German Visit

Last Thursday(Sept. 16), we had German visitors in our class. I think their names were Alex, Patrick and Yan, not that sure, but they were really nice. It's awkward to speak, because we might commit mistakes and of course they'll notice. But they don't laugh whenever we commit mistakes, and they even corrected us and tell us the right word to use. I even talked to one of them and he told me that what I've written on my "fake" business card was wrong. Well it was really wrong, and he told me a lot of things about it. They were willing to teach us about their language, and I hope they will come again to our class. I find them cute too, so I BADLY WANTED TO VISIT GERMANY.haha :)

Frau Roorkie Ong :)

When our professor, Frau Arroyo, went to Germany for a two week course in Goethe Institute(not sure about the spelling), we had a substitute professor. I'm afraid of her at first because I know she's really fluent in speaking German. She's been in Germany a lot of times, and she even know how to speak other languages. So I'm afraid to speak in class(we all are). But a day or two of being with her, I started to like her. She's great and she's really an energizer. Her style of teaching encourages us, coz she's giving everyone a chance to speak. I think she memorized all our names in just two or three days. She even said that she like our class because we like to take notes. I think her style of writing German words in the blackboard helped us in our recalling of genders, or as she calls it "The Almighty Gender". I learned a lot from her and I'll always remember her. She said that she'll miss our class, and we do miss her too :) it was a great experience with her.

Moving forward: German 11

Now that we're over in our German 10, I'm looking forward to German 11. I expect harder and more complicated topics. I need to recall all that we had discussed in German 10, for these will be my tools to learn German 11 topics. It's like moving from one grade to another, a higher step into a better understanding of German as a language. It will be more challenging, but fun. I expect more laughs shared in the class because of mistakes. We'll all commit mistakes and learn. I expect more articles to read, conversations to listen, and movies to watch(and I mean feel-good movies, I honestly don't like the holocaust, it's too heavy for me). This will be the last part of our course, and I'm so excited for it.

Viel Glück!

Self-Assesment: German 10

Just had our finals in German 10 yesterday. Can't imagine we're over in the first part of our course in German. Looking back, I think I've learned a lot. I can now converse using simple sentences, I can answer to certain questions and give directions. Now I'll never be lost in Germany, haha! I'm slowly being used to their numbers, unlike before that I still need to translate the number in English. When it comes to the gender of nouns, I think I'm slowly getting it too. I memorized the nouns with their corresponding gender and I practiced saying the nouns with their gender, their inseparable, haha :) About the articles, I also memorized it. Well memorizing, i think, is my way and it helps me a lot if I memorized the words. My weakness is still in listening. I think I need more practice. At first I really can't understand even a word, but now I'm recognizing phrases, and sometimes I even understand a whole sentence. It's not about understanding every word, but it's to recognize some words and derive the meaning or gist of the whole sentence from this words.

German 10 taught us the basic, how to construct sentences, positioning of verbs, asking directions and questions. My favorite topic is describing our houses, not to mention the drawing part. I find it fun to play with the adjectives. German 10 taught me to study everyday, because if I fail to look back on what we've discussed that day, I'll also fail to move on to the next topic. Every topic we tackle is a part of the new topics we're going to have. I'm looking forward to German 11 because I know my knowledge about the German language will be broader in that part. :)

Goodbye Lennie

I know it's super late to write a review about this movie, but I'm writing anyway. The story occurred when Germany was divided into two: the West and East Germany. The two countries were separated by a wall, called the Berlin Wall. East Germany was a socialist republic, while the West was more of a democratic country. That's why a lot of East Germans wanted to go to the West.

The story focused on one family, a family living in East Germany. Their father moved to the West, hoping that they will follow, but the mother didn't. In turn, the mother became so dedicated to their country. The climax of the story was when the mother had a coma, and was asleep for eight months. In that eight months, a lot changed. The Berlin Wall was gone, indicating the unity between the East and West Germany. When the mother woke up, her son became scared that the mother will have another heart attack(which may cause her death) if she'll know what happened to their country. So he (together with his sister, his girlfriend, his sister's boyfriend and her mother's colleagues) worked hard to keep their mother from knowing the truth. But still at the end, the mother knew about the truth(told by the son's girlfriend), without the son knowing it. He's happy that his mother died without knowing that East Germany was already in unity with the west.

The main reason that we watched the movie is for us to understand the words spoken and also to know a little about the history of Germany. I must admit I understood the movie by reading the subtitle, but I also recognized a few words and maybe that's good enough ;) Looking forward to another good German movie (again, with a handsome lead actor) :)

June 16, 2010

I'm always curious about what happened during the time of the Holocaust in World War II. I had watched some documentaries and read a lot of online posts about this topic. My engagement on this topic came back after our discussion today. I don't remember how we came to this topic, but Frau Arroyo told us about this "National Guilt" the Germans had about this issue. Due to this National Guilt, Germans became less nationalistic and they were not proud of their country. They don't even sing their national anthem. Well this issue had seriously affected the Germans. I knew that what happened was a great horror, I can't even imagine that it really happened, that people do actually experienced those things. But it was a long time ago, and the Germans living today don't have anything to do with what happened in the past. But again, I can't blame them from being guilty of what happened. It's just sad that the guilt they had affected their attitude towards their country. Being a Filipino, I was raised to be proud of my country, so I really don't know why they were not proud of being a citizen of the country they were born into.

It's just now that I realized how serious Germans take this issue. I promise not to joke about this, or even to mention it in front of a German. It's something I don't know, something I don't want to know further.

Zahlen

I'm a bit nervous for our math quiz bee this coming Wednesday. I'm used to joining a math quiz bee, but this time it's different. It's a German math quiz bee! German numbers were quite hard because they are so loooong, like when you say 121 in English, it's one hundred twenty one, but in German it's einhunderteinundzwanzig, quite long right? I easily memorized the numbers, but it's recognizing them when it is already being said is the hard part for me. Zwei(2) and Drei(3) were confusing for I could not distinguish the difference when it is already being said. It's better to use Zwo for 2. Well, I think I find it hard because I still need to translate the words in English so I will be able to understand it. I'm still looking for a better way to understand the numbers.

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier, Fünf, Sechs, Sieben, Acht, Neun, Zehn!

Reflections

In class, we have done a lot of listening and speaking exercises for the introduction part. These activities helped me a lot in learning German and I continued doing these outside class. Honestly, I need to listen to the audio clips over and over just to understand a few words. I continued doing these at home. It really helped that the audio clips were posted in uvle so I can listen to it more. I also tried reading articles written in German. I've tried visiting the links posted in our uvle and the articles written were quite hard to understand. But I still recognized a lot of words and parts of certain articles, especially biographies because it contains general information that we already studied in the introduction part, so I'm familiar to a lot of words. During class, I list words that I just encountered, and try memorizing it at home or to use it in a sentence.

As I said, I tried to read a lot of German articles. It really helped me because it's a kind of practice for me so I can remember what I learned from the class. Trying to find familiar words helped me to understand or at least get what the text means. Though a lot of words were still unfamiliar, the words I know served as context clues for the rest of the article.

I still don't understand German when it is already spoken. Our listening exercises were quite hard for me. If it is written, I easily understand certain words but when it is already spoken, I find it hard to recognize them. I learned that reading and writing were not enough, listening is still the most important. I need to talk to people to practice my German and also to understand it when it is already spoken. I don't know any German, so the audio clips served as my partner. I listen to these clips a lot of times, and it's fun that I'm slowly recognizing words and understanding what is being said.

I think practice is still the best thing to do. To build on my reading and writing skills, I need to practice. I need to read articles written in German without the help of dictionaries or translators, so that I may know how many words were retained on my mind. To be able to be a better listener, I must also practice my listening skills. I won't limit myself in simple audio clips. I'll also try listening to a German song and watching a German movie without a subtitle. In that way, I will also know how many words am I really familiar with and I'll focus to those I don't know.

The German class served as a challenge for me. It's very hard to learn a language that I had a very little idea of, but it's very interesting. It's like an accomplishment for me to be able to learn another foreign language. It may help me in my employment, because it's a unique thing. Not all people know German and it may be my edge when I'm looking for a job. It also gave me a lot of confidence, especially in class because all of us were "virgins" to the German language. I'm not afraid to commit mistakes and I learned that it is necessary to commit mistakes so I can correct it. I also learn not to rush things. Learning German is a step by step process, so is learning other things.

June 17, 2010

We read German articles today. Well the articles were kinda short, but we find it difficult to understand. For me, there were a lot of words I do not know. If it's all about introducing a person, I easily understand it but if it's a little complicated, I'm lost. My classmates understood about 50-90% of the articles, but for me, it was just about 70% of the articles. But I think I'm learning slowly. These simple exercises we do helped us recognize words.

There's no easy way in learning anything. So does in learning German :)

Understanding a German article

We had an assignment/activity with a partner. We have to read a German article, without any help from an online dictionary or the likes, and write what we had understood. Since we need to have an article that we're both interested with, we picked an article about J.D. Salinger. Salinger is a famous writer and he is my partner's favorite. I knew him since I also like reading. I found an article on him in this page:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5181140,00.html

It was pretty hard. I couldn't understand that article. Some words seemed familiar. At first I thought it was like an online biography of him. But reading the first part, I had the idea that it was about his death. The first and second paragraph was introducing him. Giving personal information about him. And I couldn't understand the rest.

I hope my partner understood a lot from that article. haha :)

Well, I still had to learn a lot of German words. :)

June 11, 2010

I learned a lot of new words. The German alphabet is really complicated. They use Sie for you,she and they, depending on the sentence. It's fun that we got a chance to ask each other in German. I found out that we really need to interact with each other in order to learn.

Mein Name ist Crissy. Ich komme aus den Philippinen. Ich wohne in Cainta.

Deutsch lernen macht mich glücklich!

June 10, 2010

This was the first day we had our discussion so I will start my diary entries today. I'm quite pressured this day. German was hard for me. Well it's my first day and it's alien for me. I learned a lot of German words today, which I keep on repeating so that I will remember :) I was so pressured I couldn't recognize the words when it's already in a sentence. We've listened to audio clips today. I downloaded the audio clips posted in our uvle page and kept on playing it. I recognize some words now. I think repeating those audios helped me a lot.

Tomorrow we'll be introducing ourselves. We need to practice by communicating to each other. Well I'm still afraid to commit mistakes but I hope committing mistakes will help me learn a lot.
It's going to be fun!

Auf Wiedersehen! :)

mein plan (my plan)

I've already experienced the German language these past few days of my German 10-11 class. It's quite hard, so I think just listening to our discussions wouldn't be enough. I have to do a plan. Having a plan makes me organized and I won't be lost.

Mein plan is to:
1. Practice at home. Starting today, I will practice.
2. I'll listen to a lot of German conversations. I've already listened to some, and playing it over and over again made me recognize some words.
3. I also plan to watch a German movie, but that is after I get to learn some more German words.
4. As Frau Arroyo said, we need to communicate. Starting tomorrow I will greet my classmates in German. We all need practice, and we should start it in class. After all, we're neophytes and we'll all be committing mistakes. We shouldn't be afraid to talk to each other. I think it's fun correcting each other and asking if we are saying the right thing.
5. Be serious. Though learning German is a lot of fun, it is still a serious thing. If I would just have fun, I might learn nothing at the end. I still consider this class as a challenge for me. I should be serious in learning German.
6. Listen in class. This is my first class, so my mind should be in focus. I will concentrate and listen to every discussion.

I'm excited. That's all i can say. Learning German brought a new challenge to my life. And I'm serious about this one :)

als Fremdsprachenlerner (as a language learner).

Als Fremdsprachenlerner or as a language learner, I'm very dedicated. I really wanted to learn foreign languages, especially European, so I enrolled to German 10-11. I think my curiosity and dedication makes me eager to practice and try my best to learn how to speak German. At first, I think it would be easy. German came from the same family as the English language, so there were a lot of similarities. But as I've read our book, I couldn't understand a thing. I don't know how I will be able to learn the language in just one semester.

I'm a bit afraid that I might be left out. I don't want to see myself at the end of the semester lost and haven't gain a thing. A lot of my classmates were European Language majors, or at least some of them already enrolled to a foreign language class. As our professor called us, I am a virgin to foreign languages.

As a language learner, I will try my best. I have lots of insecurities. these insecurities were my weaknesses. I try to overcome these by believing in myself. If some of my classmates can already speak other foreign languages, why can't I? I think dedication is the key. I just need to believe, practice, listen, speak, communicate and never give up. If I can do these things, I'm assuring myself that at the end of the semester, I will be able to speak German :)