I have passed the German B2 exam with relative ease after studying on my own for about a year.I could have gotten it after 6 or 8 months, but I lost a shit ton of time on inefficient methods.What has worked: going through a textbook What hasn't:>AppsI used Babbel, which is considered one of the better ones, it was fine up until trying to explain adjective and case endings, no worth the money>AnkiI learned a lot of vocab very fast, but out of context it's nearly useless, if you really wanna do it, do sentence cards>ImmersionI've played several video games in German, I didn't understand a thing most of the time, don't do it if you're below C1 level>YouTube videosThis was my biggest waste of time, having to listen to fat obnoxious normies blab about their day is boring and they don't even speak properly, I am not even talking about slang. I thought it's good for listening training, but it's not, the people from street interviews are the kind of people you don't even want to understand.
What about watching TV and movies. So if you are learning german, watch with german audio and german subtitles. Also children's books. And with AI can't you have full on conversations in your target language for practice?
>>17051451>textbook worksNo shit. I think online discussions about language learning are dominated by low moral and lazy 3rd-worlders. That’s why they always recommend:1. free stuff: anki, youtube videos, pirated & translated video games, etc.2. easy stuff: watching tv/movies, playing video games
>>17051457I have tried watching a TV show in german, it wasn't time efficient at all. Pausing, replaying stuff that didn't make sense to me, translating, making anki cards, one 50 min episode took me like 2.5 hours to get through. All that work for maybe 50 niche vocab. Also german TV sucks ass.I tried using AI at the start, but it never respected my level and make things either way to easy or way too hard for my level.
>>17051451>going through a textbookWhich one?
>>17051468Momente -> Vielfalt Liked those better than books from 1992 like menschen
>>17051470How did you improve your speaking ability on your own?
>>17051472My speaking is kinda slow, but for German you don't need much practice to pass the exam because the pronunciation rules are consistent, unlike English
>>17051451Anki is still the fastest way to memorize vocabulary. But B2 is like 4000 words, how would you have learned all that in 6 months? How many words do you know now?
>>17051626Wow, you’re not very open-minded, are you?
>>17051627Wow, you're a sensitive one, aren't you?
>>17051462What if I hate reading, watching movies, playing videogames, etc?How can I learn a foreign language
>>17051451I played Skyrim in German and it was good because I already knew most of the dialogue/plot beats at least vaguely.
>>17051639Are you legitimately retarded? OP was saying those didn't work, for him. That's the whole point of this thread.
>>17051646yes
>>17051646Yes I didn’t what op wrote because I’m lazy so just checked the title and I decided to ask my question
>>17051626I finished an anki deck of about 2000 words in 3 monthsI read a graded reader with an other 1000 wordsAdd the vocab from my textbooks and I am well above 4000Also you don't need to produce that vocab on the fly, you just need to recognize it
>>17051451what worked:- learning texts by heart- starting to switch words in the learned sentences- learning grammar to know how to do it correctly... in this order.
>>17051825>learning texts by heartWhat does this even mean? Did you memorize poetry, passages, speeches, monologues? Or just random textbook sentences?
>>17051626>Anki is still the fastest way to memorize vocabularyaccording to what evidence?
>>17052095According to my foot up your ass. Complaints about Anki are made by wordcels who have trouble visualizing concepts or 3D objects and creating their own mental associations with words they're trying to learn. Shape rotators win again.
>This was my biggest waste of time, having to listen to fat obnoxious normies blab about their day is boring and they don't even speak properly, I am not even talking about slang. I thought it's good for listening training, but it's not, the people from street interviews are the kind of people you don't even want to understand.Have you tried watching YouTube videos about topics you actually care about? If it's boring obviously you won't pay attention and learn anything. I remember from some highly reliable source (a random guy on the internet) that the best way to learn a language is to actually try to talk and listen to others talk in that language, even if you barely understand anything you'll pick up stuff from context clues and shit idk.Also about video games, I learned much more English from playing GTA 5 with my native language's subtitles than I ever did in elementary through high school, I think it's better to watch videos/play games with the audio in the language you want to learn and the subtitles in your native language so you can connect the meanings of words much better. If you just listen and read text in a language you don't understand it'll just be gibberish to you because you have no way of knowing what's going on.
>>17052172what's your native language. i suspect people who espouse this kind of advice are european or come from english-lateral languages. ive yet to find someone who learned harder languages this way without more structured learning.
>>17052189German coincidentally, but Polish too because my parents speak it.
>>17052172>Also about video games, I learned much more English from playing GTA 5 with my native language's subtitlesNot op. But don’t you find it suspicious all the anecdotes of language learning with video game are always about learning English? The “easy” language that everyone learns in school, consumes on the internet, from movies, etc. With video game or not, you’ll learn some English. I think it’s just a coincidence. Perhaps language learning needs time to digest, not immediate, and people want to attribute their improvement to video games. Because it’s so cool, and it gives people excuses to play more video games. For what it’s worth I played Deponia and a bunch of other games in German. And I hardly experienced any improvement. Of course if I did more, referencing a dictionary, adding words to anki, stuff like that, I would have improved a lot. But what’s the point then? Just use a normal language learning resources, like textbooks and graded readers, in that case.
>>17052215>The “easy” language that everyone learns in school, consumes on the internet, from movies, etc. With video game or not, you’ll learn some English.If it works with English it should work with any other language, just start consooming content in the language you want to learn. Sure you'll need to do some studying, for the same reason schools teach you the language that you technically already speak, school teaches you the words and rules and speaking a language directly teaches you the intuitions of it. But video games/movies/media ARE a good way to learn another language because you don't have to travel to the country whose language you're trying to learn and speak with the natives. Also when I said I learned English from GTA I meant to put more emphasis on the subtitles being in my language so I could see what they were saying because I commonly see people say (including the first reply in this thread) that they watch movies with both subtitles and audio in the other language which I don't think is effective.
>>17052232You forgot the age factor too. Too many of the anecdotes are about playing some video games in English AS a kid. Kids obviously learn things faster and easier.
>>17052232>just learn the language first bro then you can learn the language
>>17052235keywords: "faster" and "easier"slower doesn't mean it's not happening at all>>17052239Yes.
>>17051451>What has worked: going through a textbookThat's because as an adult, and approaching a foreign language, it's easier to grasp regular paradigms and understand aspects of grammar than trying to learn colloquial speak, which is full of slang and exceptions and poor grammar. Think of how often in English we mix singular and plural pronouns, treat nouns as verbs, don't speak in proper sentences, etc. etc. You are learning the nice formal German no native speaker actually uses. It's still quicker to learn all the regular aspects first and tackle the exceptions as they come though.But in Germany, children aren't taught nominative/accusative, strong/weak adjectives and so on, they just absorb it and copy what they hear. Just like in English we weren't taught sing, sang, sung has an ablaut because it was a strong verb...we just learned when to use what.>What hasn't:>Apps>Anki>Immersion>YouTube videosThe issue with learning a second language is that it's all too easy to just translate everything we see/hear to our native language for comprehension, and then translate again to respond. Kids pick up so many new words because they aren't associating a word to another word, but to the actual idea it represents. With secondary languages it's basically impossible to do that, because the idea is irrevocably tied to a word in your native language.The flashcard apps feed into and gamify translating in your head, which is why people recommend immersion, because in order to keep up with native speakers you are forced to stop translating eveything. But it's also ridiculously slow, where textbook paradigms speed things up so much because we can reason the purpose for a phoneme just from where it is in speech. Although, it can feed into translating in your head too much also.>Tl;dr: textbooks organize info in ways that make grammar comprehension quick for adults like you, but just be careful not to rely on translation too much. That's why people recommend immersion.
>>17052317>associating a word to another wordPeople who use flashcard apps like this are using it wrong and complaining about the wrong thing. The real discrepency is explained by the difference between wordcels (can only associate words to words) and shape rotators (can associate words to mental visualizations and concepts a word represents).
>>17052335Agreed, but once someone knows a language, this becomes an issue when learning other languages if you aren't conscious of it. And this is part of why some say don't use a textbook, even though it is objectively the fastest way to learn a languague, because textbooks allow you to relate grammatical concepts and vocab in one language to your own language, through explanations, chart, exercises so on. Just want OP to know.
>>17051451Not /sci/. Take it to >>>/int/ or >>>/trv/
