The Plunge into Unit 5.1 - 5.2

Yesterday I finally took the plunge. I reviewed Unit 4.1 - 4.2 to polish up what I was practising and then I took a breath and began.

How i've been doing these units is pretty simple. The tools I have are a notebook, a pen, pdf file of the coursebook, and my mediaplayer. I put the cassette mp3 files in a the queue and I add calming music in between each unit and subunit. This way, I do all my practising for that cassette file and then give myself a break to write notes, get some water or simply thank myself for a job well done. It's amazing how I've improved, however, unit 5 has been pushing me to the limit. I expect it to take maybe a week or less (depening) to get a solid hold onto rhythm.

Unit 5 includes the review, the practice, the new sentences, sentence structures and a whole lot more information. One of the things I immediately noticed is a subtle speed increase. They are definitely assuming and subtley encouraging you to step up you memory recall and speaking speed and accuracy.

Some of the sentences I've learn such as "Guten Morgen, Frau Kunze." and "Wo fahren sie hin." caught me off guard in the speed. I find myself tongue locking. It's this strange, possibly primal thing where, if I cannot keep up with speed and I lose my thought mid-sentence, my tongue will lock up and I will gently hold it down like a vice. This happens especially when learning the phrase "Ich verstehe Frau Kunze nicht." I know exactly where the bite happens Ische ver  and Kunzeeh nicht. If I don't lift my tongue in time it gets caught and I have to stop and try again.

The other challenge I'm reaching is, Recall. Now respectfully I do expect this recall to take longer than a month to be ingrained, but I was surprised at how long it takes me to recall it. It's not that I don't know it, but my brain has always been a file cabinet, and it has these words filed away too far back. Eventually my brain may bring the file cabinet up closer from frustration of packing it way in the back. Phrases like "Wo ist der Bahnhof?" should not take me 15 minutes to recall after learning it consistently.

So let's talk about "rechts" and "restaurant". Both are new words. The first means to the right, the other... is self-explanatory. No, really it means restaurant!

Totally Twisted!

Wo ist das restaurant? Es ist hier rechts.   (Es ist heer reychts) When you are in the moment and they give you less time to respond, you'll discover how quickly how you'll sound "Esh ish sheer rayss" LOL That's obviously wrong, but that's exactly what was happening at times. My brain is taking too long to synchronize with what I have to say.

There are a lot of interactive writing activities now too. I get to try to write what I hear them say, and sometimes they add new words, I get to determine and listen to see if a sentence is a statement, question, or command.

One of the things I wish I had was like a portable work book I could practice
with when out in the world. Then when I come home, I would have some practice under my belt and then can resume learning from the FSI course.

Respectfully, Unit 5 is literally the beginning of the real deal, and my gluteus maximus is being kicked in trying to learn and assimilate the lesson. However, I am also having a blast. Even though I have a goal in mind learning German, I'm not letting that dampen the fact that, I also love learning languages, and I'm enjoy learning this!

Happy learning Everyone!