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Learning Log, January 2023

·6 mins

Intent #

My intent for this learning cycle was to get a feel for beginner-level German, starting from scratch.

Some of my motivations in deciding to spend the month with German: I have previous exposure to German literature in translation (particularly classic fiction, poetry, literary theory, and philosophy), I am at least somewhat aware of the influence of German scholarship in the study of classical languages, and I’m interested in building capacity to live and work in Europe as a software engineer.

With that said, los geht’s!

Preparation #

At language level zero, I like to gather two kinds of resources:

  • a frequency dictionary, for a very broad foundation of important vocabulary to master, as soon as possible.
  • a few texts of continuous narratives, with sentences that are simple enough to understand without much, if any, direct grammar instruction.

The complete list of resources that I consulted are below.

Vocabulary #

Input #

Grammar #

Other #

Reflections #

The frequency dictionary #

The Routledge Frequency Dictionary of German is excellent: the corpus seems well selected to produce a useful list of core vocabulary, with appendices of the most frequent words by part of speech, as well as sidebars organizing vocabulary by theme.

My general strategy in using a resource like this is to memorize 300-500 of the most frequent words as quickly as possible. The dictionary is also an important source of simple and often short example sentences, which I find useful as a memory aid and as additional reading input in their own right.

From there, I generally work to expand my vocabulary by prioritizing words in example sentences that are hard to comprehend, and once those are covered, I return to learning vocabulary in frequency order.

The Goethe Institut #

The Routledge dictionary was sufficient for my immediate purpose, so I postponed the Goethe Institut vocabulary lists. At a glance, they appear to be more tuned for interactions in daily life, and worth consulting eventually, especially in the interest of certification.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the Adobe DRM to work on my borrowed items from the Goethe Institut library. Still, it provided a decent interface to search for resources to track down elsewhere.

The readers read #

For input, I invested most of my time in with the texts that I could read with the most sense of ease. In rough order of comprehensibility, these were early Assimil German lessons and Klett Sprachen readers, followed by the Hueber mysteries, followed by the Dino lernt Deutsch series. All of the above come with high-quality recordings that are essential in developing an ear for the language.

I rate Dino lernt Deutsch a bit more challenging than the rest due to a somewhat richer vocabulary and syntax, but the vocabulary in each chapter is generously glossed, and the writing style expresses a wry sense of humor that makes for an entertaining read.

The reading list contains the list of specific readers completed so far.

The readers postponed #

The following are input sources that I knew beforehand were too advanced for my current level, but that I kept on hand to get ideas about future goals:

  • Michael Ende’s Die unendliche Geschichte. I grew up watching the movie, so there’s an element of nostalgia here. My sense is that the vocabulary is just out of reach–I could make it work with focus and effort, but at the expense of having mental reserves for other more generally applicable skills. I am postponing for that reason, but likely not for long.
  • News in Slow German. Even the beginner level is a big step up in terms of my current passive vocabulary. There are generous glosses and vocabulary lists provided, so I’ll return to it when I’m ready to really focus on vocabulary in preparation for Der Spiegel.
  • Der Spiegel. A B2+ resource that I note primarily because this style of longform journalistic writing has become one of my mid-term goals when learning a language, after success with Italian and reading extensively from Internazionale. At my present level, I just spot-checked a few articles to see if I could identity vocabulary that I recognized.

The grammar #

I skimmed several sections of Routledge’s Basic German. Each chapter is quite brief and clear. For my present needs, I appreciate the restraint in the level of explanatory detail. I’ll likely keep using it casually as a reference and perhaps doing an exercise here and there.

The apps #

The following are the apps that I used in some capacity over the course of the month:

  • Anki: I find it indispensable in the early and intermediate stages of learning, in that I can tune it to be a highly controlled environment in which to encounter new vocabulary.
  • Duolingo: I generally do one lesson per day to keep my streak alive. It has the benefit of being a game I can play in the troughs of my mental energy, while I prefer to spend the peaks on readers.
  • Babbel: I completed nearly the entire series of A1-B2 courses during the month. Overall a brisk introduction to German grammar, with each lesson culminating in a dialogue between two speakers. At present the B2 level feels like a bit of an afterthought, and the increase in speed and complexity of the B2 dialogues too abrupt. I will likely phase this out if becomes too much like another spaced repetition system.
  • Glossika: A product with which I am experimenting to improve my pronunciation and intonation of simple sentences. I don’t foresee the app getting much use beyond a kind of voice training.

Outcomes and future plans #

I feel good about the level of comprehension that I’ve achieved over the course of the month with A1-level readers. My subjective sense is that I’ve learned enough beginner vocabulary and syntax to comfortably understand around 90% of the language that I’m encountering. My first steps will be to finish off the Assimil German course and the Dino lernt Deutsch series, and then look toward A2-B1 level materials.

My initial goal for the month was to aim to encounter the top 3000 most frequent words from the Routledge dictionary as quickly as possible, and I managed to get through 2500. With Anki, the consequence of introducing 100 new words per day is lengthy daily review sessions of 200-300 cards. These review sessions are particulary grueling given that most of the cards are still very new and a lot of effort is expended trying to recall them. I plan on taking at least a week off from adding new vocabulary so that the ratio of mature-to-young cards becomes more palatable. Still, I’m planning on getting at least a passing familiarity with the next 1500 most frequent words.

Projecting forward for the next three months, I foresee the first month spent reading A2-B1 level texts from the publishers above, the second extensively reading from Michael Ende’s novels, and the third on News in Slow German with the goal of ramping up toward Der Spiegel.

Justin Hayes
Author
Justin Hayes
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