So
I've decided that it's today or to-never, and so it had to be today. Got the book out of the case, the CD in the CD-Rom, and in the first minutes of the day, after talking to my boyfriend, I completed my first 15-minute German lesson. So far so good. This is my n-th attempt at learning German by myself, which is mainly due to my stubborn idea that I really want to do it by myself, or otherwise I'll end up bored out of my head and piling up a debt in class fees I really don't need. aNow, do not misunderstand me, I'm sure the Goethe Institute is awesome, but truth is that so is the Alliance Française, and I poured into the AF truckloads of money in course payments and books only to hate each day I went because it was so damned boring I ended up totally unable to conjugate irregular verbs. (Then again, for some strange reason, I kind of actually can... now... is it due to the Alliance or my readings?) So I was thinking, why to go through all the ordeal with German? I know myself (I know I bore easily), and I know the way I can take off with a language: give me the basics, and then give me a book, give me a TV channel, a few movies, some Internet sites, and soon you'll have me babling around, first quite horridly, but if there's something I don't have is lack of confidence or shame. Mistakes do not make me back off.
The book I already have it: Seine Grosse Liebe, a book I chose once upon a time because it was the only one which title's I understood: "Her Great Love".
My plan currently is simple: complete the 15-Minute-a-Day plan, not jumping ahead, but maybe listening to the lessons twice a day to engrave it in my brain better. When I feel I've advanced enough in this, I'll start checking my old books, with the bit of knowledge I will already have, in order to intensify the flood of information, so I get more tools, because, really, 15 minutes daily for 12 weeks are no way to get a decent foundation for a language. I am not stupid, nor I expect the knowledge to painlessly and effortlessly download itself into my brain. I have no Neo complex. My objective is to be able to read short texts in German, and be able to speak a tad more fluently by the time we go to Vienna in January. No, I do not set for myself irrational goals, like being able to read and fully understand "Das Kapital". However, on a mid term I would expect myself to read Seine Grosse Liebe for december of next year.
Teaching oneself can be quite a hard task, specially because you might have the tendency of granting yourself too many permits, skipping days and lessons, but also can be quite cool, for you don't have to wait the whole class to catch up, or try to catch up with a class that runs at 10 thousand verbs per hour and you have not a clue yet about how the freaking conjugation is done. You have all the time in the world to stop and mull and research and get it right, and then all the freedom to fly as fast as you wish, as high as you can without the dead weight of dunderheads that can't get in their puny brains something too simple just because they are too lazy to even try.
It worked for me (in a way) with English, though the base for it I've got it from lots of useless lessons paid to lots of language academies (okay, just one) and the idiotic highschool teacher that spoke the Charlie Brown version of English. (Years later we learned that she actually didn't know English...) Hopefully it's working with my French, which has been pimped up and pumped up by readings, TV5 Monde and the always adorable Air France Flight Attendants, God bless their beautiful hearts and beautiful... rest; as well as my promenades through Paris, where live, crispy, beautiful French was poured upon me like the sweetest rainshower.
Now German is next, even though I haven't finished with French, nor can I say the same about English, but those two are set on the way.
I've decided that it's today or to-never, and so it had to be today. Got the book out of the case, the CD in the CD-Rom, and in the first minutes of the day, after talking to my boyfriend, I completed my first 15-minute German lesson. So far so good. This is my n-th attempt at learning German by myself, which is mainly due to my stubborn idea that I really want to do it by myself, or otherwise I'll end up bored out of my head and piling up a debt in class fees I really don't need. aNow, do not misunderstand me, I'm sure the Goethe Institute is awesome, but truth is that so is the Alliance Française, and I poured into the AF truckloads of money in course payments and books only to hate each day I went because it was so damned boring I ended up totally unable to conjugate irregular verbs. (Then again, for some strange reason, I kind of actually can... now... is it due to the Alliance or my readings?) So I was thinking, why to go through all the ordeal with German? I know myself (I know I bore easily), and I know the way I can take off with a language: give me the basics, and then give me a book, give me a TV channel, a few movies, some Internet sites, and soon you'll have me babling around, first quite horridly, but if there's something I don't have is lack of confidence or shame. Mistakes do not make me back off.The book I already have it: Seine Grosse Liebe, a book I chose once upon a time because it was the only one which title's I understood: "Her Great Love".
My plan currently is simple: complete the 15-Minute-a-Day plan, not jumping ahead, but maybe listening to the lessons twice a day to engrave it in my brain better. When I feel I've advanced enough in this, I'll start checking my old books, with the bit of knowledge I will already have, in order to intensify the flood of information, so I get more tools, because, really, 15 minutes daily for 12 weeks are no way to get a decent foundation for a language. I am not stupid, nor I expect the knowledge to painlessly and effortlessly download itself into my brain. I have no Neo complex. My objective is to be able to read short texts in German, and be able to speak a tad more fluently by the time we go to Vienna in January. No, I do not set for myself irrational goals, like being able to read and fully understand "Das Kapital". However, on a mid term I would expect myself to read Seine Grosse Liebe for december of next year.
Teaching oneself can be quite a hard task, specially because you might have the tendency of granting yourself too many permits, skipping days and lessons, but also can be quite cool, for you don't have to wait the whole class to catch up, or try to catch up with a class that runs at 10 thousand verbs per hour and you have not a clue yet about how the freaking conjugation is done. You have all the time in the world to stop and mull and research and get it right, and then all the freedom to fly as fast as you wish, as high as you can without the dead weight of dunderheads that can't get in their puny brains something too simple just because they are too lazy to even try.
It worked for me (in a way) with English, though the base for it I've got it from lots of useless lessons paid to lots of language academies (okay, just one) and the idiotic highschool teacher that spoke the Charlie Brown version of English. (Years later we learned that she actually didn't know English...) Hopefully it's working with my French, which has been pimped up and pumped up by readings, TV5 Monde and the always adorable Air France Flight Attendants, God bless their beautiful hearts and beautiful... rest; as well as my promenades through Paris, where live, crispy, beautiful French was poured upon me like the sweetest rainshower.
Now German is next, even though I haven't finished with French, nor can I say the same about English, but those two are set on the way.
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