If you’re new here, I’m Chynn, a Vietnamese currently studying in Germany. Here’s my blog “Life in lines” in which I will share with you and the lessons I’ve learnt along.
Here’s the second part of the series on my experience in learning a new language from scratch and totally by myself: German. You can read again the first part here.
I started learning German during a very difficult time in my life: I had to prepare for the IELTS test, organising documents for my studying abroad, practice for the National University Entrance Exam, cram for the approaching City-Competition, maintain my grades at highschool…
Sometimes I felt like giving up, but thanks to the habit I have created long ago (I have spoken about this in my previous post), I still manage to pull myself up and keep going.
My dear friend, sometimes you will find yourself in a difficult situation, thinking that maybe giving up is the best thing to do. Please, just keep moving forwards.
If you’re serious about change, you have to go through uncomfortable situations. Stop trying to dodge the process. It’s the only way to grow.
So, here I am, sharing with you truthfully my progress. I’m not a master, I don’t have any degree in science. These are just based on my experience of what fit me, what not. Therefore, if you think it suits you, feel free to steal it, but if it doesn’t, it’s okay! If you have any questions, please comment below!
Finding time to learn
As I have talked about in the last post, this is a critical factor you need to consider, as this will be the foundation of your learning habit as well as how likely you’re going to be succeeded.
And of course, this is totally based on your own timetable.
For me, my school started from 6:45AM to 4:20PM (Stressful, yes!), so when I got home, ate dinner and did some personal stuffs, it would have been 6PM.
I usually didn’t do homework at home, I did it all at school. But for some important subjects that needed to be researched like Literature, I only did it on Saturday or Sunday, when I had a lot of free time.
Just for a context: In our school, there are pop-up quizzes, which our teacher will call randomly some students and ask them questions. In fact, every subject does such thing, and I had to prepare fully for that.
So regarding those subjects, I use Flashcard to quickly learnt those in an hour, from 6PM to 7PM. And if I haven’t finished them all, I will wake up early in the next morning to finish them. (Comment below if you want me to write about this!)
Then, regardless of how much homework I still had, I put them aside, and started learning German.
Now, let’s dive into the best part:
How to perfect your reading and listening skills
If you’re learning German, lucky for you, there’s a website that’s just so perfect for learning, it’s DeutscheWelle. There you will find a lot of exercises to hone up your reading and listening skills.
But if you’re learning another language, and there is no such website, then don’t be worried. It’s totally fine to use materials from the textbooks, or every sources that you like.
The only different is, how you’re going to use these materials.
I learnt based on these two methods:
Active Recall
Be Patient Patient Patient!!!
1. Active Recall
Active Recall is the most effective and efficient learning method I’ve ever known, and I’ve been using it till this day.
And it’s, thanks to Ali Abdaal. He has a whole video dedicating to this. Check it out!
This is how I apply it: You will need DeepL, Anki, and a text.
a. Reading
First, I will read through the whole text. It’s not matter whether you understand it or not, just read through it to grasp the very basic idea of what the text ist about, at least 30-40% (if you understand nothing, maybe this text is too high for you, try to find other material that suits your level).
Then read it again, this time you have known the context of the text, look up every words that you don’t know. Yes, every word. You may find yourself searching words in every sentence, and it’s superrrr frustrating. But that’s okay! If you’re uncomfortable, you’re learning, you’re making progress. Just push yourself through this phase.
Now you have looked up all the words there, but it doesn’t mean you have understood the whole text. Now if you’re still unsure of some sentences, put it in DeepL (Please don’t use Google Translate!)
Why DeepL? For me, I find DeepL way more accurate that GG Translate especially when it translates to English. Using DeepL may benefit you a lot, especially when you aim to climb higher to reach B1, B2 or even C1 for example.
Now you’ve understand fully the text. Here’s the important thing:
Read the text again, find three sentences that you like the most, then:
Copy them into DeepL and translate it into you preferred language (If your language is not found in DeepL, then GG Translate is still okay).
Open Anki, create a deck, press add. The front will be your language, and the back will be German
Learn them everyday.
For more information about how to use Anki, click here.
You don’t need to make it complicated, just a smiple front and back deck is enough (like the image above).
Thank you for reading Life in lines. This post is public so feel free to share it.
I often read the manuscript first, skim through to know the context. Then listen for 2 or 3 times, then do the same with reading: Understand the text, pick out 3 sentences, put them into Anki. Then I listen again to make sure that I’ve understood everything.
It can be infuriating: There are so many new words in the text, or after tons of listening over again and again, you still cannot manage to follow the speech. Don’t try so hard, if you don’t understand a sentence even after translating it, or you still cannot understand 100% the tape.
It’s okay. Totally okay.
This is learning, not a test. You don’t have to be perfect.
The goal is PROGRESS, not PERFECTION
- Kathy Freston -
In fact, every perfectionist will eventually fail because of their pursuit of perfection.
The more you stress on trying to understand everything, the more upset you are, and the more likely you’re going to give up, thinking that ‘nah, I can’t learn a new language’.
You can with your mother tongue, so why can't you with another language?
Here’s the thing:
A baby needs 2–3 years of constantly listening to their parents talking in order to utter out their very first words. You just learn a language for weeks and even think of understand like a native? How?!
Based on my experience, here’s my advice: Don’t try to be perfect in every exercise. Just be modern, 60% is okay, 80% is really good. This is just a learning phase.
And…
Have you ever seen magic?
Because I do.
Indeed, you can see it by yourself: Leave the difficult text you’re struggling with behind and move on. Then, a week or month later, simply revisit it, and you will be surprised: You understand everything, including that one exercise you were once struggling with.
I have seen it, by myself. When I started using the textbook, it was really hard for me as everything was written in German, and I had to look up basically every word in a sentence. I was struggling, yes, I cried, literally, but I kept moving on. But a month or so later, when I opened the book again, and read the first lesson, I understood everything, literally everything on the page.
To learn more about how we learn language, check out this master:
I recommend you to watch the whole playlist, as it’s extremely useful in building your foundation of your method of learning the language. I did, and I have combined with studying techniques recommended by Ali Abdaal.
He’s Steve Kaufmann, a founder of LingQ, the app allows you to import you own text and mark new words. He’s learnt 20 languages and on his channel, he shares his techniques and methods. Mr. Kaufmann is my master back then, and I have consumed quite a lot of his videos and learn many things from him. If you want, check out his YouTube channel.
And one of the most important thing I’ve learnt from him, is what I have just shared with you, BE PATIENT.
Be patient is everything.
In fact, I have purchased LingQ for a year, and it’s really worth it. Here’s my profile, although it’s been abandoned since last August :’)
LingQ has a very unique and helpful feature: As you’re reading, you can click on words you don’t understand, so that you’ll see the translation and also how the word is used in other contexts. Those new words will be saved, and will be highlighted when they appear in the future text you’re reading.
Okay, to summarise:
In my experience, using the Active Recall method and Being patient have helped me improve my reading and listening skills. If you're looking to learn German, I highly recommend checking out DeutscheWelle, and for translations, I suggest using DeepL instead of Google Translate. Anki is also a great tool for memorizing new words and phrases that I use a lot, both for my schoolwork and learning German.
