German beginner study route by Janet.Tian

The first thing to do. 29/09/2016

ltian3 — 2016-09-29 20:27:29 UTC

Get start to know German alphabet.
There are 30 letters in total.
26 alphabet 3 utomalate and 1 ess-tsets
The pronounciation are different from English, but both of them have similarity.

Pre-session practice. 04/10/2016

ltian3 — 2016-10-04 08:13:42 UTC

I borrowed the text book in Diamond and start to read it adapt with audio material received from my language tutor. BBC language website is a good choice for self study. There are not only culture introduction, but also language practice and loads of video.

Special pronounciation but very important

ltian3 — 2016-10-04 21:55:16 UTC

These pronunciation are based on alphabetic form, the author use sound in English to help us learn German vocabulary. This is worth to learn, even it is definitely a challenge for me.

Review day 10.9

ltian3 — 2016-10-09 16:22:02 UTC

Today, I reviewed the whole content I have learnt last week including alphabet pronunciation, handout, verb and vocabulary. I found a question that is why the text use aber sie but not sind sie?
Quizlet is very helpful for me to learn new vocabulary, and I finished the unit 1. <39 words>

Self Study(date:10.16)

ltian3 — 2016-10-16 09:14:20 UTC

Discovered a very useful German course website. This website has step by step classes to guide a beginner learning German.
I learned how to say hello to people in three ways.
First, Hallo is the most common used greeting. However, Hallihallo is an informal way to say hello, we could use it amongst family, friends or young people.
Besides, in Germany, there are different geographical locations, In South Germany and Austria, you'll often hear "Grüß Gott!" or "Servus!" in daylight hours, whilst in Switzerland you'll hear "Grüezi"
In recent years young people have become more demonstrative; however, the handshake is still the more common gesture used in formal and informal greetings and partings. As for verbal greetings, “Guten Tag” is more formal than “hallo”, and is used when greeting elders but never between young friends. “Auf Wiedersehen” is more formal than “Tschüß,” which is, in turn, more formal than “ciao.” In many parts of southern Germany, “Grüss Gott” is used instead of “Guten Tag.” When young people meet on the street, it is not common for quick introductions to be made. If that same group were to go sit in a café, those unknown to one another would introduce themselves.
It is not necessary to shake the hand of each person in a large group person unless one is in a very formal business meeting. Among the older generations, when leaving a large gathering where everyone is still seated, one can knock on the table three times and say goodbye.

Langmedia Site

ltian3 — 2016-10-16 09:44:00 UTC

Provide learner with opportunities to see how German people use their language in different situation.

Daily routine(10.18)

ltian3 — 2016-10-18 22:15:47 UTC

The third German class I learnt how to speak and spell numbers and how to read the time. One thing I found is hard to deal with which is the changing form of verb. In German, they have seperate verb such as "aufstehen". -----Ich stehe um 9 Uhr auf means I get up at 9 o'clock.
Besides, another thing I found was interesting is the count number in German are totally different from English and Chinese number system. German number put the single digit in front of tens digit and put "und" in the middle to show both numbers plus together. This is quite complicated, but I heared that French number system is more tricky.
In a short, this week need more time to spend on German study. I still not familiar with the alphabetic pronunciation, which definitely needs to improve step by step.

The cases (11.6)

ltian3 — 2016-11-06 11:29:15 UTC

Grammar is the most important part for learning a precise language. German have four cases, which plays a significant role in grammar system. For me, it is difficult to remember the definite article with different cases, but very fortunately I found a youtube video to help me remember them as a song. This makes me thinking about alphabetic song in English. Music is a magic thing to support people's memory. I hope this could also help every German beginner.

Discovered a German vocabulary list. (1000 common words) 11.10

ltian3 — 2016-11-09 20:06:40 UTC

It is very helpful and important for a language learner to learn vocabulary of the target language regularly.

This vocabulary list shows 1000 common and widely used German words. Indeed, each word have an extra tips to help learner understand the context of using it, which is my favoraite part.

I realised that it is not enough only use what we learned in the class. Extra vocabulary help me a lot to improve my language learning process.

Link:http://www.languagedaily.com/learn-german/vocabulary/common-german-words

Unit 3 formative test reflection.(11.13)

ltian3 — 2016-11-13 15:09:52 UTC

Today, I finished the unit 3 formative test on Mole. I'm unsatisfied with my score(47/59). I analysed the result and fund several problems I have. First, I still make mistakes on definite article. For example, I will mix the neutral nouns article with feminine one. 'eine Katze' should be 'ein Katze'. Neutral article have the same form with muscular article, and feminine is the same with plural article. In addition, I also made mistakes on possessive. The possessives of 'her' and 'his' are particularly annoyed me. So, I really need to spend more time on review the grammar knowledge so that I will not make the same mistakes again.

Dative case(11.29)

ltian3 — 2016-11-29 10:21:38 UTC

Today, I learned the third case, dative case in German. Apart from what I have read on the textbook, which is limited. I use online sources to help me understand two different kinds of Dative. The first type is that those are always dative and never anything else. The second type is certain "two-way" or "dual" prepositions that can be either dative or accusative.
I also got a really useful list, the list of dative-only prepositions. Moreover, the placement of prepositional phrase in the sentence.
The most difficult thing for me is to change word endings when using dative. Such as, definite articles, pronouns, adjectives etc.
It is definitely necessary to do more exercise on cases, so that it can help me build comparatively good grammar knowledge.