The Grammatik aktiv practice (one or two per day) has proven to me the importance of grammar drills. By reviewing A1 level grammar, I’m now a bit faster at ein/eine/einen/einem, kein/keine/keinen/keinem, dieser/dieses/diesen/diesem, mein/meine/meinen/meinem, wer/wen/wem, welcher/welches/welchen…
It feels like I’m not progressing in some respects because of so much review. I already knew all this stuff… But knowledge isn’t enough! I never built up the speed or confidence, the “skill” of using these little grammar things.
I’m beginning to enter the A2 level drills. I’ve also flipped to the end to look at the B1 drills, all look quite doable because I kinda know all the theory.
But when I’m trying to read or listen to my daily German material (Kurz und Leicht, or various podcasts…) It’s clear that my biggest weakness remains vocabulary. 5 words/day on Anki has always been on the lighter end of German review. I might have to “crunch” vocabulary practice somehow.
Sigh: it’s like every skill I have is so inadequate. Progress in one skill (grammar) reminds me of the weaknesses in other skills (vocabulary).
All in all: yes. Grammar is important, even if it’s boring. These were the things I made lots of mistakes with when I was trying to talk or write in German. So hopefully my output (speaking/writing) has improved.
I’m back to it today after a (mostly) week off. All I did was old flashcards.
Starting an interstitial review plan before starting my JLPT N2 prep in earnest at the end of the month. Was a little concerned at first because my analysis suggested some foundational issues (particles and sentence parsing mostly), but today’s session went really well. I think I’m showing good instincts.
Most interesting thing from today: I’m noticing impatience when starting comprehension in my head. You know how Japanese to English interpreters always take quite a while to start speaking? I really do need to build that memory-holding skill of topic, main verb first, be patient with it. My comprehension will get better and more efficient when I do.
It’s really cool to have gone from piecemeal vocab and grammar parsing, conjugations and particles and all that, to starting to see this bigger picture stuff.
I did way better than I thought I would on my Japanese oral placement exam last week and I get to skip the unnecessary levels at my college (yay! Time and money!). I still am keeping up with daily listening and I try to do speaking. Once Summer hits I’ll be reading up a storm and doing Quartet 2.
I really need to add to my Anki mining deck, it’s slowed down to just ~13 a day…
おめでとう！
Hope you share your thoughts this summer on Quartet. I’m having mild regret at having done Tobira instead, hah.
I got bored with regular way of learning Japanese so started learning lyrics of some music I like to listen to, and try to sing them.
I Wanna be a Girl
You just blasted me to the past with that. I haven’t listened to Mafumafu in so long but it’s truly amazing how much he can change his voice. But I do think about revisiting JP utaite to see how much I understand now.
He did that live too a while ago. I don’t know if I can but I might as well as try. My voice hasn’t dropped for some reason, so who knows.
I got my first full B1 German reading book. I’m a few chapters in.
I’ve managed more spoken interactions, but it’s still small and short kinds of statements. We have been doing more German at work for discussions.
My German classes start this week. They’re B1.2 level. It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but it’ll be great to spend more time focused on listening and speech.
I did try out a few of the Telc B1 tests. I scored about 75%, which isn’t good enough for going right into the exam, but I’m getting closer than I thought to B1.
Spending roughly 40 mins on my languages now, the odd day or 2 did an hour of Japanese, but altogether starting to make work on the languages. My other hobbies are sort of languishing though by comparison. Despite the increase in my language studies, it’s been an overall downturn in efforts. I guess I’m still trying to get back on the horse.
Working on more immersion. Started watching France 24 YouTube videos this week… Which is hard AF lol, sucks to be me that I’m more interested in current politics than gaming Ytb channels… at least the upside is that everyone seems to be speaking in standard French. But yeah if anyone has good French-speaking YouTube channels (not “for learning”, but what locals watch) please share them my way
Anki is a bit slow but still going, slacked off on learning new words a bit but revision is going well. Good news is that I’m almost completely done with the first 500 words of the 5000 deck, so I should be able to delete it soon
Been busy between work and family stuff lately, so this week I’ve mostly just been maintaining.
Likewise, longer week so mostly consuming contents in a given language instead of properly studying.
However, been sorting some stuff, so hopefully I can start studying Libras soon (Brazilian Sign Language), though that’s more of a hobby project, so priority’s been low for quite a while now.
