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Arguably one of the central figures in German history is Martin Luther. In 1517 he published his 95 thesis, kickstarting the reformation. I found online a modern day German and English translation, and worked through the first 20 trying to figure out how they were translated.

I read the English version for each thesis first, and then read the German. This was a very good idea as I knew what I was expecting to read. I would write down all the words I thought would be interesting to learn and remember. This led to helping understand the German translation much much better and I understood new vocabulary. As well, the vocabularly I learnt was very specific and I had not seen any of it before because it was quite unique to Christianity. This helped me learn new words like Gott, Christus, Priester, Papst and Sakrament.

Therefore this was quite a good exercise. However, I would also have understood almost none of it without reading the English translation first and so it was definitely good to do it this way.

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I listened to the song Zusammen a total of 6 times, twice only with by listening, then twice reading the German lyrics and then twice with the English and German lyrics.

I struggled a lot when only listening to the song, the only words I recognised was funf (five) and what I thought was vier. I think I got bogged down quite a bit and so in some sense just stopped listening.

However, when I started reading the German lyrics I saw a lot more than that I knew. Though for most of it I couldn't make up full sentences, I saw things like Wir sind, Mann and Frau and lots of little words like die, das, auch es and ist. This was a start and I attemped to work out sentences. I looked up what zusammen actually meant and then attempted translating this sentence:  Wir sind zusammen groß. I guessed that it was we are better or great together as it seemed similar to large in French. It turned out to be pretty close and it was in fact We are great together.

Then reading the English lyrics as well helped to fit a couple more sentences together however on the most parts they were quite complicated. I did learn "Wenn ich sag'" which I think could come in handy meaning when I say.

I also found out when I was hearing vier it was in fact wir, and so I intend to do some more listening exercises so I don't make big mistakes like that

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As a huge fan of music, listening to it up to a few hours a day when I'm working/going into uni/ cooking etc. I saw this as an oppurtunity to try and help my pronounciation. I am particularly poor with pronounciation, I think because having done French for a few years, I'm really used to pronouncing words in a French pronounciation, and German is very different!

Therefore, downloading the German Pop playlist suggested by the mltc, I have just been trying to listen to it as much as possible.

As you listen to songs over and over, you pick up words that you know and so helps with learning some words, but overall I don't know what most of the songs are actually about.

I do think it helped a lot with just passively learning how Germans speak. It is hard to state exactly what I've learned here, however the intention of this task was just to dissociate myself with French pronounciation and learn better German pronounciation, and I do think it has helped.

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I decided to watch 3 Türken & ein Baby, a comedy about 3 brothers having to look after a baby.

I used English subtitles to follow the movie, however I think this stipped me from actually listening to what was going on. It was hard to correlate what was on the subtitles to what was being spoke. I hope it helped with my pronounciation, and similarly to the task about listening to music, I hope that there is a passive learning that is occuring where just listening to the German language for an hour and a half does help me to adapt to the German way of pronouncing words.

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I went online and searched German newspapers. I clicked on one and clicked on the first link (I have no idea if the newspaper is any good or what political viewpoint it takes).

This was certainly a challenging task and after reading it over slowly and several times, I still had little idea what was going on.

That said, I was able to pick up several words I knew "Donnerstag" , "eine" and "kleine" and several other small words and connectives.

I then put the article into google translate to check what it really said and being able to see the English alongside the German really helped just to learn what each word was saying. There were many complicated words but some that I might recognise if I were to see them again such as "im Streit" meaning "in a fight/dispute" and "Müller sei nicht bereit" to say that Muller was not ready to talk included nicht and bereit which were both words I have seen before.

Therefore I think it was a worthwhile task and had learnt a few new words and were able to see how words I already knew could have been put in phrases.

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I met up with my German friend to try and speak as much German as I could. The conversation did not flow naturally at all and I ended up just talking about what food I like most but he did follow some of it.

I was surprised at how often I was corrected and it's clear that I need to learn more verbs and get better at a my grammar.

It was nice to have a go but with a limited knowledge of the language it was difficult to keep going. However, it was also helpful hearing what he was saying in German. A lot of it, although I did not know the whole sentence, could make out what he was saying overall, which was really encouraging.

This was a good task but I think it would have had to happen regularly in order to be really helpful as regular practice is the most important thing to do.

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I turned the language on my phone to German. This was a surprisingly good idea as I use my phone constantly. As I know what the phone says in English, it made it particualrly easy to learn new words, or even remember words learnt in class.

The days and date are on the homepage of the phone and it was useful to learn the days of the week, something particularly important to learn, and it was useful of just being reminded, everytime I checked my phone.

As well things like "vor 2 Minuten aktiv" was easy to understand as I knew from when my phone was in English it would say "active 2 minutes ago"

This was definitely a helpful way to study independently, and I've got no intention of turning my phone back into English any time soon.

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Doing 30 minutes a week of Duolingo, an app that turns learning a language into a game.

It was quite interesting comparing how Duolingo worked with an actual lesson. I found it helpful to learn new vocab such as the family and common phrases but it doesn't particulary help with grammar.

So far, I have learnt vocab to do with family and it has helped consolidate knowledge about general phrases.