Hmm. I was going to call bullshit in 10 words a day (20 new cards) but he claims 70% retention setting, which is much much lower than mine/default of 90%. I'll start experimenting with some settings tonight....
It was a "wall" week for me, at least psychologically.
I started looking up a lot of the lyrics to the new songs I'm listening to, and am realizing that I've been totally mishearing the lyrics. It has taken me 2 hours (!!!) to reach the 1st Pokemon center in Pokemon Weiße. I've been getting like 70% on Anki this past week, etc. etc.
Its just one of those weeks, I'll keep practicing but its a downer this time. Sometimes progress feels like a step back rather than a step forward.
I'll share "Wann fängt mein Leben an?" (Tangled German version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S6l7Dazg-8
As far as Disney songs go, this one is on the easier side. Especially with the video. Its basically Repunzel going over her morning routine, so its a lot of "simple" and "beginner" words (ex: read a book, do a painting, clean and cook).
Example:
NPC: Also, dann werde ich dir jetzt aus dem Expeditionshandbuch vorlesen.
Hmm, I struggled with this sentence. I thought I understood it. I click next and...
Hier steht: Für Trainer ist der X-Knopf unerlässlich! Vergiss das nicht!
Ohhhhhh. He's reading (vorlesen) from the Expedition-Handbook. The next sentence makes everything so clear, even if the grammar of the first sentence was so difficult for an A2- like myself. (Its... an A2 level sentence. I "should" have been able to figure it out, but I'm not very well practiced with this yet).
In a lot of these cases, there's "play". I don't have to achieve full understanding from the first sentence, the 2nd or 3rd sentence helps explain the earlier sentences.
In Pokemon White / Black, it is the first time you depart as a group, a set of 3 where Bianca took the pokemon you were strong with, while Cheren is more of your traditional rival.
Professor to the group: Oh, ihr habt eure Pokemon schon kämpfen lassen. Das is ja großartig!
This is the first time I've had the opportunity of "someone" calling out to me with "ihr" (you-all in German). This is especially good practice because "ihr" also means "they" or even "hers", depending on context (yeah... German is weird). It actually took me a while to "understand" that ihr in this sentence was referring to me + Biana + Cheren all together.
It makes me appreciate the changes Pokemon did over the years. Earlier games was just "you" vs "rival" (You vs Gary, for example). Adding additional "friends" so that more group words, or other such "roleplay" situations really adds to the language-comprehension of this game.
I started Pokemon Weiße. It starts with...
https://www.pokewiki.de/Professor_Esche/Zitate
„Hallo! Wie geht's? Willkommen in der Welt der Pokémon! Ich bin Prof. Esche! Die Leute nennen mich auch die Pokémon-Professorin. Wie du vielleicht weißt, wird diese Welt von Wesen bevölkert, die man Pokémon nennt. In den Pokémon schlummern geheimnisvolle Kräfte. Begegnen kann man ihnen beinahe überall und es gibt eine große Vielfalt an unterschiedlichen Arten unter ihnen. Die Pokémon und wir Menschen ergänzen uns ganz ausgezeichnet! Wir führen ein Leben in Eintracht mit ihnen und helfen uns gegenseitig, wo wir können. Um das Band der Freundschaft zu seinen Pokémon zu stärken, ist es sehr beliebt, mit ihnen gegen die Teams anderer Trainer zu kämpfen. Tja, und ich habe mein Leben der Erforschung der Pokémon gewidmet! Aber genug von mir… Erzähl mir doch lieber ein bisschen was über dich! Bist du ein Junge oder ein Mädchen? […] Aha, ein <gewähltes Geschlecht> bist du also! Habe ich das richtig verstanden? […] Jetzt wüsste ich noch gern, wie du heißt. Verrate mir doch bitte deinen Namen! […] heißt du also. Ist das richtig? […] … Das ist aber mal ein toller Name! Gut, dann will ich dir jetzt noch mal deine treuen Weggefährten vorstellen. Ihr seid ein unzertrennliches Gespann! Dieser Junge hier heißt Cheren. Manchmal gibt er sich ein wenig mürrisch, aber er ist ein aufrichtiger Bursche. Dieses Mädchen hört auf den Namen Bell. Sie geht alles ein wenig gemütlicher an, aber gibt immer ihr Bestes… Ich werde euch dreien jetzt einfach mal vertrauen und jedem von euch eins meiner kostbaren Pokémon schenken. Hör mir gut zu, ! Von dem Augenblick an, an dem du dich für ein Pokémon entscheidest, beginnt dein ganz persönliches Abenteuer. Auf deiner Reise wirst du mit unzähligen Pokémon und Menschen in Berührung kommen, die nicht immer dieselben Ideen und Auffassungen teilen wie du. Ich hoffe, es gelingt dir, durch diese Begegnungen herauszufinden, was für dich im Leben wichtig ist und was nicht… Ich sehe, du verstehst mich! Das große Ziel deiner Reise sollte es sein, über den Umgang mit Menschen und Pokémon reifer zu werden und innerlich zu wachsen. So, jetzt aber mal los! Geh und stürze dich kopfüber in die Welt der Pokémon!“
This is very above my level. But I can get through it by looking up every word I don't understand. It takes me a long time to make progress, but I'm actually 100% understanding the grammar. Its only the vocabulary that's tripping me up.
dict.cc is very useful at looking up set phrases that occur. Bianca (English) aka Belle (in German) exclaims "Hopfen und Malz verloren", which actually means "they're hopeless". It used to be hard to look up set phrases/idioms like this, but fortunately dict.cc just has a good database of these and found it instantly. Aside from the idioms... the most advanced grammar is the "subjunctiv". Which is a "hypothetical' case in German. (Ex: the German word for "can" can be turned into subjunctive form, which then means "could" in English). You are greeted in this game with a few words from Professor Esche in the subjunctiv.
Aside from that, its banging my head against all the (tons) of vocabulary I don't know yet. But with modern computerized dictionaries, it really isn't bad to look them up.
Now the words may be difficult, but the game makes it easy. With graphics, sound-effects, and music playing over the text, you can get a good "feeling" of what any phrases are. And because Pokemon's sound design / music design is so integral to the story and so iconic, you'll always have a "gist" of what's going on even if you cannot understand the words in front of you. So the only question is how hard do you want to work at understanding these words?
I haven't made the decision yet on how "hard" to work on understanding everything... But I do think playing this game in German will 100% help me learn the language.
Based off of the A2 rubric, I've decided that I'm no longer A1+, but instead A2-. I haven't mastered all the required A2 skills (so I'd likely fail any real test), but I've got enough A2 level skills that I think A1+ is selling myself short.
I've picked up significantly more songs from Spotify, especially by focusing on translated Disney songs. Disney does offer very high quality songs that I already know. Of all the Disney songs I've listened to, I'm finding that the Lion King, Tarzan, Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Frozen, seem to be the best songs. At least in my opinion.
On an "Anki" perspective, I had a big review this Monday. I dumped all of my remaining vocabulary into Anki and had a 500+ review session day on Thursday last week. Which of course followed up with 200+ review session days for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That got me enough practice that I feel like my review session/test was done well on Monday. Because I feel a bit burned out, I prevented any new words from coming into my Anki reviews for ~3 days (Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday). I don't feel so burned out any more so I'll add new cards starting Thursday.
I enjoyed "Herr von Ribbeck auf Ribbeck im Havelland", though I don't fully understand it yet. I'll probably watch more of "Die Maus" moving forward.
Thank you. English was indeed turned off for some crazy reason.
I did check for Undetermined before making this topic... But I forgot to scroll down also check English lol.
It looks like everything is working again.
Today, my account only shows the following for this community: https://lemmy.world/c/leopardsatemyface
If I enter "Private Mode", or if I log out, I can actually see far more stuff.
Is there any account setting that might have caused this problem?
Oh, one more thing. There are also "Grammar Workbooks" which consist of hundreds of pages worth of drills.
If you are a nerd, these hundreds of pages of exercises might be more important than reference material. Buying a workbook so that you can DIRECTLY write on the pages and try immediately is also helpful.
Grammatik Aktiv by Cornelsen covers A1 through B1 pencil-and-paper drills. Very dry stuff but it kind of works...
You need a separate textbook to know what order to learn things (it sounds like your Goethe Institute course covers this). You need additional reference (Basic German: A Grammar and Workbook covers this, a 2nd clear perspective focusing on grammar). Finally you'll find that various bits of your speaking + writing skills suck.
Using Grammatik Aktiv exercises to drill on your weaknesses just makes sense. Maybe an intensive would try to complete the whole book but uhhhhh.... self study means you get to choose when you're done with exercises lol. Do as much as you see fit.
Grammatik Aktiv is however, 100% in German. You probably need to wait until you are A1+ before you buy Grammatik Aktiv, if only so you have enough vocabulary to even figure out what the drills are asking of you.
Maybe your A1 goal should be to learn enough German so that you can start Grammatik Aktiv, lol.
Basic German: A Grammar and Workbook by H. Schenke.
It's short. Too short. Too few exercises and only covers material up to A2+ or so. But at only 200 pages, it's so ridiculously short!!!! One of the fastest reads you can do on this subject.
As long as you use this book as an auxiliary, it's great. It's not a primary lesson material, it's to help explain other books / other lessons.
Copying others is the easiest language exercise you can possibly do. Just listen then parrot them.
So don't just listen. ALSO repeat, either in your minds eye or even out loud if you don't find it embarrassing.
Although I don't understand every word... the A2 level "Kurz und leicht" section of Deutsche Welle is surprisingly readable to me now (!!!). At least, today's story is working out quite well.
I still need to look up around 30% of the words in the article. But notice: the page has definitions (albeit definitions in German). I can understand some of the definitions (and for the definitions I don't understand, I think its a good learning opportunity to learn more vocabulary).
My Anki Deck is seriously too full and getting very difficult for me to push through as it is however. So I won't "study" this new vocabulary from this source. Instead I'll take it as a more "passive" kind of learning. I'll probably forget all these words by tomorrow, but I'm almost stressed out from the amount of Anki flashcards I have to do already... so I really don't want to do anything to add to my current workload.
Once I'm done my classes, maybe I'll add these words to Anki and study them seriously. But while I have classes and "normal" vocabulary words to get through, it really doesn't make sense to increase my work (or homework) load.
I cannot "listen" to Kurz und leicht yet. I mean, I can try but its not sticking at all. I can only read (and read at a relatively slow pace at that). But now that its "comprehensible input", I can probably start working up the speed-ladder and work my way to understanding this stuff through listening.
Reading is always the first skill you unlock at a level.
Hmmm, I need to raise my daily routine to 10 new words/day minimum again. I've realized that my classes are adding about +60 words per week. 5 new words/day (10 anki cards per day or 35 new words/week) just isn't fast enough to keep up with my classes... and I actually have ambitions to do "better than my classes". (I have pronouns to learn/drill, numbers, new songs, etc. etc.)
I've also begun to put some grammar into Anki flash-cards. "Everything" can seemingly become a good flash card with enough creativity and though (not necessarily a reversible card, but at least a "one-way basic" card). When Anki is my tool, everything I'm learning seems to be a "flash card" I can organize with Anki...
Anki's true superpower really is hand-crafting your own cards that work for you. Only YOU know what songs you're listening to, what books you're reading. Your vocabulary (and grammar) Anki cards really need to be created and customized to your daily life and routine.
Anki is an open-source flashcard app for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX with versions also available for Android and iOS. Unfortunately, iOS version costs $25, but all other versions are free.
Anki is a self-graded flashcard program / app. This makes it a combination quiz-app + timer system. Unlike Duolingo or other programs, Anki entirely relies upon self-grading, but this is more than sufficient for study.
Anki grabs the top cards from a deck (defaulting to 20 new cards per day. Feel free to customize this to whatever fits your needs best). Then each day, it grabs "scheduled review" cards + shuffles in the new cards, and shows you them one at a time. Once a card is shown to you, you the user click a button to reveal the other side.
After the flip, Anki asks you to self-grade yourself on your performance. "Again" means you grade yourself as "incorrect", and Anki will remember this mistake. Because you were "incorrect" on this card, Anki will show you the card again very soon.
If you choose one of the three "correct" scores (labeled "Hard", "Good" and "Easy"), Anki remembers that you've answered correctly, and will schedule the card some time in the future. I'll get to the difference of the three scores later, but consider all three to just be "correct" for now.
The precise time is calculated based on how well Anki thinks you know the card. If you know the card well, "Good" might schedule the card to be reviewed 1 month from now, but if you've made a lot of mistakes with a particular card, then that card will likely be reviewed 1 or 2 days from now. Its all data collected on a per-card basis.
Above is an example screenshot of Anki's memory: every single self-graded score is remembered on every single card, as well as the date and time of each score.
As such, Anki is a system of spaced repetition. The "better" you are with some cards, the less you see them. The "worse" you are with other cards, the more Anki shows you those particular cards you keep making mistakes with. Timer + self-grading == you only see the cards you're doing bad with, while Anki hides the cards you are doing good with.
FSRS is a new experimental algorithm Anki is using. There's been 6 versions (FSRS-1, -2, -3,... and of course FSRS 6 today). Fortunately, the overall gist has been the same for all 6 versions. Alas, its a lot of blogposts and technical math that's far too nerdy for most people https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The-Algorithm. For the math nerds who want to learn the algorithm, study away. But I'll attempt to do a simpler "translation".
Before we get started, click on your deck's preferences and scroll down to the FSRS button. Ensure it is on.
FSRS is simply three pieces of memory being applied to each and every "card" in your Anki decks. Every single card will try to figure out "R", "S" and "D". R is the probability that you've forgotten a card each day. The longer a card goes without being shown, the worse-and-worse "R" gets (this is the value Anki uses to determine when to repeat a card to you, it wants to show you a card before you've forgotten, but after enough time that you had a chance to forget, defaulting to 10% chance of forgetting).
Every single card tracked by Anki has this "forgetting" curve, primarily defined by the "R" aka Retention variable.
The theory is: if you show a card too often, you never really test your long-term memory. Furthermore, its too much extra work to review so many cards. By waiting days, weeks, or months before showing you a card again, Anki saves you time by not overly-reviewing cards you already know the information of. Furthermore, studies have shown that showing you information "right as you are forgetting about it" is the best way to remember (!!!). Any sooner, and you really aren't learning too well, but instead just temporarily holding things in your short-term or medium-term memory.
"S" stands for Stability. The more "stable" a card is, the longer Anki-FSRS thinks it can stay in your memory memory without review. Most "new" cards are assumed to be forgotten about within a day by default. However, as you get the card "correct" over-and-over again, Anki-FSRS will increase stability, thereby causing the longer review intervals. (Maybe showing you a card once every 3 days, then 7 days, then 1.5 months, then 3 months....).
"D" stands for Difficulty. The more times you get a card wrong (ie: when you click the "Again" button), the worse Difficulty gets. Anki-FSRS remembers that some cards are harder for you to remember... in particular the ones you keep getting wrong.
Even if you get a high-difficulty card correct multiple times, Anki "remembers" that you have been forgetting this card, and will show it to you again sooner. Ex: by default Anki will mature a card within 7x correct answers in a row. However, if a card is "difficult", Anki will keep showing you that card 10x, 15x or more, knowing that you need the extra practice.
Or in more math-nerd terms, "Difficulty" is the derivative of stability. The change-of-stability is determined by the "Difficulty" of a card.
Hard / Good / Easy all count as correct (ie: increases the stability of Anki-FSRS), but will do different things to your Difficulty score.
"Good" is the default, and Anki recommends that users hit the "Good" button 80%+ of the time. Lets pretend that a particular "Good" answer will result in 1-month timer for a particular card...
"Easy" basically is telling Anki that you don't want to practice with this card anymore (ie: low-difficulty card). After clicking "Easy", instead of taking a 1-month timer... Anki will likely choose a 1.5-month or 2-month timer on the card.
"Hard" is telling Anki that you want extra practice with this card. It increases difficulty, despite increasing stability. You'll see this card again more-and-more in the future. Instead of 1-month timer, Anki might show you the card again within 2-weeks.
Anki was originally developed to help its original programmer learn Japanese. Its not an end-all be-all app however. Anki is only a piece of any language-learner. You must also buy grammar / theory books, as well as write regularly in the new language... speaking and listening and more.
Nonetheless, "Anki" is your cudgel. A brute-force method to try to force vocabulary words into your brain through raw force. You'll likely never gain mastery of the words through Anki... but you can at least become a beginner and learn how to start reading. There's literally thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of words you must learn to become proficient in a language. And that's spelling, grammar usage (gender / der/das/die in German, or maybe conjugation rules and pluralization rules), definitions and more!!
In all cases, Anki can be used as a way to force this information into your brain, getting it ready so that those words can "begin to be learned" when you watch TV, listen to a foreign language podcast or hear those words in a song.
Yes, Anki isn't enough. But Anki is a great tool to get you started. And getting started is sometimes the hardest step for many people.
Remember: 1000 words is beginner level (near 1st grade level understanding), while 10,000 words is roughly high school level. If you wish to be seen as a competent adult in a new language, you must figure out a system to reach those 10,000+ words known. 10,000 words sounds like a lot in isolation... especially because true mastery of 10,000 words includes spelling, grammar (pluralization/conjugation/gender), meaning, and pronunciation. But think about it: 10,000 words is merely 14 words per day for 2-years. Plenty of people have used Anki to jumpstart that kind of long-term forced-learning of words.
My current Anki deck is the 4000 German words/phrases by frequency (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/653061995). Anki decks vary in quality but this is one of the better German decks.
Despite that, this deck starts out-of-order. I had to reorder the first 200 words into the correct order (for some reason, words #1 through #200 were actually the least frequent words). After reordering, I hit the "FSRS" button, signed up to AnkiWeb.com and synchronized my Desktop + Phone to this deck through the web-account.
I currently keep the defaults of Anki-FSRS at 90% retention and 20 words per day. I roughly have 80 review words per day + 20 new words, or 100 flashcards to review (front and back). I hit "good" or "again" most often, though some very easy words (ex: "Ich") I do hit the "easy" button on. I rarely hit "hard" at all.
When a card feels poorly made, I always go into "Edit" and improve the card. In most cases, the "English side" of this deck is lacking (ex: "because" either turns into weil or denn). In these cases, I add a German sentence to the English side with the German-word missing, so that the card can become "more fair" as study material. Anki Decks should always be customized to become your own notes.
If Anki gives me a new word, I also check Wiktionary for the proper pronounciation, as well as additional "example sentences" of that word. Anki is NOT a dictionary, its simply a notecard system, and you should rely upon good and proper dictionaries. In some rare cases, I go to German Language Discord and ask the community to help me understand a concept, but in most cases I do try to figure out the word myself.
I also use many songs, kids songs, Anime songs, pop songs and more as my primary source of "Practical German". (Ideally songs harder than Ramstein's "Du Hast", lol). I'm building an Anki deck out of these songs (ex: Backe Backe Kuchen, or "Bake Bake a Cake", a traditional German kid's song, has a list of common ingredients like sugar, salt, milk. Its good vocabulary practice... and also is a good source of practical words for an Anki deck). I also have a beginner German book ("Cafe in Berlin"), with a huge vocabulary list. Fortunately, the author for this book already made an Anki deck and I can just go to to the listed website and download the pre-made Anki.
Given the article about Anki and how that author was happily on 70%... I've decided to lower my Anki-FSRS from 90% (default) down to 80%. This should cut my workload significantly. It will take a week or so before the workload feels different, but the simulations suggest maybe 30% or 40% fewer cards-per-day and only losing maybe 5% of my memory. (Fewer reviews == more mistakes, which means more words "forgotten". But at only 5%-ish, its a good tradeoff)
The simulator also says that 70% is my optimal workload for fewest-minutes spent per card. So maybe I should keep dropping it down all the way to 70%?
As of today, I've completed 5 months of study. 3 of which were self-study, and 2-months under a tutor (twice a week meetings, 3 hours total). I have 3 weeks left in my tutoring session, meaning I need to figure out where my next steps are. Tutoring is expensive, both in time and in dollars. I 100% needed it, my speaking skills have gone from non-existent (with huge numbers of "unknown" mistakes in my pronunciation), to passable. I feel confident with the skills I've gained from our in-person practice. But I'm no where near my overall goals even with all the tutoring.
I feel the need to do more tutoring, but maybe later? My current bottleneck is clearly vocabulary and grammar. Subjects I can handle on my own. I also have significant amounts of self-study that I've built up (ie: Pokemon, "Das Maus", transcribing and/or translating songs, Grammatik aktiv. Vocabulary lists to memorize... etc. etc.). With all the tutoring sessions + homework, I barely have gotten any of my self-study done.
I'll at least work through my self-study goals (finish reading my A2 book. Maybe complete a full playthrough of Pokemon, etc. etc.), before I consider additional tutoring. I know this will stunt my speaking skills, but I'm also confident that additional tutoring in the future can "fix" my speaking skills later.
I did have one moment of "achievement" this past week. I've begun to remove the children songs from my playlist. While I haven't gained mastery of all the children songs of my previous playlist... I realize I am "strong" enough to be learning from real pop songs / normal German songs now.
I'll probably go back to some of the harder children songs (or at least, the ones with more complex rhythms / less boring songs). They really are great for learning vocabulary. But my skill level has evolved that I can be sampling harder songs / harder books / harder material successfully. So I should move forward and leave the easier stuff behind...