The Lab

I regularly scan Twitter using http://search.twitter.com/ for tweets about “learning German”.

I discovered a tweet by Josh, a self described “language geek”, and through that his interesting blog Language Geek. In particular I found his post More Exposure, Less Study relevant to me. I was prompted to write a comment on my feelings about this dilema. For the record, I am posting that comment here.

I am starting to think that exposure really is the key. I’ve been learning German since April 2007 and I have put a lot of time into studying it and listening to it.

However after all that effort I can’t actually say very much in German. I am happy with my level of comprehension relative to the amount of time I have been learning.

My problem is that my head has gotten so caught up in the complex grammar that speaking now seems to be close to impossible. I mean, when trying to speak, by the time my head has processed the grammar, the moment is lost.

I am travelling to Germany in September (for a big exposure) and I am seriously considering taking a break from active and formal studying after that trip. This is not giving up, rather an attempt to clear my head and actually learn how to speak. During this break, I would focus on conversing with my German online and offline friends, and attending German speaking social functions.

Children learn to speak by exposure. As an adult learning by exposure is a much slower process, complicated by a brain that is now wired in English. Time to accept this and re-wire :)

• BEOLINGUS: Dictionary/Wörterbuch This is an online dictionary for translation. It is very useful particularly as it provides audio pronunciation examples of many common words. Needs Adobe Flash Player and/or an MP3 player (eg Windows Media Player).
• LEO Deutsch-Englisches Wörterbuch Very detailed online dictionary.
• dict.cc A different kind of German-English dictionary. The goal of dict.cc is to make it possible to share your vocabulary knowledge with the world.
• Some other online German-English dictionaries
  

• http://german.about.com/ There is a lot of lessons, articles, activities, discussions and more here. Best to leave it to you to explore for yourself. I think the site layout and structure is not so good, but it’s worth struggling with that to find the valuable content. This site appears to have now moved here http://forums.delphiforums.com/aboutgerman/, but I am not sure what is going on.
• BBC Languages - Learn German Fairly straight forward basic online German Language course. Has some useful reference information eg days of the week, numbers.
• German Level I A very basic introduction to German.
• Deutsch – Warum nicht? Online course includes MP3 and PDF’s downloads for each lesson. Presented by DW-WORLD.DE.

• german-podcast.de This is quite crazy. The presenter, Stephan Wiesner, is a German man living in Switzerland. Stephan sounds like he is a really nice guy and he puts a lot of effort into producing these podcasts. However they are all over the place, ie beginners one week more advanced the next. Also the subject matter covered is the world around him and his interests. This is great as it is very personal but you will learn words about subjects, eg mountain climbing, in which you have no interest. Recommended on the whole because of Stephan’s warmth, passion and sense of fun. Stephan appears to have given up on this project and it is no longer updated.
• Slowly spoken daily news reports in German from DW-WORLD.DE http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1833641,00.html. RSS version seems to work best http://rss.dw-world.de/xml/podcast_langsam_gesprochene_nachrichten.
• SBS Radio Australia Try the Children’s program because the language is simple.

• mylanguageexcahange.com This is a site, where for a small fee you can contact German speaking people who want to practice their English in exchange for you being able to practice your German with them. It is offered for a range of languages, not just German and English. The idea is you make contact with someone and then work it out between you how you will communicate, eg by phone, Skype or in person if practical. This is a fun way to learn. For long distance communication Skype with both audio and video is recommended. Video helps when words fail.
• English > Skype Community > Learn languages and more” href=”http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showforum=140″>Skype forums can be used to locate language partners.

• A Guide to German Pronunciation This is a very handy reference, although quite brief. For example do you know how to pronounce a “g” when it appears at the end of a word or “ü”? This will help you. It also provides audio examples. This site is part of a larger Exeter University Beginners German which unfortunately has some broken links and incomplete sections.

• DW-radio deutsch Livestream (wm50) Audio news in German from Deutsche Welle. DW-WORLD.DE homepage in German and in English.
• n-tv Streaming videos on demand with a lot to choose from.

• SBS German program guide. Many programs are now available as podcasts.

• Learn German tips http://feeds.feedburner.com/LearnGermanTips
• Deutsche Welle: DW-WORLD.DE - Germany. News from Germany in English. http://rss.dw-world.de/rdf/rss-en-ger
• Expatica Germany: German news in English. http://www.expatica.com/RSS/RSS_feed_German_news.xml
• German News - English. Brief news items from German newspapers translated to English by volunteers http://www.germnews.de/rss/dn.rdf

Twitter

My latest craze is Twitter . I am still learning how to learn Twitter myself, but I think that it has the potential to put me in contact with other people with similar interests. Therefore I am hoping that I can use it to expand my German skills. Go to http://twitter.com and register. If you are like most people you won’t get it first off; you will probably think it is stupid. To help you get started try The Big Juicy Twitter Guide by Caroline Middlebrook and this Video: Twitter in Plain English | Common Craft - Explanations In Plain English from Common Craft.

One good tool for finding people on Twitter with similar interests is Tweet Scan. Using several Tweet Scan RSS feeds combined with RSS mix, I came up with a way to find people on Twitter who might be learning, or prepared to help with learning, see here http://www.rssmix.com/u/33031/ or subscribe to this feed http://www.rssmix.com/u/33031/rss.xml.

“Friends” on Twitter are referred to as “followers” or “following” so once you have joined go here http://twitter.com/madam3181 and follow me by clicking on the follow button under my photo. Make sure you read Twitter help http://help.twitter.com/index.php it will get you started.

• List of German newspapers
• Berliner Morgenpost. Daily newspaper in German. You can subscribe to a very personalised and detailed daily e-mail.
• SPIEGLE Online International. In English.

For people in Melbourne Australia

• Gumtree http://melbourne.gumtree.com.au/f-Community-skills-language-swap-W0QQCatIdZ18330
• I found an informal group that meets in Melbourne about monthly at a bar to talk socially in German. All levels are welcome http://german.meetup.com/356/

• Berlin Webcams from Deutsches Historisches Museum

I have been checking out Friendfeed trying to understand how it works and how it might be useful for people learning German.

To learn more about Friendfeed see this listing of bookmarks by Louis Gray http://del.icio.us/louismg/friendfeed.

To join the German learning Friendfeed room I have created go here http://friendfeed.com/rooms/deutschlernen.

I feel that I am about to have a breakthrough with my spoken German.

Readers of this blog will know that this is something that I have struggled with, and still continue to struggle with more than one year into my learning.

This week has been a fairly intensive week of learning. Every day there has been some spoken German activity. There has also been some attempts at writing.

Today I find my head full of German words. I am translating my thoughts, where possible, into German. I think I am becoming obsessed.

Rather than obsessed, a more positive way to look at it is that some kind of breakthrough is imminent. I hope so.

This blog never normally gets much traffic… well the content is limited in scope.

Look what playing on Twitter has done, just in one week.

Today it was pointed out to me on Twitter that learning German using Twitter is ‘…that learning German in Twitter is very ambitious - like learning to drive a car by starting with motor racing.”

Another person also suggested that there is a lot of “bad German” on Twitter. True, just like there is a lot of bad English on Twitter. I think I can live with the bad. In time I should be able to differentiate between the bad and the good.

I take these points. However, what I am trying to do is collect a group of followers who are either native German speakers or advanced learners. By twittering these people I hope that they will come to realise that I am a German learner. I further hope that some Twitterers will be the type of person who is willing to help. So, for example, I make a tweet in German and it is wrong. Somebody responds with the errors corrected. I can learn that way.

Also it should be noted that Twitter is only a small part of my overall learning strategy. I also do many other learning activities and spend a lot of time doing them.

If you see me on Twitter say hi. If you see me posting incorrectly in German on Twitter; correct me. (I will usually put “KW” at the end of my posts to indicate that “corrections are welcome.

Oh, and if you are a German who is learning English I am happy to help you with that too.

Non-Germans find Germans very direct. I like their directness. I found this nice article about it “Why you’ve gotta love the Germans“ by Eileen Yu. See what you think.