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On top of 'Extr@', I have also been occasionally watching the German TV knowledge show 'Galileo'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_hXODDU4cA
I've watched this particular episode a number of times and although I haven't understood majority of the things being said, I could still kind of grasp the context of the episode, because the spoken German was combined with visual information, which served as an indication of what is being discussed.
I will carry on watching 'Galileo' as some of the things they talk about seems really interesting and I want to understand eventually what it's all about.They have hundreds of episodes so I will never run out of things to watch when I'm tidying my room for example.

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It has been a month since I set myself some targets (see ENTRY #4) towards improving my pronunciation and conversational skills. I have put what I have learnt into practice by having brief conversations in German with godmother. I would usually talk to him about topics which I covered from the most recent class. I haven't noticed any huge difference in my conversational German. In spite of this, I still
think dedicating time to this has been quite helpful, because those are only my first steps towards perfection. I will carry on doing this, but I
will try engaging conversations with different people aren't close to me (like my godmother)
as a way of stepping out of my comfort zone and perhaps with time it will become less difficult for me to engage in naturally-flowing conversations in German. I will do this by maybe arranging a voice call with my language partner Mailyn.

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Recently, more often than not, I found myself looking up words in German when speaking to my language partner, which is a clear sign to me that my vocabulary is not good enough. I have decided to change this by learning 100 most popular verbs in German. Hopefully this will help. I am planning on doing the same for adjectives.

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I have been using HelloTalk for about a month now. It has been a positive experience and I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to learn a language. After speaking to a bunch of German people, one person has stuck around for the longest and so became my constant language partner. So far we have talked about what we are studying, our plans for the future and exchanged our interests.
However, all of my language partners so far were my age so I used the informal 'du' form when addressing them. I would like to practice using the formal 'Sie' form with a native. I found someone who is 53, so I dropped her a message and hopefully we will be able to hold a nice conversation. In the meantime, I will carry on talking to Mailyn and expand my knowledge of the German language.

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After speaking to the teacher about where I can practice speaking German with a native speaker, she recommended that I should do research into apps specifically dedicated to learning a language by connecting and chatting with them online. This was where I discovered HelloTalk. The way it works is that native speakers teach you their language and you teach them yours. I have been matched with 3 different people and conversed with them only via text messages so far, although the app offers you to create voice recordings, voice calls and video calls. So far, this has been an extremely useful experience, because  I am putting the things I'm learning in class into practice, but at the same time I am forcing myself to learn words and phrases in order to be able to respond to their messages if I don't know how to say something in German. I learned the very basic future tense in German language to ask one of my partners where she will be studying. I use pons.com, which was a dictionary recommended by my teacher, so it's quite reliable. Although I have made lots of mistakes already, my language partners have corrected me every time, which I found extremely helpful, because I've learnt so much from them already. I am also helping others with their  English, so it brings me extra satisfaction. I am going to continue doing this for as long as my partners don't get tired of talking to me.

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I have been using Duolingo - the language learning platform - for quite a while now and found it extremely useful in becoming familiarised with new vocabulary, revising the articles and knowing when to use the accusative and dative case. I aim to spend at least 15 minutes on Duolingo a day and keep a record of anything new I have learned on here.

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In my spare time, I have been watching the TV series 'Extr@' in German. It's super helpful, because it's targeted for high school language classes, so it's suitable for my level of the German language. So far, I've found it very educational and genuinely entertaining at the same time, because of its Friends-esque sitcom format and also one of the characters is from the USA and is learning German, just like I am. Watching the episodes has really helped me in expanding and reinforcing my vocabulary as well as engaging in active listening techniques. I still struggle to understand when listening in German so the subtitles really help. However, I don't want to get into the habit of relying too much on subtitles, because they won't always be available, especially if I want to hold a conversation with a real person. I will carry on doing this on a regular basis, but without the subtitles on.

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Since I started learning German, I realised that
up to this point I seem to have grasped the German grammar pretty well. I think this is because German grammar is closely related to the Polish grammar, i.e. like German, Polish also has complex gender system and cases (except Polish has seven cases as opposed to German which has four). Knowing Polish has given me a great advantage at understanding the grammar, which makes the learning much easier for me.

There are, however, some aspects of the German language that I'm still struggling with, such as the tongue-bending pronunciation. I find certain words almost impossible to pronounce and this disheartens me from actually speaking the language. I always feel insecure in the lab sessions about pronouncing something wrong that I end up hardly speaking at all. I think this might be because I am a perfectionist and always have to live up to high standards in every aspect of my life, including the academic one.
I realised that I need some form of an ice-breaker that will make me more confident about speaking, even if it is not entirely correct. My plan to break the ice with the language is to try have simple conversations in German with my godmother who speaks the language fluently as often as I can (e.g. anytime she is free to call. In the meantime, I will carry on listening to the correct pronunciations on Duolingo and repeating the words and sentences out loud in my room until I get it right. Hopefully this will lead me in the right direction.