More Seasonal Reviews

[Season's] Greetings!

Today's post will talk about German 2.

So as it turned out, I managed to get an A- for German 2, of which I was pleasantly surprised. The final paper came back and I had barely scraped a 70. Compared to German 1 where I had 80+ for the finals, this was comparatively worse. I expected to get a B+ as a result of that.

The thing about German and exams in a foreign language is that as I relook through my paper, I stare at the mistakes I make and wonder what on earth was I thinking? My answers were blatantly wrong or I had missed the obvious. My listening portion was considerably better than last sem's. Perhaps the last two or three weeks spent randomly listening to the german podcasts on edaf did help somewhat haha. The rest of the exam paper, unfortunately, was not as well done. It falls back onto the rules, rules, rules! I should dedicated a bit more time memorizing and ensuring I had memorized properly the vocab rules for the most part.

My oral, on the bright side, did much better this year than last year. I had a 73% last year and scored 85% this year. I'd like to think that played a major role in boosting up my grade. How to practice oral? I found a song or two I enjoyed singing and used it as a means to practice pronunciation. Have a friend or two that is equally interested in the language and practice over lunch randomly talking. Don't limit the german experience just to the classroom. Whip out the guitar and strum some Disney classics in german (which is what I did haha). Share what you learn with family and friends, whether they are supportive or not is irrelevant :D. Watch youtube videos and try mimicking their pronunciation as closely as possible. There's a ton of things you can do to improve, bottomline is you need to spend time immersing yourself in the language... unless you are one of those gifted people who pick up languages with minimal effort.

This is probably the end of my german journey. I do not intend to take level 3 because I would like to spend more time on my other modules.

I bid thee Auf Wiedersehen! Alles Gute!

RRR