<p>Just curious about the techniques of other people. Especially those who learn/learned German because this language is ****ing hard! I know two languages fluently (English, Russian), and little it of Spanish. I am taking German in college right now and always have problems memorizing words.
P.S.: I’d rather hear answers from people who took/are taking language at the college level because learning language in High School is a joke.</p>
<p>I’m taking German… I’m only in 102, which is probably why I still find it easy… but yeah, I don’t have much technique… it’s basically - don’t study at all till the day before the test, cram, and pray that you pass… it’s worked so far, but yeah, now I’m realizing (as we get more into dative and such) that I need to know all the articles… before it was okay, because I could usually just guess what the word meant and not worry about the article, but now I’m thinking I’m gonna go back and memorize all the vocab…
When I do try to memorize vocab, I make flashcards, and highlight/use different pen colors for the gender of the words… pink = feminine, blue = masculine, black = neuter… also, I haven’t tried this myself yet, but I want to - you could stick the flashcards on their appropriate object (although I guess you can’t do this for every word) - so your flashcard for ‘die wand’ would go on the wall… Also, kinda just talk to yourself (or a friend, if you have one that speaks german) in the language you’re learning… you might sound slightly crazy, but it’s fun and it helps you learn how to form sentences easily.
If you have any tricks you use to help you study, let me know! I’ve kinda gotten rusty over winter break, and I really don’t feel like reviewing…</p>
<p>Yea I am in German 2 which is like German 102. I use program from <a href=“http://www.brainsystems.com/english/index.html[/url]”>http://www.brainsystems.com/english/index.html</a> to study. Check it our. The idea of using colors for different gender looks good to me.</p>
<p>I’m majoring in German and have taken it for 6 years. When I started, I just looked for patterns, especially in verbs (for example, ei verbs often change to ie in imperfekt). Once you pick up these patterns in verbs, you can make very educated guesses on conjugations. Rather than using different colored pens, I liked to use pink, blue, and white flashcards; I thought that way was easier to keep the genders straight. Sometimes I’ll make up songs since I’m a verbal learner. In HS, we had a song that was used for drilling verb conjugations, one for the akkusativ prepositions, one for dativ prepositions, and another for prepositions that can be either akk/dat. As for learning nouns, I always did drill and kill with flashcards.</p>
<p>haha, imagine Asians learning English, it’s way harder.</p>
<p>no no no. engrish.</p>
<p>I’m an asian who learned english as a 2nd language. No engrish sorry, I didn’t learn english in Asia… I came to America when I was 7 soo…</p>
<p>I know korean and English and self learning japanese (I can understand what is mostly being said). I suggest listening to alot of songs if you can! That’s what definitely helped me with Japanese… books didn’t help as much. But watching shows in that language and listening to songs in that language definitely will help you with that certain language overall (probably not so much for a certain test but…whatever)</p>
<p>yeah, I’m in German 1 this semester, and although it’s been only one week, I’m already having trouble. It doesn’t help that the professor refuses to speak in english during class time. I’m usually the kid in the back saying “Wie, bitte?” lol. I’ll probably start using flash cards once the heavy vocab starts, and I don’t know what I’ll do about pronunciation. After having 3 years of spanish in high school, I pronounce most of the words like they do in spanish…it gives my prof. a good laugh…</p>
<p>german is actually pretty easy, it’s the closest variant of english out there! whatever you do, people say not to convert things back to english when thinking about speaking b/c it makes things more difficult.</p>
<p>English? Lol don’t even compare English to German. I had to learn both languages and English is so much ****ing easier. No conjucation in verbs, articles are hella easy to memorize, plurals are easy to understand and stuff like that. Englihs is hard to read/pronounce, but from its grammers are easier</p>
<p>take a look at the blog of this guy who teaches english to foreign speakers. It is at <a href=“http://www.thelinguist.blogs.com/[/url]”>http://www.thelinguist.blogs.com/</a> A lot of interesting ideas. Another treasured link is <a href=“http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dfstephe/secrets.html[/url]”>http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dfstephe/secrets.html</a></p>
<p>As for learning vocabulary, the best way I know is thru mnemonic methods. You take the foreign word and make up an association, the sillier the easier to visualize/remember. For example, to remember that in Thai “khao” means rice, imagine a cow eating rice. You start by learning and reviiewing your words with the associations and you practice, pretty soon the right word comes without having to use the crutch. See <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkword[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkword</a> or the website of a company that sells products to do this at <a href=“http://www.unforgettablelanguages.com/frames_a3.html[/url]”>http://www.unforgettablelanguages.com/frames_a3.html</a>. The owner of the website, Michael Gruneberg, years ago wrote a series of books (French by Association, German by Association, etc) that are out of print but often only a few dollars used. If you’re buying from the website I recommend the CD ROM so that you see the words written out as well as played thru your computer.</p>
<p>If you’re seriously interested in learning a language there are lots of resources out there. Don’t expect your class to give you all you need. Check out the Pimsleur tapes, available at most language labs. And there are versions of the show “French in Action” for Spanish and German as well.</p>
<p>One more suggestion from many years as a struggling language learner. Never fall behind! Classes go very quickly in college, quicker than many people can really learn even if they’re working hard on keeping up. If you fall behind then pretty soon (and I mean in just a week or two at the start) you’re so far behind that it just feels futile to try even if you knew what you should try. Don’t let this happen to you.</p>
<p>German is actually very easy once you get the hang of it. Flashcards are key to initially learning vocabulary, but the best way to remember new words is to write out a definition for each one in German. </p>
<p>Make it easy on yourself and learn [url=<a href=“http://german.pravapis.org/articles_noun_gender.asp]patterns[/url”>http://german.pravapis.org/articles_noun_gender.asp]patterns[/url</a>]. For example, any foreign word is probably neuter, any word that ends in -eit or -e is probably feminine, any word that deals with -er or -an is probably masculine, etc. </p>
<p>Practice makes perfect! I’m sure your college has a lot of resources for a German learner- conversation hours, German newspapers (e.g. Der Spiegel), etc. Ask your professor what you can do outside class.</p>
<p>Get Mastering German by Barron’s (level 1 and 2) and the Pimsleur series. This will teach you the language much better than your college courses could ever hope to do.</p>