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.