After the period comes a new sentence.
Guten Abend!
Let me begin by saying that if you're wondering why my blog post title is such then you're not alone because I'm also thinking of the same thing. I guess I'm being extra metaphorical tonight so much so that I've taken it to myself to compare the end of German 10 and the coming beginning of the German 11 to the simple and ordinary phenomenon of the beginning & end of sentences. It's not that I'm saying that German lessons are simple and ordinary, it's just that the transition to German 10 to 11 was so smooth, unexpected, and so... normal that I decided to use that metaphor. No offense intended, please! But moving on to the greater topic at hand: The End of German 10. Well, what can I say? Truthfully, the greater part of my feelings are that of surprise and amazement. Just as I've mentioned in the earlier paragraph, the transition of the lessons and the movement of the entire German 10 was so smooth and continuous that I never noticed that we were almost through with it! I only realized this when Frau Arroyo gave us updates on our progress as a class. So, kudos to Frau Arroyo & to the class!
I am diverting from the assignment yet again... So truth be told we were asked to evaluate German 10 as a whole and include bits and pieces of self-evaluation as well. I'm through evaluating my German 10 class/lessons and I have nothing but high praises for it but I'm quite stumped when it comes to self-evaluations. But I'll give it a shot! Well, with all honesty, I was quite surprised that I'd made it this far and that I was able to not only understand our lessons but also keep up with the pace of the lessons. However one part that proved a challenge for me was the aspect of self-studying. I didn't know how to go about it at first. I would browse through the pages and I'd try to find exercises to do and pages to practice on. At the beginning, my approach to self-studying for German 10 was quite limited to my Studio D A1 textbook. I'd bring out my English-German/German-English dictionary then translate the directions from my textbook. From there, I'd try to derive the meaning of the directions in English and then I'd go to the exercises. There are times that I'd also go through the texts in the book and I'd try to read it to test my comprehension of basic German words. What I'll do would be to read the paragraphs without the help of my dictionary and then whenever I encounter a word or term that I don't know, I'd encircle it and then proceed on with the sentence. I'd try to derive the meaning of the encircled word/phrase first by using context clues. If I really couldn't find the meaning, I'd go get my dictionary and look it up. But I don't immediately get the meaning of the word, I'd rather I give an educated guess first. Also whenever there's a lecture or a concept I really couldn't understand during class, when I go home, I'd pore over my notes and my textbook and really try to understand why and how it became such. Also whenever there are classroom exercises and I get... a not-so-good result I'd immediately exert extra effort to study the lesson all over again. My verdict for this learning strategy is a 1, it's very much effective! The practice through this strategy was commendable and I was really able to exercise the lessons I've learned in class. Most probably, I will continue this throughout my other language classes.
But besides the learning strategies I've mentioned previously, I also tried to complement my German textbook by purchasing the "German At A Glance". It's pocket-sized "phrase book & dictionary for travelers". It contains essential phrases, questions, sentences, and such that a rookie would need if one would travel to Germany. It even includes the pronunciation and some information about verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc of the German language. It divides the phrases into different categories such as Greetings, Shopping, At the Restaurant, At the Hotel, etc. It was an amazing find! Plus the pages are colored and there are drawings so one doesn't get bored reading it. I'm familiarizing myself with the phrases but I have yet to find use for them. Haha! My verdict for this learning strategy is a 3, it wasn't able to contribute greatly to German 10 since already gave ready-made answers (in this case, phrases). It completely missed out on the important part of learning a language such as how the sentences became such, and the basic grammar components. But the book is still very helpful so I'm going to keep it around with me.
Another learning strategy that I used during the duration of German 10 was to download and listen to German songs (with lyrics and English translations) from the Internet. I remember there was this one time that all I listened to was German music so much so that I was able to familiarize myself with the words and their meaning. But this strategy was more of a phase for me and it was quite fleeting. I didn't know where to download other songs so I stopped and I wasn't able to update my playlist since. But the strategy was really effective, if only I pushed through with it. My verdict for this one is a 2 because it was partly my fault why I wasn't able to download other songs. But listening to German songs and looking at their translated lyrics was a big help during the beginning of the lessons because it increased my vocabulary and at the same time I heard the pronunciation of the words.
Besides the ones I've mentioned above, I've also followed good German blogs here in Blogspot since this is where I've created my journal. I did some intense researching on which blogs presented helpful and informational posts that will help me with my language learning. The search yielded five great results but for now I haven't found other blogs to add to my list. I remember this one blog that I'm following that posts different German words regularly with their meaning, pronunciation, as well as sentence examples. Very helpful! And since we're already talking about blogs, I'd like to say that perhaps one of the best learning strategies that I've employed was to update my blog/journal. I recall my previous posts regarding this glossary of German food terms. It was extremely helpful! I discovered a lot of German verbs and nouns through it. I also accompanied those posts with pictures of the action they portray or what noun it was. However perhaps my one regret is that I've stopped or I haven't been updating that glossary regularly. My verdict for this learning strategy is a 1.25! This is probably one of the best learning strategies that I've employed and I managed to gather a lot of valuable information through this. And since I'm very much into using the Internet this activity wasn't very much of a hassle for me. I actually enjoyed it and it didn't feel like I was doing homework at all. I will definitely employ this strategy when we're studying German 11.
So I suddenly remembered that another strategy I used was by changing the language (from English to Deutsch) of my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google Chrome. This transition was quite difficult at first because I had no idea what the phrases and words meant since they were in Deutsch. I used my dictionary a lot because of this and when I needed to translate and/or interpret large paragraphs I'd use Google Translate. Although it translated the text word per word, the meaning was there so I just tried to rearrange the translated version to get the real meaning. Because of this change I quickly became familiar with: schließen, Vorsicht, as well as, gefällt mir. My verdict for this learning strategy is a 2! It was partly effective because, again, my vocabulary increased but I still get a bit confused whenever I see terms that I don't understand. But surely I'm going to push through with this learning strategy for German 11.
I know this blog post is a bit dragging already so to end it I'm going to introduce some of my plans for German 11. Don't worry, I'll be really quick about it! After all, brevity is the soul of wit! Haha I don't even know where that came from. So anyway, my general plan for German 11 is to exert a greater amount of effort in studying my lessons in advance, doing practice exercises from my book and other online/printed resources, visiting interactive and student-friendly German websites, and allotting time to really review and study my lessons every single day. So I have this theory: whenever you study/review your lessons when you get home, everyday you tend to retain much more information about those lessons plus the level of understanding you have of those lectures improve. I think this theory has already been proven and tested over the past years by countless of students but I've only realized this now so I'm going to employ it in German 11 and also to my other subjects! Also I'll probably listen to formal German conversations to better grasp the accent and the proper pronunciation of the words. I wonder if there's an online streaming of German evening news somewhere...
Let me begin by saying that if you're wondering why my blog post title is such then you're not alone because I'm also thinking of the same thing. I guess I'm being extra metaphorical tonight so much so that I've taken it to myself to compare the end of German 10 and the coming beginning of the German 11 to the simple and ordinary phenomenon of the beginning & end of sentences. It's not that I'm saying that German lessons are simple and ordinary, it's just that the transition to German 10 to 11 was so smooth, unexpected, and so... normal that I decided to use that metaphor. No offense intended, please! But moving on to the greater topic at hand: The End of German 10. Well, what can I say? Truthfully, the greater part of my feelings are that of surprise and amazement. Just as I've mentioned in the earlier paragraph, the transition of the lessons and the movement of the entire German 10 was so smooth and continuous that I never noticed that we were almost through with it! I only realized this when Frau Arroyo gave us updates on our progress as a class. So, kudos to Frau Arroyo & to the class!
I am diverting from the assignment yet again... So truth be told we were asked to evaluate German 10 as a whole and include bits and pieces of self-evaluation as well. I'm through evaluating my German 10 class/lessons and I have nothing but high praises for it but I'm quite stumped when it comes to self-evaluations. But I'll give it a shot! Well, with all honesty, I was quite surprised that I'd made it this far and that I was able to not only understand our lessons but also keep up with the pace of the lessons. However one part that proved a challenge for me was the aspect of self-studying. I didn't know how to go about it at first. I would browse through the pages and I'd try to find exercises to do and pages to practice on. At the beginning, my approach to self-studying for German 10 was quite limited to my Studio D A1 textbook. I'd bring out my English-German/German-English dictionary then translate the directions from my textbook. From there, I'd try to derive the meaning of the directions in English and then I'd go to the exercises. There are times that I'd also go through the texts in the book and I'd try to read it to test my comprehension of basic German words. What I'll do would be to read the paragraphs without the help of my dictionary and then whenever I encounter a word or term that I don't know, I'd encircle it and then proceed on with the sentence. I'd try to derive the meaning of the encircled word/phrase first by using context clues. If I really couldn't find the meaning, I'd go get my dictionary and look it up. But I don't immediately get the meaning of the word, I'd rather I give an educated guess first. Also whenever there's a lecture or a concept I really couldn't understand during class, when I go home, I'd pore over my notes and my textbook and really try to understand why and how it became such. Also whenever there are classroom exercises and I get... a not-so-good result I'd immediately exert extra effort to study the lesson all over again. My verdict for this learning strategy is a 1, it's very much effective! The practice through this strategy was commendable and I was really able to exercise the lessons I've learned in class. Most probably, I will continue this throughout my other language classes.
But besides the learning strategies I've mentioned previously, I also tried to complement my German textbook by purchasing the "German At A Glance". It's pocket-sized "phrase book & dictionary for travelers". It contains essential phrases, questions, sentences, and such that a rookie would need if one would travel to Germany. It even includes the pronunciation and some information about verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc of the German language. It divides the phrases into different categories such as Greetings, Shopping, At the Restaurant, At the Hotel, etc. It was an amazing find! Plus the pages are colored and there are drawings so one doesn't get bored reading it. I'm familiarizing myself with the phrases but I have yet to find use for them. Haha! My verdict for this learning strategy is a 3, it wasn't able to contribute greatly to German 10 since already gave ready-made answers (in this case, phrases). It completely missed out on the important part of learning a language such as how the sentences became such, and the basic grammar components. But the book is still very helpful so I'm going to keep it around with me.
Another learning strategy that I used during the duration of German 10 was to download and listen to German songs (with lyrics and English translations) from the Internet. I remember there was this one time that all I listened to was German music so much so that I was able to familiarize myself with the words and their meaning. But this strategy was more of a phase for me and it was quite fleeting. I didn't know where to download other songs so I stopped and I wasn't able to update my playlist since. But the strategy was really effective, if only I pushed through with it. My verdict for this one is a 2 because it was partly my fault why I wasn't able to download other songs. But listening to German songs and looking at their translated lyrics was a big help during the beginning of the lessons because it increased my vocabulary and at the same time I heard the pronunciation of the words.
Besides the ones I've mentioned above, I've also followed good German blogs here in Blogspot since this is where I've created my journal. I did some intense researching on which blogs presented helpful and informational posts that will help me with my language learning. The search yielded five great results but for now I haven't found other blogs to add to my list. I remember this one blog that I'm following that posts different German words regularly with their meaning, pronunciation, as well as sentence examples. Very helpful! And since we're already talking about blogs, I'd like to say that perhaps one of the best learning strategies that I've employed was to update my blog/journal. I recall my previous posts regarding this glossary of German food terms. It was extremely helpful! I discovered a lot of German verbs and nouns through it. I also accompanied those posts with pictures of the action they portray or what noun it was. However perhaps my one regret is that I've stopped or I haven't been updating that glossary regularly. My verdict for this learning strategy is a 1.25! This is probably one of the best learning strategies that I've employed and I managed to gather a lot of valuable information through this. And since I'm very much into using the Internet this activity wasn't very much of a hassle for me. I actually enjoyed it and it didn't feel like I was doing homework at all. I will definitely employ this strategy when we're studying German 11.
So I suddenly remembered that another strategy I used was by changing the language (from English to Deutsch) of my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google Chrome. This transition was quite difficult at first because I had no idea what the phrases and words meant since they were in Deutsch. I used my dictionary a lot because of this and when I needed to translate and/or interpret large paragraphs I'd use Google Translate. Although it translated the text word per word, the meaning was there so I just tried to rearrange the translated version to get the real meaning. Because of this change I quickly became familiar with: schließen, Vorsicht, as well as, gefällt mir. My verdict for this learning strategy is a 2! It was partly effective because, again, my vocabulary increased but I still get a bit confused whenever I see terms that I don't understand. But surely I'm going to push through with this learning strategy for German 11.
I know this blog post is a bit dragging already so to end it I'm going to introduce some of my plans for German 11. Don't worry, I'll be really quick about it! After all, brevity is the soul of wit! Haha I don't even know where that came from. So anyway, my general plan for German 11 is to exert a greater amount of effort in studying my lessons in advance, doing practice exercises from my book and other online/printed resources, visiting interactive and student-friendly German websites, and allotting time to really review and study my lessons every single day. So I have this theory: whenever you study/review your lessons when you get home, everyday you tend to retain much more information about those lessons plus the level of understanding you have of those lectures improve. I think this theory has already been proven and tested over the past years by countless of students but I've only realized this now so I'm going to employ it in German 11 and also to my other subjects! Also I'll probably listen to formal German conversations to better grasp the accent and the proper pronunciation of the words. I wonder if there's an online streaming of German evening news somewhere...
Sehr schön! You've evidently thought deeply about how you learn best, and how to apply this knowledge in order to make your language learning more effective. Keep it up!
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