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This week in class, we covered basic introductions and the German alphabet.
Firstly, for my independent study I rewrote the rough notes I had made in class, using colour coding to make important information stand out. Not only are my notes more organised now, but this also gave me the opportunity to revise what we had learnt. I also created flashcards of all vocabulary and phrases on Quizlet, which further consolidates my learning, I aim to try and practise at least one set each day.
Next, I practised the pronunciation of German letters using sound files from two websites: https://www.rocketlanguages.com/german/lessons/german-alphabet and http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/guide/alphabet.shtml. I found this really helpful as I learn languages best through listening and repeating. Having said, I do have trouble with some sounds in German, such as the two ways to pronounce 'ch' and the 'r' sound. I have a hard time controlling where in the mouth 'ch' is pronounced, though hopefully I will improve as I practise more and more over the next few weeks. As Spanish is my second language, I automatically want to roll the r's but I learnt that that's only how they're pronounced in Southern Germany.

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This week focused on Länder und Sprachen, where we learnt how to say where we come from and what languages we speak. We also learnt numbers from 0 to 20 in German.
Just like last week, the first activity I did for independent study was rewriting my class notes in neat, as well as creating flashcards for new vocabulary and phrases on Quizlet, in order to organise and revise what I had learnt.
I also wrote some practice sentences (pictured at bottom of post), which I found useful for practising basic grammar points such as subject-verb agreement and prepositions such as 'aus' and 'in'. Currently I'm finding this fairly straightforward, though I look forward to practising more complex sentences once we learn more grammar points. Grammar is one of my favourite things about learning a language!
To revise numbers from 0 to 20, I have been reciting them over and over, as well as completing the homework tasks in the Netzwerk Neu textbook, where the audio files read out phone numbers and you have to write them down - I think these exercises have been really effective in helping me memorise numbers.

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We covered quite a few new things in this week's class: how to talk about our hobbies, the days of the week, regular verb conjugation, introduction to German nouns, and numbers past 20.
As usual, the first thing I did for independent study was rewriting my class notes to organise them and colour code them so important information stands out to me more. Then, I made new flashcard sets on Quizlet for hobbies and days of the week, as well as updating my numbers set by adding multiples of ten, hundreds, and thousands. Updating previous sets has been helpful not only for consolidating new knowledge, but also revising vocabulary I learned in previous weeks.
To further consolidate my grasp on German numbers, I used the website https://www.fluentin3months.com/german-numbers/ to learn how numbers past 20 are structured. I made notes on this in my notebook (picture at bottom of post). I found this website really useful for understanding numbers better - because they are a bit complicated!
Lastly, I logged back onto my Duolingo account and began the German course, and I have completed quite a few beginner lessons. So far, the vocabulary and sentence structures Duolingo uses has been quite basic, so this will not be my main resource for practice and it will not replace flashcards, writing sentences, speaking aloud, listening to German audio, etc.
Next week, I would like to begin creating a noun bank for new vocabulary, with sections for masculine, feminine, and neuter. This will come in handy for memorising which gender a noun is, as German doesn't seem to have a predictable pattern for noun genders like Spanish does.

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In this week's class we were introduced to plurals in German, as well as talking about work/study and places in towns and cities.
After completing my usual task of rewriting and colour coding my class notes and creating new flashcard sets on Quizlet, I wanted to understand plurals a bit better. It's not as predictable as it is in Spanish, where you simply add an -s to the end of a noun. So, I used the website https://deutsch.lingolia.com/en/grammar/nouns-and-articles/plural to learn the most typical ways of forming the plural. It's quite overwhelming in my opinion, however thanks to the next task I have done, I feel a bit more optimistic about learning German nouns and their plurals...
This next task was something I mentioned in last week's post, which was creating a noun bank. Using a spare notebook, I have begun to fill it with all nouns featured in the textbook thus far, as well as their plurals and their meaning in English. Then, I have highlighted each of them with one of three colours: blue for masculine, pink for feminine, green for neuter. This will be a handy visual aid for studying and quick reference. Of course, as time goes on this notebook will become more and more filled as I learn more vocabulary. Hopefully as I continue to use it will prove to be effective for memorisation!
Finally, after covering the topic of jobs in class, I wanted to expand my vocabulary beyond what is in the textbook. Using the website https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-german, I looked up lots of professions and wrote them in my notebook. You can view a picture of this list below.

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This week's class focused on the indefinite article, the negative article, the imperative, and pronouncing vowels in German.
As well as organising and colour coding my class notes, I wanted to write a brief guide for pronouncing vowels in my notebook. I ended up using http://www.germanlanguageguide.com/german/pronunciation/vowels.asp as my resource, as it contains written examples of the pronunciations and also some youtube videos as audio aid. I found this website quite helpful for understanding the basic rules better, however it will take lots more practice in order to get used to the pronunciations for a wide range of German words. To achieve this, I'm going to listen to the audio files that come with the textbook, and repeat what is said over and over in order to get used to the sounds.
Reflecting on my methods of learning nouns as well as their gender and plural, I don't yet feel confident with memorising them. Creating flashcard sets and a noun bank has been a good start, however I definitely think I should be doing a wider variety of practice techniques. For example, instead of solely saying the nouns out loud when prompted by flashcards, I could also write them out (with their article and plural) over and over again across the week. I do this when I am studying Japanese and it seems to work, so I will try transferring this to German as well.

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We have moved onto the topic of food now, as well as being introduced to cases, specifically the nominative and accusative.
I was a little bit confused by cases at first, however after using the website https://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/learn/german/german-tips/german-cases-explained, I understood them much better. This website helped me a lot when writing out my notes, which are pictured at the bottom of this post. I found the example sentences on the webpage especially helpful. I even learnt that there are certain prepositions that always take the accusative, which will be useful knowledge later on.
Reflecting on my progress of pronunciation practice over the past 6 weeks, I have definitely improved quite a lot! I have gotten much better at the two ways of pronouncing "ch" and I have also gotten better at pronouncing the "r" sound. I think I am also getting the hang of pronouncing German vowels. This improvement is due to listening to audio clips in German as well as German music. There is a German singer I like called Anna Blue, and listening to her songs has helped me get used to pronunciation quite a lot. Over the next few weeks I hope to find more German singers and bands, as music is a great way to practice listening and pronunciation of a language.

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This week, I suggested to a friend back in my hometown - who is teaching herself German - that we should practise together over instant message. She thought this was a great idea, so we've begun to converse in German. Since she is a bit further along in her German study than I am, we are pretending that we have just met so that I can use the grammar and vocabulary that I have learnt so far, which is proving to be very useful for my independent practice. This exercise is pushing me to be a bit more creative with constructing sentences. For example, when we were talking about our hobbies, it gave me the opportunity to use modal verbs to describe how I'm sad that I can't draw as much nowadays because of university!
As I prepare for Essential Homework 2, I have been looking up little phrases to help add variety to my writing. This includes words such as also, aber, da, jetzt, außerdem, bald...
I also found one webpage, https://yourdailygerman.com/schade-meaning-schaden/, that contains lots of information about the word 'schade' and its many uses. I've found this very interesting, and I'd like to use the phrase somewhere in the assignment, as one of the objectives is to explain why you cannot meet up with an old friend.

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In order to understand separable verbs better, which we have learned recently, I have been utilising them in practice sentences that I have made up and written down. In addition to the eight I learned from the textbook, I also learned the verb "weggehen" on my own for this exercise, which means to go out. I had these checked over in class and I got almost all of them right, which shows that this exercise has worked well for me in applying my understanding. I have been struggling a bit with word order in German, particularly with modal verbs, as in Essential Homework 2 I didn't understand that the infinitive verb has to go to the end of the sentence. Now I have learnt from this mistake and I am being more cautious of word order in my practice sentences.