FINAL RESULTS: Mission… ACCOMPLISHED! :)

My dear readers and friends,

last week I got the final results from Goethe Institut, and…

…I DID IT! 😀

I can tell you that I needed around one week to get down from the soft joyful cloud where I’ve been laying during the subsequent days! 🙂 I couldn’t really believe it, but… YES! I did it.

The results of specific sections were generally in line with what I scored at home, even though a bit lower than I expected. I guess that this may be mainly due to my tension during the exam day.

In the written part, my marks on average reached the sufficiency, which is what I had been aiming for (I generally aim much higher, but with such a short timeframe I had to content myself with something reachable!). This proves anyway that I’ve been able to correctly subdivide, among the different required skills, the efforts that I put in, without exceeding in a section at the expense of another.

In respect to my previous post, I did a better job in the Listening comprehension than I foresaw, while the Letter section scored less. Anyway, again, the final result was at least sufficient.

A good surprise, instead, has come from the oral exercise: being 50 the highest possible mark, and 30 the minimum required, I scored 39. Not so bad, for a guy who had truly started exercising his speech in German only one month ago!!! 😉

On this last point, I would like to underline that I’ve been helped a lot by the fact that German is my second foreign language. Throughout the years, I’ve actually trained my brain to elaborate thoughts in English, in addition to Italian, and being fluent in English has paved the way to a fast thinking in German, as well.

Natürlich, I still stumble into words, verbs and expressions that I’m not yet able to translate in German “on the fly”, and that I need time to recall, but once they are clear in my mind, they generally flow out by themselves. I suppose that most of the people, instead, generally lack of mind flexibility, because they’re stuck only with their own mothertongue flow of thoughts.

The level I reached, all in all, eases now the way for further improvements in all areas. Now it will be easier to “land” new knowledge and deepen the understanding of facts and rules that I had to ingest… without a full digestion. Now it’s time to consolidate this knowledge while always keeping an eye on the practical and alive part of the language.

Maybe someday I’m going to comment shortly the main sources of information and study that I’ve been using during these three months’ study, giving them a final score, and I will provide a  personal “Lessons Learned” to sum up this period: would I do the same steps, or would I change something, should I do it again?

For the answer, as always… Stay tuned! 😉

The Judgment Day – Day 90

Dear Readers,

the final day has come. Yesterday I sat for the exam as planned… and for the month to come, I’ll keep my fingers crossed until the results will be published online. So much time for correcting an exam?!? Yep, exactly. The corrections shall be sent from Milan to Rome, which is the central office of the Goethe Institut in Italy, where they’ll be further processed. Only then, they will be made public.

Until then, and in the impossibility to have a clear perception of how much I did correctly, I’d like to share my impressions about what I’ve done.

(Please refer to this page to have an idea of the type of exercises I’m referring below.)

Written Part

• First, Three exercises: “Strukturen und Wortschatz” (Grammatical Structures and Vocabulary), 30 minutes. My perception is that here I scored quite good, especially if compared to the similar exercises that I did at home. I have to confess that several words were not clear to me, so I made the best guess that I could. In relation to the adjective endings, definitely this post that I previously recommended has been absolutely great!
• Second, Three Exercises, “Leseverstehen” (Written comprehension), 40 mins. Some question were posed in a  not always clear way, so I’m afraid I missed some shots, even though the sense of the answer was clear to me. Let’s see.
• Third, Four Exercises, “Hörverstehen” (Oral Comprehension), 30 mins. I didn’t do totally bad, but I think I’ve done much worst if compared to my previous results at home. Maybe because at home I had headphones on, while during the exam there is a just stereo playing aloud in the room, but I also had the perception that the verbal speed of the speaker was in some moments higher than the one in the examples provided, both the free ones and the paid version… or maybe I was not so relaxed as at home and I’ve not been able to go with the flow. In particular, I am sure that I did at least one error for each of the two phone numbers to be written down. Which makes me angry, since I always scored good in my “Lab” 😦 Also as above, some question were posed in a strange way (but I knew that, also the examples were structured similarly), so I’m not sure I got all the right shots.
• Fourth, Two Exercises, Korrespondenz (yeah, you got it: Correspondence, Mail), 60 mins. In this case, I think I did a good job. Maybe also the experience of last week with “Odol” has helped me a bit with this kind of exercise 😉

Oral Part, 20 mins.

In this case, 15 mins prior to this part of the test, I was given some sheets, with some graphs and some “roleplays”. I had to choose one of the firsts, and one of the seconds, and take my time to jot down some ideas about them, that I could refer to during the actual test, when I had to orally report about them.

Than, I came into this room with two German mothertongue teachers (professional, but very friendly women), with whom I started speaking about my job. Ten minutes later, I explained’em that my self-“active study” of the language had started just three months before, and that before September 2012 I knew absolutely nothing of the German language. On top of that, I had not spent more that one weekend in Berlin, 2 years ago, when I was able to speak only English.

They stared at each other breathlessly, couldn’t believe their ears, looked at me and asked: “How did you do that?!?” 😀

I would leave it to your imagination, but I guess that they meant that my verbal performance so far had not been so bad 😉 So I went on explaining about my personal challenge, and how I did it. I told’em about the “Benny the Irish Polyglot” style, about Busuu, about the precious friends that I met thanks to it and that helped me the most in this tough journey, and they looked amazed…

Maybe they also thought that, when this challenge would be made public, people would start skipping traditional preparation courses like the ones at Goethe’s!

Well, I think it won’t happen, for several reasons. First of all, to reach good results with this path, it is required a strong dose of Motivation, Obstinacy, Concentration, the Willingness to go beyond one’s comfort zone, a clear Vision of the final Goals and a constant Testing behaviour about one’s Performances. This kind of study HAS to be targeted in detail for one’s Objectives: in my opinion there’s no One-Fits-All program, especially because each of us learns differently, has got different talents and different learning channels, and it is each one’s responsibility to scan among the (many) learning possibilities to find the ones that suits one most.

Unfortunately, I personally think that not everybody is ready to take this challenge… But I guess that, if you stumbled into this blog, and if you’re still reading this post, you’re the kind of Person that would give this approach a chance! 😉

To wrap up with the oral part of the exam, during the  following exercises I felt I was not so fluid as in the presentation one, both because I couldn’t recall in time some words and verbs (and I probably kicked out also some English words… both German and English are foreign languages for me, and maybe in my brain they are not exactly “hermetically sealed compartments”...) and because I happened to make things grammatically too complex. Thus I’ve been trying to simplify the structure of the sentences, so as to ease the communication. The teachers replied back to my observations, as was expected by the roleplay, and I replied back once more to reach a common point.

After the exercises, we went on speaking for five minutes more. Auf Deutsch, natürlich (!), but in a more relaxed way: about study, languages, about my life and the job market outlook. The exam was ended, and we were just communicating… Those five minutes have probably been the best and most touching part of the exam for me: the ultimate reason of those three months’ study, that is the communication with real native people, was in those moments being accomplished. It was sort I had no teachers in front of me, but just common people, new friends, and we were interacting with each other… in a language that was no more “alien” to me, and that spread directly from my head through my mouth, without relevant interruptions or communicational interferences.

That was absolutely great, and I probably looked very self-confident, but I actually couldn’t really believe it was true. But it was 🙂

So, in the end, I think that I can be quite positive in relation to the final possible results… But anyway, like my deutschsprächigen friends Renate and Ina say, to me it’s already been a success, and I’ve already reached my final Goal. The exam to me has been in the end a bit more than a “pretext” to let me concentrate on the business part of German, to be ready to use it in a professional context… and increase my workability.

Of course, I’ll take some more steps in the very nearby future, to consolidate and widen my knowledge… But this, as well as the lessons learned from these three months’ study, will be the subject of a next post, so, as always…

…Stay tuned!!! 😀

Final Countdown, one week to the Dawn! – Day 86

Dear Readers,

the plane is going to fly… Next week, 7 days from today, I’ll find out how effective these 3 months’ study has been! To tell the truth, I’m starting feeling some tiredness. I’m enjoying the language, I feel more confortable with it, I read German everywhere and anytime I can without major problems, I even use it with SMS’s or speaking aloud… Yet I hope the exam date comes as soon as possible, because I need to take a break! 😉

I’ve been posting so little in this period as I’m proceeding with the plans, exactly according to my previous posts, so I had no specifical notes to add.

Yesterday I’ve gone for the first time to the Goethe Institute in Milan, to take a look at the place and don’t wander around on the day of the exam. I met some people of the organization, and also bought a second “Übungssatz” (Sample of the exam) in addition to the one freely available online, and I’ll test myself on it a couple of days before the actual exam.

Today, besides, I’ve had the possibility to really test myself on commercial letters in German, that you know have a certain role within the exam. I had planned for today a study session about that, but I had something more interesting to do… apply my German knowledge to a real-life case!

Actually, in the past months I’ve been looking for a peculiar mouthwash, called “Odol”, about which I had had very positive feedbacks. It is a “historic” product, whose commercial birth dates back to 1892. For some reasons, this product is no more available in Italy since the beginning of this year, and than I’ve tried to find it somewhere online. The only place I found it was in Germany, exactly in an online shop from Berlin! So last week I made the order (I took several bottles, to amortize the shipment costs), paid, and kept waiting for receiving the packet.

Today, I got the parcel… but unfortunately, one of the bottles was broken, maybe because of a not-so-perfect packaging from the shop (actually, the bottles were not in plastic, as I thought, but in ceramic, maybe to preserve the properties of the product, so they were very fragile). Well, I thought that, all in all, the Heavens have brought to me the occasion to apply for real what I had been studying… So, to make it short, today I’ve written my very first real Commercial Letter in German, describing the problem, explaining why I thought that the issue depended on a wrong packaging, attaching some pictures, and asking in which way could we handle the situation.

Within half an hour, the shop contacted me via email, saying (in German, natürlich) that they were sorry for what happened, and that they had already prepared a second delivery to complement my order. So… my email had been successfully understood, and passed a real-life exam! ;D

These are satisfactions!

So near to the exam, I would like to thank all the friends that have been helping me during these hard months (yes, you know who you are!). With your patience and your active support, you’ve helped me gain confidence and arrive to this point with the tools I had been looking for… For sure, it’s been a path for which it’s usually required a longer time and much more exposure to live German, while I did it only from my home, but with the help of a virtual community… that really made the difference.

[Of course, I also have to thank my wife, who has patiently left this strange guy studying in a closed room for all these months, considering him just a “silent presence” in the house, without blaming him for being so… ehm… antisocial… ;D ]

After the exam, I’ll definitely look for opportunities to practise German in real life.

And now… the final effort!

I’ll keep you posted. Stay tuned! 😉

Building Vocabulary with A2 and B1 level Verbs – Day 74

Here I am again, with the promised Flashcards that I created for A2 and B1 level, freely available for you in Quizlet at the links below. In particular, the same verbs are in a first deck with the double translation in German/Italian (“Deu/Ita”), while in the second deck they are only in German (“Nur Deutsch”) conjugated as already explained in this previous post. I’ve tried to keep the decks small (below 30 items) to improve the ease of memorization, that’s why some of them have an “A” and a “B” part. Here we go:

• Verben A2 – Deu/Ita
• Verben A2 – Nur Deutsch
• Verben B1 – Deu/Ita A
• Verben B1 – Deu/Ita B
• Verben B1 – Nur Deutsch A
• Verben B1 – Nur Deutsch B

At the moment, I (sort of) master the A1/A2 verbs, and I’m working on the B1 level.

In the meantime, I’m proceeding with the study of Commercial Letters and Marktplatz (in particular, learning how to describe graphs and tables, which is one of the oral exercises during the exam), and trying to systematize the Grammar.

I’ll try to study also during the Easter… holidays 🙂

By the way, Happy Easter, and, as usual… stay tuned! 😉

Talking auf Deutsch about my Job – Day 70

Dear Readers,

by now I’m swimming towards the core of my study, by gathering contents related to my job: Project Management, Construction Management, Photovoltaics. In particular, I wish to master the specific terminology as soon as possible, to be able to talk about my profession and my job experiences.

Differently from English, that borrows almost all its technical terminology from Latin and Greek (sharing in this sense the same roots of the Italian language), German uses words of its own, making it absolutely impossible to “improvise” a conversation in German on project management or technical matters for a non-German speaker (though I sometimes find some “anglicized” words, but I guess that’s far from “good” German).

Luckily, Wikipedia is helping a lot on these subjects. First of all, I’ve found a link about Projektmanagement, that covers in short the PM ground. An in-depth study can be done also with the German version of the PM Body Of Knowledge – PMBOK Guide, available on the PMI.org website (and freely downloadable if you are member of PMI), but it’s far from being an easy reading, so I’ll probably check it in future should I really need it.

Another great article in Wikipedia for my scope is also “Construction Management”, that in German becomes “Bauprojektmanagement“, and contains most of what I normally do in my day-to-day job.

Besides, a great source to gather specific terminology in German is Linguee.de, that searches through 100 million translations to get a match with a sentence you’re looking for, in a big database that covers English, French, Spanish and Portuguese (not Italian, but luckily I can get around it). For example, it has helped me with the definitions in German of “civil construction works” and “electro-mechanical works” . One great aspect is that it provides the links from which the translations are generated, so you can deepen your researches through real-world examples, and maybe also get in touch with Companies and Professionals that relate to that specific job field.

To conclude, here’s available a Presentation in German that talks about the structure of an Investment for Photovoltaic Plants. It dates back to 2004, but I confirm that the structure has remained quite the same also nowadays, mainly for Works managed in “Project Finance”.

That’s all for today… I’ll keep you posted for new updates.

Stay tuned! 😉

Hacking the Irregulars… Day 67

Ok, I promised I would share my hacks to simplify the learning of the German irregular verbs, and here I am!

First of all, I have to say that these hacks are NOT the Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow… I’m finding the German verbs some really unfathomable beasts, that can be acquainted with, only by spending a lot of time with them… no really fast ways to learn, but a lot of patience and exercise are of the essence to “tame” them…

I’m challenging myself in learning the Infinitive, than the 3rd Person of the Präsens, the 3rd Person of the Präteritum, the 3rd Person of the Perfekt together with the related auxiliary verb (haben, sein). Decks for A1 Verbs are available through the links on one previous Post.

First Hack

Said this, the first strategy that I’m following is finding out a “pattern” related to how the vowels change in the three declensions. Unfortunately, there are many patterns to be put in place, but with exercise it becomes quite clear which one to use when. These patterns, essentially the vowels that change, create in my mind a keyword that jumps out when I recall the 4 forms. Of course, the keywords I’ve chosen are in Italian (much easier for me!), you will be suggested to find similar words in your own language to fit your needs.

Let’s do some examples.

• Fahren, fährt, fuhr, ist/hat gefahren
• Tragen, trägt, trug, hat getragen

We see here the sequence “a“, “ä” (sounds like “eh”), “u” and again “a“… which recalls me the word “ALLELUJA“: First Keyword.

• Fangen, fängt, fing, hat gefangen
• Lassen, lässt, ließ, hat gelassen

…and here we have ALLEVI-A (which in Italian means, “it alleviates”) . Second Keyword.

• Helfen, hilft, half, hat geholfen
• Nehmen, nimmt, nahm, hat genommen

…that sounds like EMILIANO (“guy from “Emilia Romagna”, an Italian Region). Third Keyword.

Proceeding with the study, I’ve associated other verbs with the keywords “EMILIANE“, “DIVISA Sù“, “DIVISA NO“, “Sì, Sì, LO SO“… and other ones in the same way. It’s important to make these keywords lively, so as to associate them in a funny way with the verbs. With the time, the association may get lost, but usually three of the four forms already come to mind; so it generally becomes easy to recall the fourth variating vowel, and which keyword to associate with.

Unfortunately, modal verbs and auxiliary verbs do what they like to do (together with other “mixed” verbs), so we have to memorize them as they come 😦

Second Hack

When there is a variation of vowel between the infinitive form and the 3rd Person Präsens, the Perfekt is generally made up of the ge- form plus the infinitive (for example: tragen, trägt -> hat getragen). Maybe not a general rule, but so far it’s working for me.

Third Hack

Finally, in most cases the auxiliary verb is “haben”, but all the verbs that contain the idea of movement, have the ausiliary “sein”, alone or as an alternative to “haben”. The “Spaced Repetition System” doesn’t forgive us on this if, as in the case of Quizlet, we have to write down the solution instead of just recalling it to our mind! So it’s important to remember which verbs have at the same time haben and sein. Luckily, they are just a little group.

And… that’s all? Yep. So far, at least.

As I anticipated, a lot of exercise has to be done, supported by these few tricks. I’ve created decks with a limited number of verbs (only 20), because especially at first it may be daunting trying to remember them all in a single session, and the “spaced time” for the repetition becomes too long. But, after a little while, everything gets clear and comes to mind.

Have you successfully tried other techniques? Do you see other “useful patterns” that can improve the memorization and make it faster? Please let me know! 🙂

In a short while I’ll make available also the lists for A2 and B2 irregular German verbs.

Stay tuned! 😉

Intermediate Test – Day 58

My dear Blog Readers,

Time is running, it seems… Today I’ve registered for the ZDfB exam of April, 18, and made the payment (110 euros for the exam, plus 30 euros as I’m not a Goethe student). Sooner than that, anyway, I’ve tried the sample test available on the Goethe website.

Luckily, the results were encouraging on the parts that I tested myself on. I had actually to skip the parts related both to the Commercial Letter, which I’m not yet used to (but I already gave a fast scan at my related study materials, and it doesn’t threaten me), and to the Speeches / Role Plays, related to the working life. I’ve made some simulations for the spoken part by myself, and not yet in “public”. Besides, I still need contents to be speaking about these matters…

The final results show me that so far I’ve done quite a good job: on an average index, 3.3 “stars” on 5 available. Not so bad, considering the short study timeframe!

At the same time, I still have to work hard if I want to be sure to pass it with… dignity 🙂 Actually, in the test there were many words I didn’t know yet, but I was surprised, more than by these, by the quite high number of those that I recognized! So this confirmed the good choice of study sources so far.

So my plan for this last month of study ahead is as follows:

• going on in depth with “Orientierung im Beruf”, for words, expressions, themes and in general contents related to the job life;
• studying of Commercial Letters;
• preparing some short essays in German on the themes highlighted by the Goethe sample tests, and learning to repeat them aloud (to someone else). The actual themes might be different, but it will help me getting the needed fluidity in mindset and speech;
• finally, studying more in depth the units by Marktplatz, that up to now I’ve just listened to (with pleasure, they are very well done).

The study of the grammar should come altogether, but I’m afraid I won’t have enough time to study it in a “rational” way. I’ll better check grammar issues as I meet them along the way, rather then treating grammar as a study subject by itself. I’d love to, but one month is too short…

The help of my German speaking friends will be, especially in this last phase, of vital importance! 😉

In a few days I’ll write down some notes on how I’m at the moment “hacking” the German irregular verbs, so… stay tuned! 🙂

Danilo erzählt :) – day 52

Today I’m posting my speech of the tale “Das Sonnenchloss” (“The Castle of the Sun”).

It is originally read by the speaker Andrea, from the podcast series “Andrea erzählt” (see this previous post for more news). Specifically, here you can find her speech together with the transcripts.

At the following links instead you find my own versions in AAC (smaller) and in MP3 format (bigger, but compatible with any device). Everything can be improved (I already know that many words sound far from being perfect!), but I’ve focused on the flow of the words and on the interpretation.

Any comment? 🙂

Stay tuned! 😀

Back on my “Weg” – day 51

During the past weeks my study of German has been somehow errant and nomadic. I’ve had several extra activities and I couldn’t stick to my study plans in the “active way” that I wished (except for a couple of Skype calls in “semi-German” 🙂 ).

I’ve gone on by listening to German radios and podcasts from DW-Marktplatz, as well as repeating “connectors” and “most used verbs” through Quizlet. Besides, I’ve started to use the book “Orientierung im Beruf” (see this previous post for a short description) to get some acquaintance with terms and expressions related to the working life

In addition, I also got the short course “Why German is easy” by Benny Lewis (here’s a description of the course, while here you can find the index and an excerpt). This ebook, with some extra contents, guides you through the identification of patterns in the German language that makes its learning much easier for English-speaking people. Actually, English is a Germanic language, so both languages share common roots. Its aim is mainly intended to improve and ease the verbal communication in German, so many useful short-cuts are provided in that sense. In my case, unfortunately, I have to focus also on grammar aspects, which complicates the study, but Benny’s insights are anyway very useful.

At the moment, I’m preparing some decks to be used on Quizlet, for the memorization of the irregular German verbs. I’m writing down some lists from the book “Grammatica attiva della Lingua Tedesca“, which usefully groups those verbs according to A1/A2/B1/B2/C European levels categories, so I can start with the lowest levels (easier and more widespread verbs) and subsequently increase the difficulty. Here you can freely find my deck with the German A1 irregular verbs with the translation in Italian, while here the deck of the same verbs, but to exercise on the 3rd person Present, 3rd person Präteritum and 3rd person Perfekt.

Memorizing them is actually a hard task, but unfortunately it’s a necessary step to improve understanding for both spoken and written German.

I’ll keep you posted for updates.

Stay tuned! 🙂

On my Way – Days 28-32

Yesterday I’ve decided to take the “Placement Test” offered by Deutsche Welle, to see what I’ve reached so far, in this first month of in-depth study. The Test is meant to give some hints regarding one’s level of knowledge of the German language, and consequently suggest which of their free online courses (in line with the European levels A1-C2) would suit best the learner. The learner decides for which level (A1/A2/B1/B2) he/she want to be examined, and the result is a percentage of how well he/she scores according to that level. It is quite well structured, as each test is based on 30 exercises (grammar, listening, comprehension) related to study and everyday life, with increasing difficulty.

These are my final results:

• A1: 88%
• A2: 78%
• B1: 80%
• B2: 45%.

First of all, the test obviously cannot evaluate the pronunciation and the ability to interrelate with natives, so I take these results as a simple indication of my level in those other areas.

I can tell you that, even though there is a lot to improve in the grammar, the good numbers have put me on the right mood. A couple of months are ahead, and I think that there is enough space to reach the skills required by the B2 level and delve into communic-ability.

I admit I’ve left aside the communication aspect so far, but I’d like to start with something more than a simple “Hallo, wie geht es ihnen” and the likes, being already able to improvise. And to do that, I’m working especially on verbs, learning as many as possible. I’m still working on tenses and their construction with adverbs, but it’s just question of time.

Now, a pat on the back, and back to the study! 😉

Stay tuned! 🙂