last note. I finally learned the conditional tense in German, which seems to have no distinction from the subjunctive at the moment. The conditional is the last major component of the grammar for me to learn, I think. It has already made a big difference in terms of my speaking ability. Next time you speak English, notice how often you use the conditional. It's more imperative than conditional, heh, heh.

Don't be ashamed to forget!

Every day as I tear through my German lesson I am asked to translate an English phrase to German and I forget the German verb that I need to use. Nouns and common terms don't slip my mind as easily as verbs (remember that I group my flashcards by nouns, verbs, and commons). The problem with verbs is that they are more abstract concepts than nouns. It's easier for me to remember the word information (die Auskunft) then to remember the verb explain (erklären). In fact, I never needed a mnemonic device to remember die Auskunft, but I still struggle to recall the one for erklären: "Explain to me again why I have to have an ear clearin' if I always can hear ya loud and clear." One problem is that it's hard to make a mnemonic device for a verb. Notice that the "Explain to" part of my sentence is fairly optional. I always remember the "ear clearin'" part (what I call the actual device). In fact, my mnemonic device for the noun version of the word, die Erklärung (the explanatory statement, or explanation), is easier to remember: "My previously clogged ear clear(ly) rung after his explanatory statement". Notice that here "after his explanatory statement" is more necessary to the mnemonic device being a complete thought than "Explain to". Put another way, it's easier to translate a German noun into a significant part of a mnemonic device sentence than a German verb, and that's likely the same for any language. I could probably retool the first mnemonic device to be better associated with the verb: "Ear clearin' explains why grandpa's hearing goes in and out". In this sentence explain is a fundamental part of the sentence, so I'm more likely to association "Ear clearin'" with "explain". Keep this in mind when you write mnemonic devices, especially for verbs. It's ideal that the device is a fundamental component of the sentence. You might have less of a problem if you draw pictures instead of using sentences, since it's easier to see an image holistically than a sentence.

What I really wanted to explain is that when I do translation exercises, I forget a lot of words that I've learned. Forgetting a word should never be embarrassing while learning. It should be a revelatory opportunity to reacquaint yourself with the word. When I can't remember a word I go to my flash cards and search for the word in English. I'll usually find one obvious match, or I just guess which one in the results my exercise is looking for. Upon seeing the English written, I tried to remember the mnemonic device before peering at it below the word. Hopefully, just a few words of the mnemonic device will remind me of the German word. Sometimes I have to parse the sentence carefully to identify the actual device (e.g. Ear clearin'). I then try to say the German word based on the device and my recollection. Finally, I look at the other side of the flash card and verify the German. I may have said it slightly wrong or gotten it dead on. The next thing I do is add the German word to a word list for that day. At the end of my session I'll make a sentence out of triplets of words (as explained in recent posts). I often forget the word's meaning by the end of the session, so the sentence gives me another re-acquaintance with it. If I suspect that I'm frequently forgetting the same word I can search my sentence flaschards (I make one flashcard for each sentence exercise) to quickly count how many times I've forgotten a word during my exercises.

How many minutes until you're muttering in German?

Now that summer has arrived, I've been frequently wondering how many minutes I have to dedicate to my studies in order to get something to stick in my head. The most important thing is the number of days a week I do it, which should be about 5 or more. The continuity is essential. Lately I have done about five days a week and also managed to spend one-and-a-half to two hours studying each morning. I find that afterward I spend the day blurting out a couple of the words I learned. It's not that this is necessarily useful to my studies, but it is a good indicator that I'm studying enough for words to stick in my head (even if I don't remember what they mean.) I'm guessing that this muttering will start occurring with as little as a half-hour of intense study, but it probably helps to do more. How many times have you done an activity all day only to go to bed at night and see yourself doing it as soon as you close your eyes. Back when I was a kid and was a life guard, I would go to sleep and have to wake myself up to tell myself that I didn't have to watch the stupid pool that I kept dreaming about. I certainly don't need visions of German when I close my eyes or dream, but there must be some critical threshold of study that allows you to penetrate your subconscious and let something permanent in. I probably should just consult some books on the subject, but for now I'll leave it to rumination. Moo.

Words that won't lock in

As I complete the 16th lesson of the FSI German books, I am intently integrating sentence writing into the process. As I said in my previous post, my hope is that the practice will commit words to my memory and reinforce my comfort with the sentence structure. Already certain advantages are emerging--I spend a great deal of time struggling with the same nouns and verbs each day that I practice the lesson. They are mostly words that are new for that chapter, and occasionally words from previous chapters that I forgot over time. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten the English meaning or German translation of the same words in the last few days.

Some verbs are:  

• eintreten - to occur, to arise;
• aufschieben - to delay, to put off
• sich etwas ansehen - to take a look at something
• sich lassen etwas entgehen - miss something, fail to do something

 Some nouns are:  

• die Einladung - invitation
• die Bescprechung - the conference
• die Bedeutung - the meaning, significance

Notice that all of the meanings of the words are fairly basic--not remedial--but basic. I believe it's important to be able commit them all to memory and summon them whenever I need them in speaking or writing. They challenge me, though, for various reasons. Some are rather long words with a few syllables but are similar to other words (e.g. Besprechung, Bedeutung). Some verbs are variations of common words but add reflection (sich etwas ansehen - literally, for oneself something at look.) The fact that ansehen is a variation of sehen - to see, tends to give me difficulties because I don't remember if it's ansehen, or aufsehen, or perhaps aussehen. The second turns out to mean stir, which I haven't yet encountered, and the third means to appear, to seem. This might all be perfectly logical if I had a better sense of what the prepositions mean. Of course, prepositions are often one of the hardest things to master in a foreign language because so many don't translate directly to and from English. Finally, there are some verb constructions, like sich lassen etwas entgehen, where I have to remember the reflection (sich), the helper verb (lassen - to let/leave), and the main verb entgehen (literally ent - away, gehen - go). So the whole clause might translate literally to on oneself let something away get, or simply, to miss, fail to do.

As you would imagine, it helps to write about these trouble words here and break apart their components. I would like a way to commit the words to memory after only forgetting them two or three times. I don't want to look something up 10 times and have to write a sentence with it 10 times because I've keep forgetting. I'm wondering if there is something sort of shortcut I could slip into the process, such as drawing a picture, that would commit it to my memory in fewer attempts. Given that I already have the sentence mnemonic devices for each word, it seems ill advised to also draw a picture that might confuse me further. I need to give this more thought, maybe in Chapter 17 :)

Sentences

I've been incorporating more writing into my German lessons now. Though I'm not quite writing free form sentences, I am writing down vocabulary words that I need to learn and making sentences out of them. To review, when I do the chapter dialogs I write down all the new vocabulary after I go though the dialog for learning. I now immediately write mnemonic devices for all of them (I used to wait until they came up in the drills.) Then I do the dialog for comprehension and fluency to reinforce the words I put to flash cards. At that point I haven't actually learned many of the words, unfortunately. When I do the variation and translation drills, if I can't remember one of the vocabulary words that show up (or one of the vocabulary words from previous lessons,) I'll look up the flash card to review it, then I'll write it down in a text file. So by the end of one study session I'll probably have 10 or so words written down. At the end of my study session I'll go through those words, splitting them into groups of three, and come up with sentences for each group.

The nice thing about writing sentences is not only do I reinforce the new vocabulary, but I also go back to my flash cards to look up other words that I want to use in the sentences. If I want to use a word that I haven't learned yet, I'll generally try to find a substitute, or look it up in the dictionary if it's a word worth learning. I then copy the groups of words and sentences to flash cards, putting the words on the "front" side of the card and the sentence on the "back" side. This way, if I look up a word I don't know in the future I'll see that I've already written it n number of times in the sentences. This satisfies my constant desire to know how many times I've looked up a word in the dictionary, which most electronic and Internet dictionaries sadly don't keep track of for you.

When I write the sentences I also get a lot of practice with grammatical constructs. I know some of my sentences are constructed incorrectly, but they are close to correct, and I know I have them recorded in my flash cards so I can go back and correct them as I better learn the language.

This process is slowly improving my ability to really learn the vocabulary and practice my writing. I'm still struggling with comprehension and fluency, but I have a couple techniques to improve that. First, I always try to listen to the German on the audio files without looking at the text first, unless it's the first time I'm hearing the dialog. I usually don't understand what they say, so I then read it in the book and possibly replay it a couple times. When I speak the variation drills I never look at the base sentence in the book, because I want to practice saying memorizing the structure of the sentence as I repeat them. Usually this isn't very hard. On the translation drills I only look at the English, of course, and make sure to construct a full sentence in German before looking at the book's translation.

So things are still evolving, which is no surprise. By the end of this second German book I think I'll have a very powerful learning technique. I hope I can share this technique in a comprehensible way with other users of the FSI book.

The downhill slope

Sometime last month in the midst of grad school finals I came to the glorious end of the FSI German Level 1 course, having churned diligently through 12 units of Phefferkucken-thick lessons (that's gingerbread, apparently--pepper cake.) The duration of the feat was lengthy; I started the lessons in November 2008 and even went through the first couple several years prior. It's safe to say though that the small amount of flexibility offered by my grad school schedule allowed me to dedicate many a morning to the lessons over coffee and a cinnamon-chip muffin (Zimtmuffin? Yes! Verified by Google: http://www.chefkoch.de/rs/s0/zimtmuffin/Rezepte.html)

When I finished the book I quickly ordered up FSI German Level 2 and then sat back and reviewed the first. There was actually quite a bit of material that I missed the first pass through, and I chose to go over some of it. My main error of omission was a nifty extra reading at the end of the later chapters that introduced a pile of new vocabulary. I read these over and excitedly added the new words to my flashcards. More minor were the conversation and writing exercises, which I passed over with little regret. I think writing and speaking are extremely important, but I can delegate those activities to more modern activities, such as writing in German in this blog.

I've taken to libraries lately and checked out a couple German-related books. The first is the history of the German language. I read a chapter and realized it would be more appropriate when I've thoroughly studied the language, which may be never. What I was really looking for was a fun book about German, such as Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue written about English. I suppose I'll need to look for such a book in the German language. The other book is a collection of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm. I'm a few pages into Hänsel und Grethel, and I do mean a few pages. I takes me about an hour to read the tiniest of pages. I probably look up about 20 to 30 words a page. This is well above my 10 word maximum, but it's so delightful to read this familiar story in its original language. I can anticipate each line, and there's nothing like learning words of place. Forest words are especially enthralling, from woodsman to shining pebble (not really a forest word), the story lights up. I miss some of the more complex structure and idioms, but the simplicity of the story makes for a great opportunity.

I have just over 900 flash cards now, and I don't want to give the impression that I have a 1000 word vocabulary. Many of these cards are a struggle to recall. But I work on them frequently and need to dedicate more time to really studying flash card composition and learning techniques. I've finished the first lesson of the level 2 book and the vocabulary is mounting, not to mention that from Hänsel und Grethel.