Learn how to talk about your language learning
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: Chuck here upper intermediate season 1 lesson 23. I’m learning German effectively. Hello and welcome to germanpod101.com, the fastest, easiest and most fun way to learn German. |
| Judith: I’m Judith and thanks again for being here with us for this upper intermediate season 1 lesson. |
| Chuck: In this lesson you’ll learn how to talk about your language learning. |
| Judith: This conversation takes place at the office cafeteria. |
| Chuck: The conversation is between Mr. Jones and Mrs. Bayer. |
| Judith: The speakers are good colleagues, therefore they’ll be speaking informal German. |
| Chuck: Let’s listen to the conversation. So you may already know that we both learn several foreign languages. Well, I’ve personally studied, German, Esperanto, Spanish, French, Dutch, American Sign Language and a little Polish. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Bayer: Sag mal, Frank, wie kommt es eigentlich, dass du so gut Deutsch sprichst? |
| Jones: Ach, ursprünglich hatte ich Deutsch in der Schule, aber der Unterricht war nicht sehr gut. Der Lehrer konnte selbst kaum Deutsch. Ein Jahr später hatte ich alles verlernt. |
| Bayer: Aber jetzt sprichst du gut Deutsch... |
| Jones: Ja. Vor zwei Jahren habe ich Deutsch für mich wiederentdeckt. Ich höre gerne deutsche Musik und dachte, es ist eigentlich schade, dass ich sie nicht verstehen kann. |
| Bayer: Es gibt doch Leute, die die Texte übersetzen. |
| Jones: Es ist nicht das Gleiche. Jedenfalls habe ich dann angefangen, hier und da ein bisschen Deutsch zu lernen, mit Podcasts und Internetseiten... |
| Jones: Dann musste ich vor einem halben Jahr umziehen und ich dachte mir, dass ich eigentlich gerne in Europa leben würde, zumindest ein Jahr oder zwei. |
| Jones: Also habe ich intensiver Deutsch gelernt und mich nach einer Arbeitsstelle und einer Wohnung in Deutschland umgeschaut. Freunde in München haben mir geholfen. |
| Bayer: Und deshalb bist du jetzt hier. Interessant! |
| Jones: Ja, und mir gefällt es hier. |
| Bayer: Das freut mich. Außerdem bist du hier ganz von Deutsch umgeben, da kannst du es nicht mehr verlernen. |
| Jones: Haha, ja, das stimmt. |
| Bayer: Say, Frank, how did you come to speak such good German? |
| Jones: Oh, originally I took German in school, but the class wasn't very good. Even the teacher could barely speak German. A year later I'd forgotten it all. |
| Bayer: But now you speak German so well... |
| Jones: Yes, two years ago I rediscovered German. I liked to listen to German music, and thought it's really too bad that I can't understand it that well. |
| Bayer: But there are people who translate the lyrics. |
| Jones: It's not the same. In any case, I started to learn a bit of German here and there, with podcasts and web sites... |
| Jones: Then a half year ago I had to move, and I thought to myself that it'd actually be nice to live in Europe, at least for a year or two. |
| Jones: So I studied German more intensely, and looked around for a job and an apartment in Germany. Some friends in Munich helped me out. |
| Bayer: And now you're here. Interesting! |
| Jones: Yeah, and I like it here. |
| Bayer: I'm glad. Besides, here you're completely surrounded by German, so you can't forget it anymore. |
| Jones: Haha, yes, that's true. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Judith: And I studied English, French, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Mandarin, modern Greek, Arabic and Swahili. I obviously don’t speak the all at the same level. |
| Chuck: Yes, same with me. Anyway in this lesson, we want to share some language learning tips with you. |
| Judith: Okay, first tip, find materials that you like, I cannot stress this enough. If you dread working with your materials, then you won’t learn anything. |
| Chuck: No matter how much time you are supposed to spend on German, if a teacher or a program tells you how much, spend as much time as you can. Even when you are doing something else, you could have German podcasts or our dialogs or German radio in the background. It won’t be as effective as if you actually paid attention but you’ll still end up picking up some words or better pronunciation. |
| Judith: If given the choice, it’s better to spend a little time on German everyday rather than a lot of time on German once a week. Even if you can only study German say every other day for fifteen minutes. That’s still better than studying it once a week for one hour. |
| Chuck: Activate your idle time, equip your ipod with lots of German materials and listen to them while commuting, cooking, washing dishes, waiting in line or also see if you can get five minutes of German after lunch or five minutes of German before going to bed. |
| Judith: Experiment with different input sources. Many people learn more effectively when they can hear and see something at the same time. So try to get transcripts for things that would otherwise be audio only. You could also experiment with hearing something in German, while reading the translation or the other way around. See what works for you. |
| Chuck: I hope this helps. |
| Judith: Also please post your language learning tips in this lesson’s comments or in the forum. |
| Chuck: Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. The first word we shall see is; |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Judith: [ursprünglich] |
| Chuck: Originally or initially. |
| Judith: [ursprünglich] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [Unterricht] |
| Chuck: Instruction or class. |
| Judith: [Unterricht] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [Lehrer] |
| Chuck: Teacher. |
| Judith: [Lehrer] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [verlernen] |
| Chuck: To forget what you had learned. |
| Judith: [verlernen] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [übersetzen] |
| Chuck: To translate. |
| Judith: [übersetzen] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [Seite] |
| Chuck: Side or page. |
| Judith: [Seite, die] and the plural is [Seiten] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [umziehen] |
| Chuck: To move to another home. |
| Judith: [umziehen] and the forms are [Er zieht um, Er zog um, Er ist umgezogen] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [zumindest] |
| Chuck: At least. |
| Judith: [zumindest] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [intensiv] |
| Chuck: Intensive or intensively. |
| Judith: [intensiv] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [sich umschauen] |
| Chuck: To look around or look out for. |
| Judith: [sich umschauen] and the [um] splits off. |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [umgeben] |
| Chuck: To surround. |
| Judith: [umgeben, Er umgibt, Er umgab, Er hat umgeben] |
| Chuck: Next. |
| Judith: [außerdem] |
| Chuck: Besides. |
| Judith: [außerdem] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Chuck: Let’s have a closer look for the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Judith: The first phrase we’ll look at is [wie kommt es] |
| Chuck: How come or how is it possible? |
| Judith: [wie kommt es] and next we shall look at [wieder entdecken] |
| Chuck: To rediscover. |
| Judith: It is based on the [entdecken] |
| Chuck: To discover. |
| Judith: The [wieder] prefix, fulfills the same role as the English re, that is, it’s like saying again. To rediscover or to discover again. [wieder entdecken] |
| Chuck: That’s a very important reunification. |
| Judith: Yes [Wiedervereinigung] and [hier und da] is the same as the English expression “here and there”. [Ich habe hier und da mal Deutsch gelernt] |
| Chuck: I earned some German here and there. The grammar focus of this lesson are more verb prefixes. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Judith: We already covered some in the lower intermediate lesson 25 but here are some more. Let’s go over them one by one. First, [ent] implies that something is taken away or removed for example in [entdecken] the [Decke] is taken away. So you get discover and [decken] is cover. We also already had [entfernen]. |
| M:To remove. |
| Judith: Where the notion of [fern] |
| Chuck: Far |
| Judith: Is combined with the idea of to remove. For another example, there is [entnehmen] |
| Chuck: To take and remove. So to take out. [ver] has a negative connotation but the exact meaning of [ver] words can be guessed. This lesson we saw [verlernen] |
| Judith: To forget what you learned. Unlearn. Earlier we had [sich verwählen] |
| Chuck: To misdial. |
| Judith: [verhüllen] |
| Chuck: To cover up. |
| Judith: [verrückt] |
| Chuck: Mad. |
| Judith: And [verdreckt] |
| Chuck: Dirtied. |
| Judith: We also had others. |
| Chuck: There are two types of [um] when it splits off and when it doesn’t. The one that doesn’t split off means around. This is the origin of [umgeben] would you give us some examples of this? |
| Judith: Yes [umgeben] |
| Chuck: To surround. |
| Judith: [Umleitung] |
| Chuck: Diversion or detour. |
| Judith: [umfahren] |
| Chuck: To drive around. The [um] that does split off usually means something differently. Do you have some examples for that? |
| Judith: [umfahren] |
| Chuck: To knock over by car. |
| Judith: [umziehen] |
| Chuck: To move to another home. |
| Judith: [umdenken] |
| Chuck: To rethink. Finally we shall look at [über] this prefix can mean being overly much better like when English speakers use uber or it can also be the equivalent of over, trans or across. |
| Judith: Example words are [übertreiben] |
| Chuck: Exagerate. |
| Judith: [überlegen] |
| Chuck: Superior or to ponder |
| Judith: [überwinden] |
| Chuck: To overcome. |
| Judith: [übersetzen] |
Outro |
| Chuck: To translate. That just about does it for today. Attention perfectionists, you are about to learn how to perfect your pronunciations. |
| Judith: Lesson review audio tracks |
| Chuck: Increase fluency and vocabulary fast with these short and active audio tracks. |
| Judith: They are simple to use. Listen to the German word or phrase |
| Chuck: Then repeat it out loud in a loud and clear voice. |
| Judith: You’ll speak with confidence knowing that you are speaking German like the locals. |
| Chuck: Go to germanpod101.com, download the review audio tracks, right on the lessons page today. So see you next week. And don’t forget to comment if you like this lesson. |
| Judith: [Also bis nächste Woche]! |
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