Ich möchte manchmal schneller Deutsch lernen. Ich wollte letztes Jahr die A2-Prüfung machen. Aber ich habe es damals wegen des Coronavirus nicht gemacht – die Prüfungen wurden abgesagt. Im Unterricht haben wir “Begegnungen A2+” beendet und haben nun mit dem B1-Lehrbuch begonnen. Ich habe ungefähr ein Viertel des Materials gelernt. Außerdem habe ich mir alle 76 Folgen einer Online-TV-Serie der Deutschen Welle, die “Nicos Weg” heißt, angesehen und die angehängten Übungen gelöst. Die Serie ist für Lernende, die das Niveau B1 erreichen wollen und schließt mit einem Test ab, bei dem ich 89% erreicht habe. 

Ich habe ein paar Modellprüfungen bei dem B1 Niveau gemacht. Normalerweise bekomme ich beim Lesen und Hören mindestens 90 Prozent der Punkte. Ich finde, dass die Schreiben-Aufgaben nicht zu schwierig sind. Die Texte, die man schreiben muss, sind relativ kurz (insgesamt circa 200 Wörter) und man hat eine Stunde dafür. An der anderen Seite sieht die mündliche Prüfung sehr anspruchsvoll aus. Ich weiß nicht, ob ich sie bestehen würde, wenn ich sie heute machen würde. Ich habe das über A1 gesagt und dann allerdings 100 Prozent bekommen, aber B1 ist viel schwieriger. Ich möchte die B1-Prüfung später in diesem Jahr machen. B1 ist gut, denn es ist wichtig für die Einwanderung.

Sometimes, I would like to learn German more quickly. Last year, I wanted to do the A2 exam. However, I did not at that time because of the coronavirus; the exams were cancelled. In class we’ve finished “Begegnungen A2+” and have now started with the B1 textbook. I have covered about a quarter of the material there. Additionally, I’ve also watched all 76 episodes of an online TV series from the Deutsche Welle called “Nico’s Weg” and completed the attached exercises. The series is for learners who want to reach level B1 and concludes with a test, in which I scored 89 percent.

I have done a few B1 practice papers. Normally, I score at least 90 percent in reading and listening. I find that the writing tasks are not too difficult. The texts that one has to write are relatively short (in total about 200 words) and one has one hour for that. On the other hand, the oral exam looks very challenging. I don’t know if I would pass if I took it today. I did say that about A1 and got 100%, but B1 is a lot harder. I would like to do the B1 exam later in this year. B1 is good, because it is important for immigration.

Measuring one’s language skills, and perhaps more importantly what one can do with a language is always challenging. At the beginning, there were clear milestones for improvement: I’d learn a phrase or expression that would be useful (e.g. Ich komme aus Singapur, which means I come from Singapore), or alternatively learn new vocabulary items (e.g. gelb means yellow). Towards the end of A1 this shifted towards building constructions with connectors (e.g. Ich kann Chinesisch sprechen, weil ich es in der Schule gelernt habe – I can speak Chinese, because I learned it in school); various other types of constructions and connectors came in in A2 and B1, which added trickier structures (e.g. Je mehr ich lese, desto mehr lerne ich – the more I read, the more I learn; adjectives can generally be converted to nouns by adding a d in the right place e.g. reisen means to travel; der Reisende means the traveller).

Of course, there are still new vocabulary items that are coming in. As part of homework I learned the words Oberschenkel and Unterschenkel for the parts of the leg above and below the knee (thigh and calf, respectively). Progress, however, now appears less directly measurable in that I’ve covered (whether in class or externally) most of the required grammar for B1. I’m not particularly surprised or confused by say the passive voice, a statement in future tense or adjective endings, even if it may take me a while to be certain that I’ve done it correctly when writing a sentence (similarly, accuracy when speaking may not be good). There are still some areas where I know that I have not learned the grammar yet (e.g. Konjunktiv I, which is a tense often used in reported speech), but these generally seem less urgent.

I think the key areas for improvement on my end involve fluency and accuracy, which are a lot more difficult for me to assess. I know that when saying I would like the red apple that I can’t just say Ich möchte den rot Apfel; the adjective needs to be declined, and the correct version is Ich möchte den roten Apfel. However, I might accidentally say Ich möchte den rote Apfel, and I might not know that I had made a mistake (and, even though it may seem a bit primitive, communication would probably be achieved). My German teacher would of course catch and point out such a mistake, but I don’t know if others would. I’m also fairly confident with the connectors as used independently, but am somewhat less certain when stacking them – for example, in my most recent essay, I wrote

Obwohl ich die Wohnungen nicht persönlich besichtigen wollte, ging ich trotzdem, weil ich glaube, dass Fotos und Texte kein Ersatz sind.

This means “although I didn’t want to view the apartments personally, I went nonetheless, because I believe that photos and text (descriptions) are not a substitute (for that)”. Getting a sentence like this right is still difficult for me in German, which is problematic for me because I often want to express ideas following a similar pattern.

There is a related point on vocabulary. At some point in primary school, I was given the advice to, as far as reasonable, avoid repeating words. For example, my good friend and I went to a good restaurant, where I had a good steak; depending on the actual details, something like A close friend and I went to an exquisite restaurant, where I had a masterfully executed steak would sound more interesting and engaging. I’m starting to have to deal with this issue in German as well; initially I was happy to be able to simply get my ideas across, but I’ve now been asked to vary my ideas and expressions more. I think the verb I have the most problems with is finden (to find, both in the sense of locating something and drawing a conclusion from experiences – this second usage is difficult). I know that glauben and denken (believing and thinking respectively) are often OK, but I find (pun intended) that they don’t have quite the same tone or mood.

In general, it seems my compositions have had a bit less red ink on them, which is good – though progress certainly isn’t as clearly measurable as it was many months ago.

Ich lerne jetzt seit einem ganzen Jahr Deutsch. Ich erinnere mich, dass ich mit Duolingo und Linguee fing an. Zuerst lernte ich ein paar Wörter mit diesen Apps (obwohl es ist nicht so, dass ich von Null fing an. Früher hatte ich drei Monaten in Zürich gewohnt, und obwohl ich dann kein Deutsch gelernt hatte, erinnere ich mich natürlich ein bisschen Sachen.)

Als ich die Unterrichten bei Palantir begann, kannte ich ungefähr zwischen 600 und 1000 Wörter. Aber ich wusste kein Grammatik, und hatte nie auf Deutsch gesprochen. Wir hatten ein paar Deutschstunden, und dann unsere Lehrerin machte ihren jährlichen Urlaub. Ich hatte eine Fünf-Wochen-Pause, aber ich lernte weiter. Sie empfahl mir eine Serie von Büchern, die heißt “Dino lernt Deutsch”. Ich las diese Büchern gern, weil ich die Charaktere lustig und (wichtiger) die Sprache verständlich fand. Ich mochte auch die Fragen nach jedem Kapitel, weil ich mein Verständnis des Textes überprüfen konnte.

Ich glaube, dass ich vielleicht im September oder Oktober das A1-Niveau erreichte. Aber wegen meines Arbeits und meiner Faulheit machte ich die Prüfung im Januar. Damals war meine deutsche Sprachkentnisse sicherlich über A1; deshalb mochte ich “sehr gut” (mehr als 90 Prozent) Note. Ich übte andere Prüfungen, z. B. die englische GCSE (zu dieser Zeit bekam ich Siebener, die vielleicht Niveau A2 sind), und die telc A2 Deutschprüfungen. Endlich bekam ich 100 Prozent – das war noch ein bisschen überraschend. Ich vermute, dass sogar ins Sprechen und Schreiben man alle Punkte bekommen kann, wenn man die Aufgabe komplett erfüllt.

Wegen des Coronavirus muss ich die Unterrichten selbst bezahlen. Natürlich bevorzuge ich, wenn die Firma bezahlen, aber das ist für mich kein Problem. Ich finde die Deutschstunden effektiv und interessant. Am wichtigsten ist, dass ich mich durch diese Unterrichten mein Sprechen und Schreiben verbessern können. Eine Person, die meine Arbeit präzise korrigieren kann, ist sehr wertvoll.

Und dies ist mein erster Artikel, den ich komplett auf Deutsch geschrieben habe (am meistens…). Es ist klar, dass dies immer noch sehr schwierig ist. Aber es ist gut zu sehen, dass ich jetzt über komplizierter Ideen und Sachen schreiben kann. Ich will, und werde, weiter lernen.

I’ve been learning German for a full year now. I remember that I began with Duolingo and Linguee. I first learned a few words with these apps, though it isn’t the case that I started from zero. I had previously lived for three months in Zurich, and although I didn’t learn German at the time, I naturally remember some of it, by absorption.

When the lessons at Palantir started, I knew somewhere between 600 and 1000 words or so, although I knew zero grammar, and had never spoken a word of German. We had a few lessons, and then our teacher went on her annual holiday. I had a five week break, but I continued to learn. My teacher recommended a series of books called “Dino learns German”. I enjoyed reading these books, because the characters were funny, and more importantly the language was understandable. I also liked that there were questions after each chapter, as they allowed me to validate my comprehension of the text.

I believe I probably reached an A1 level in September or October, but because of my work and laziness I only did the exam in January. At that time, my German skills were surely above A1, therefore I wanted to get a “very good” (90% or higher) grade. I practiced other exams, for example the English GCSE (at that time I was scoring around grade 7s overall, which are about A2 level) and the A2 telc exams. In the end I scored 100%, which was still surprising. I guess that even in speaking and writing, one can get full marks if one fulfills the task completely.

Because of the coronavirus, I now have to pay for lessons myself – of course I prefer if the company pays, but that is not a problem. I find the lessons effective and interesting. Most importantly, I can improve my speaking and writing through these lessons – having a trusted person who can precisely correct my work is very valuable.

And this is also my first blogpost that I’ve written completely in German (well, kind of). It’s clear that this is still really difficult, but it’s good to see that I can now write about more complex ideas and things. I do want to, and will, continue to learn.

In der A1 “Start Deutsch 1” Prüfung muss man in das Schreiben-Teil ein Formular ausfüllen, z. B. ein Anmeldeformular für eine Sprachschule, oder eine Reisebuchungformular. Obwohl ich darin eine sehr gute Note bekam, bin ich noch nicht sicher, Formulare auf Deutsch auszufüllen. Ich würde immer noch Englisch benutzen, weil ich Missverständnisse vermeiden möchten. Auf der anderen Seite, das Spielen von Computerspielen hat am meistens weniger Konsequenzen, wenn man Fehler machen. Ich spielte ein paar Spiele auf Deutsch mit meinen Freunde, darunter “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” und “Tick Tock: A Tale for Two”. In diesen Spiele ist gute und klare Kommunikation sehr wichtig. Wir machte viel Spaß, obwohl wir waren viel langsamer als wenn wir Englisch benutzte.

One has to fill in a form in the writing part of the German A1 (“Start Deutsch 1”) exam, for example a registration form for a language school or a travel booking form. Although I got a very good mark there, I’m still not confident filling in forms in German. I would still prefer to use English, because I would want to avoid any misunderstandings. On the other hand, playing computer games mostly has fewer consequences when one makes mistakes. I played a few games with my friends in German, including “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” and “Tick Tock: A Tale for Two”. Good and clear communication is very important in these games. We had a lot of fun, even though we were much slower than if we used English.

A suggestion I’ve come across fairly often as part of language learning is to set one’s computer’s language to the target language. The aim here is likely to achieve immersion: one will see the language as part of one’s daily activities. Admittedly, the vocabulary one comes across is likely to be fairly domain specific (one will probably very quickly learn what the word for close or delete are – in German schließen and löschen respectively), but it does still likely cover a fair few common phrases and expressions that might be useful. For example, I have to think a bit to translate how to play (Spielanleitung or Wie man spielt, probably not the direct Wie zu spielen), while that would probably come very quickly to someone who did this.

As the previous sentence implied, I did not do this. I did try it briefly, but ran into enough frustrating issues that I switched my laptop back to English. I think the main issue wasn’t that I found the system unusable, but it did considerably slow things down. Many websites presented content, forms and questions to me in German (it’s possible this is my failure and/or I went for even more immersion when I changed the language settings), and I needed to read them really closely to be sure of precisely what I was doing. For example, I remember being asked, when booking a flight to Switzerland, Brauchen Sie aufgegebenes Gepäck? (Do you need checked baggage?) I knew Gepäck meant baggage – the problem was that I wanted hand (but not checked) baggage, and while I knew that hand luggage is normally written Handgepäck I didn’t know if aufgegebenes was another word for hand baggage or if it referred to checked baggage. While these kinds of disruptions could certainly be viewed as learning opportunities (and that is how I learned those words), they happened at a higher frequency than I would like, and were often disruptive.

There were also more technical issues relating to internationalisation (or “i18n” as is frequently written in tech). For example, my copy of The Sims 4 couldn’t find its old data directories because it decided to search in Die Sims 4. Most of my documents are still written in English, and Office also seemed to think that it should follow the default language for spell-checking (a reasonable assumption, and it’s probably too much to ask to have it infer the input language and then run spell check based on that, but frustrating for me).

On the other hand, I find computer games, especially ones that are relatively simpler, suitable for playing in a target foreign language because, as discussed above, there are generally fewer consequences for mistakes. If one is playing competitively, of course, then this would be an unnecessary handicap. The Sims series would probably be very good games for playing in German (or when learning a foreign language) because many of the words encountered would be similar to ones used often in real life – compared to Keep Talking, where numbers, colours and orientation were much more prevalent. Tick Tock was interesting and communication felt more difficult (we’ve only finished chapter 1): it’s basically kind of like an escape room with puzzles and instructions in German. I was able to figure out at least the gist of what was being said, so that wasn’t too much of a problem – the bigger challenge there was because my friend and I communicated entirely in German. Relaying instructions was tricky; there is a richer range of things that needed to be communicated (as compared to saying Vier Kabeln, rot-gelb-schwarz-weiß; thinking back the part of Keep Talking made trickiest by using German was the symbols module).

Ich habe meine A1 Deutschprüfung bestanden. Ich habe nicht nur bestanden, sondern 100 von 100 Punkte erreichen. Man muss in jedem Teil mindestens 60 Prozent erzielen, wenn man die Prüfung bestanden. Es gibt fünf mögliche Bewertungen. Am höchsten ist “sehr gut” (90-100). Aber ich weiß nicht, ob ich eine sehr gute Entscheidung über das Sprachniveau machte – vielleicht konnte ich die A2 Prüfung auch bestanden? Vor sechs Monaten wusste ich nicht, wie meine Deutschsprachkentnisse entwicklen würden.

I passed my A1 German exam. I didn’t just pass, but got 100 of 100 points. One must score at least 60 percent in each part of the exam to pass. There are five possible grades. The highest is “very good” (90-100). However, I don’t know if I made a “very good” decision about which level of the exam to take – maybe I could have passed the A2 exam. Six months ago, I didn’t know how my German skills would develop.

This is in general an issue with exams where candidates must decide what level to enter themselves at: I’ve run into this before for music, and also with German. It’s a shame that the Goethe-Institut (and as far as I know, other alternatives like the telc) exams aren’t generally equipped to provide assessment at other grades for very strong, or alternatively, just-unsatisfactory performances. This is less of an issue with the Cambridge English qualifications – in general, candidates can also obtain a grade N + 1 or N – 1 result when taking the exam for grade N if they, respectively, score close to full marks or just miss the passing mark.

I made the decision on which exam to take about 6 months ago – the decision was between A1 and A2. I started by looking at the model papers available from the Goethe-Institut. I think my opinion at the time was that at that point, I could mostly smoothly navigate the A1; A2 would be a struggle, though there were still four months to the exam. The speaking section of A2 would, in particular, have been a struggle then; I think it would still be difficult if I had to do it now. I think I tried out the reading and listening sections of both papers in September last year, and scored 83% on A1 and 57% on A2. I’ve tried out the B1 level papers more recently for reading (and the telc grammar/sentence construction ones as well) and have been able to fumble my way through with about 80 percent, though of course it has been six months since then!

The European Council does publish a self-assessment rubric to help distinguish these levels, but I find the “can-do” descriptors a little vague and, more importantly, difficult for me to confidently assess. I’d generally be confident with most of the A2 descriptors now, and five months ago I think understanding would be at A2 while production (speaking and writing) would be somewhere in between A1 and A2. However, there still exist interpretations where I wouldn’t necessarily be confident of my ability at the A2 level. Consider the descriptor for spoken interaction, which includes “I can handle very short social exchanges, even though I can’t usually understand enough to keep the conversation going myself”. Many of my social interactions with friends involve puns, humour and sarcasm which I might completely miss if delivered in German. I don’t think this is part of the expectation at A2, but it isn’t explicitly stated.

I was somewhat risk-averse and picked A1, figuring that I would get this out of the way and I could still take A2 subsequently, or alternatively jump straight to B1. As mentioned, I think my German skills developed more than I expected over the next few months, perhaps because I spent more time doing self-study. This isn’t a bad result at all, but something like this instead of say an 85 or 91 really did make me think if A2 would have been the better decision. In any case, I can’t take it back, and the improvements to my skill level remain. (It is possible that I might have developed my skills further if I did the A2 exam in January, as I would need to push myself through catch-up classes or work, but it would also have been considerably more stressful.)

I had my Goethe-Zertifikat A1: Start Deutsch 1 exam about 3 weeks ago. The exam has four parts: listening, reading, writing and speaking. I was most nervous about the oral exam, but once it started, I felt more comfortable. The third part of the oral exam is about making and responding to requests. One of the other candidates took a card with a “no smoking” sign on it, but I think he forgot the word “smoking”. He was smart, though, and said, “Please do not give the children cigarettes”. I think my speaking skills were good enough, though unfortunately not as humorous.

Vor drei Woche habe ich meine Goethe-Zertifikat A1 Prüfung gemacht. Die Prüfung hat vier Teilen, nämlich Lesen, Hören, Schreiben und Sprechen. Ich war am nervösesten über die mundliche Prüfung, aber als sie angefangen hat, fühle ich mich besser. Das dritte Teil der mundlichen Prüfung ist über Bitten formulieren und reagieren. Ein anderer Kandidat hat eine Karte mit einem “Rauchen verboten” Schild genommen. Ich habe gedacht, dass er hat das Wort “rauchen” vergessen. Er war intelligent, und hat gesagt “Bitte geben Sie meinen Kindern keine Zigaretten”. Ich denke, dass ich habe gut genug gesprochen, aber ich war leider nicht so lustig.

Taboo is a game where one needs to communicate a word to one’s partner, without saying a list of “taboo” words. For example, for the word “Twister” one might have Tornado, Game, Colours, Legs and Arms as taboo words. If I still wanted to go for the party game approach (which I think is easier than the tornado approach as it’s very precise if done correctly), I might say something like “Something played at a party where a wheel is spun and players contort their limbs to place them on red, green, blue or yellow circles”.

I’ve found some similarities between playing Taboo and speaking in German (and even in Mandarin), in that I can’t always use the most direct approach of communicating something. The reason for this is different: in Taboo, it is the rules of the game, while with second and third languages it is typically because I lack vocabulary required to use the most direct approach. For example, if I wanted to communicate “I want a pair of chopsticks”, I could do this easily in English or Chinese (我要筷子), but I don’t know the word for that in German (Essstäbchen, it turns out). I might thus need to work around it via description, with something like “Könnten Sie mir chinesisches Besteck geben?”. There are a number of English words that have been adopted into German, so I could just take a shot in the dark with “Geben Sie mir ein Paar Chopsticks, bitte.” which would probably get the point across especially to a German speaker, though it’s wrong.

I’ve also tried playing Taboo myself in German. Even sticking to simple sentences (to avoid struggling with stringing together subclauses or neighbouring-sentences on the fly) not having a broad vocabulary makes it tricky. For example, I saw a card with goal word Biene or bee (banned: gelb or yellow, Stachel or sting, Summen or sum, Honig or honey, Blütenstaub or pollen). In English, this isn’t very hard: “there’s a queen, they make hexagonal structures, produce golden liquid good for coughs… you can say you have this in your bonnet, or if you’re in a rush you’re making a this-line for something”. I found this tricky in German. Even trying to translate what I’d say in English, I might begin “Es hat Königin”, but it goes downhill from there (turns out hexagon is just das Hexagon, and I could improvise liquid by just saying Wasser). I wouldn’t be able to give the idioms and I’m not sure they still work in German. Effectively, all of the missing vocabulary items are permanent Taboo words.

I think one of my strengths in English communication is being able to make statements fairly precisely (for example, “I don’t have a particularly strong opinion; while I agree with (specific parts of X), I’m not confident X is correct because I am not in a position to assess (other part of X)”, or “X is correct in principle but I’m not sure it’s appropriate to implement”). I’m not there in Chinese, and definitely not in German. This can be an issue with using possibly circumlocutory descriptions – if they accidentally indicate a preference that isn’t really there. For example, for the “chinesisches Besteck” example above, one can’t fault a server that brings a soup spoon (and depending on one’s point of view, the server could be justifiably annoyed if one rejects the soup spoon and continues to make this request without qualifying it further).

By now, I’ve taken learning German more seriously for half a year. It’s still difficult, especially speaking and writing. I tried the German GCSE exam for reading, and managed to get a grade 9 with 49 points out of 60 (that’s the highest possible grade in GCSE). However, I’m still not confident. I find building sentences problematic if I want to talk about more complex things. Reading is slightly easier, but I won’t know if a sentence is wrong!

Mittlerweile lerne ich seit ein halb Jahr Deutsch. Es ist noch schwierig, besonders sprechen und schreiben. Ich hatte die Deutsch GCSE-Prüfüngen für Lesen probiert. Ich habe im Prüfüngen einen Neun (das ist die höchstmögliche Note) mit 49/60 Punkten erzielt, aber ich habe noch kein Konfidenz. Ich finde Satzbau problematisch, wenn ich komplexe Dinge sagen will. Lesen ist ein bisschen einfacher, aber ich werde nicht wissen ob ein Satz falsch ist. 

The paper I tried out specifically was the June 2018 exam for AQA GCSE German. This qualification is assessed over four papers, which attempt to test the four common language skills – Paper 1 tests listening, Paper 2 speaking, Paper 3 reading and Paper 4 writing. I found it interesting to see how an attempt is made to segment performance by limiting the extent to which the skills not being assessed are required. For example, in Papers 1 and 3 many questions ask for answers in English, and for the sections where answers are required in German full sentences generally aren’t needed, and linguistic errors generally aren’t penalised unless they affect clarity.

I tried out Paper 3 first, largely for practical reasons – I will probably do Paper 1 at some point, as the sound files are also available online. I can’t quite administer Paper 2 to myself, and for Paper 4 I’d need someone to evaluate my own writing, as I’m certainly not in a position to do that yet. I attempted the Higher paper, which is aimed at students seeking to get a grade between 4 and 9 (recall that passing grades range from 1 to 9). I wasn’t confident of getting a super high grade as I’ve only studied German on-and-off for around seven months or so; GCSE courses typically run for two years. Nonetheless, I managed to scrape it (the grade boundary for 9 was at 48 of 60, and I scored 49 – note that 48 is good enough, so I had one point of breathing room).

The paper is divided into three sections; the first involves reading texts and responding in English, the second is similar to the first but in German, and the third involves translating a German passage back to English. Generally, within each section difficulty increases, which led to a rather non-monotonic difficulty curve. Q8 at the end of Section A was probably a question aimed at top students, while Q9, the first question of Section B was a crossover with Foundation Tier, so aimed towards the lower end of the Higher Tier range.

I also found the translation task fairly straightforward – I knew all of the words apart from Bauernhof, and based on context (working with animals, starting the day early, hard work) along with guessing from prefixes (Bau– for construction: it turns out Bauer means farmer but I didn’t know that as well, and –hof for yard e.g. from Bahnhof – train station – or Friedhof – cemetery) guessed it correctly as farm. My natural tendency to aim for precision seemed to work very well on this question.

Most of the marks lost came from holes in my German vocabulary. There were questions that asked for specific features of the text to be described in English, and these often effectively reduced to questions about the definitions of specific words. For example, there were questions that effectively asked what Dieb (thief), enspannen (relax), vermeiden (avoid) or lügen (lie, as in telling an untruth), none of which I knew, meant – I was able to figure out from context that that word was the desired answer, but had to guess when translating. Interestingly, if I was asked to write the answer in German (being allowed to lift) I would have scored these marks!

There were also a few marks which were lost because of carelessness. I’m aware that trying to pick out keywords and translating them is often a trap, yet I still ended up making some of these mistakes. For example, on the first question which involved reading people’s descriptions of what they did to help the environment, I accidentally described someone who said Meine Eltern haben immer ihren Müll getrennt, aber … habe ich nichts gemacht as saying they separated their trash. I probably got too excited about knowing what getrennt meant – it’s often used when asking if a bill is to be split in restaurants – and wrote down “separating trash”. The correct answer is of course, nothing – the separation was done by their parents, not them!

I’m not entirely sure this grade 9 is secure, being just two points away from an 8. That said, the 7-8 boundary is at 41, so I’m quite confident of at least an 8. This also means that if I was to take the entire GCSE qualification an overall 9 probably wouldn’t happen, as I’d see reading as the language skill I’m currently most confident in in German. Students have overall grades calculated based on the sum of their marks in each of the four papers – while a candidate doesn’t need to get a 9 in each component, any marks below the 9 boundary in one paper must generally be offset by marks in other papers. I’m not sure what standard is expected, but I won’t be too surprised if I struggle to get a 5 in Schreiben (writing) or Sprechen (speaking).

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Ich kann nicht so einfach meine Deutsch bewerten. Eine Methode ist Prüfungen machen. Ich will Goethe-Institut Deutsch Zertifikat Prüfung machen, deshalb ihre Prüfungen wären gut. Allerdings gibt es nur ein wenige Modellprüfungen online.

I can’t easily evaluate my progress in German. One method (of evaluating progress) is to do exams. I want to take the Goethe Institute German exam. Thus their past papers would be good practice. However, there are only a few practice papers available online.

A part of life growing up in Singapore for me was, unfortunately, to find ways to maximise performance on exams, especially given limited understanding of the underlying subject matter. Some of these techniques might be classified as “common sense”, such as knowing the format of exams, what one was being assessed on, and making sure to spend enough time on each question or part, as marks within each question tend to get progressively harder to score. There were others that tended to be a little more subject-specific; for example, final answers in mathematics exams tended to be reasonably simple forms.

The Common European Framework for Reference of Languages (CEFR) outlines six levels of language proficiency – these are, in order from lowest to highest, A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. Typically, each language level is associated with a set of competencies that speakers at that level would generally be able to perform; these have been outlined in a table published by the European Council.

Looking at that table, I’d rate my English skills at probably C2 across the board, though I’d be a little hesitant to claim that for spoken interaction. For Chinese, I’m probably a rough B2 for listening/reading, and somewhere between B1 and B2 for speaking/writing. On the other hand, for German I’m probably somewhere between A1 and A2 for listening and reading, and closer to (or possibly even below) A1 for speaking and writing.

Another way to assess one’s skills is to look at language certification examinations. These are often used as part of work permit requirements. For example, the UK Tier 2 (General) visa typically requires applicants to pass an approved English language test at a B1 level. Chinese work visas operate on a point-based system, and additional points are successively offered with each level of the HSK completed. It seems one doesn’t even need to speak any German to get a German work visa; however, reaching a B1 level allows for quicker permanent residency.

I haven’t actually formally taken any of these exams, though I have looked at the test material and even done a few of them under exam conditions. I was generally able to navigate the CPE (English C2) exam quite comfortably. For Chinese, I haven’t had too much trouble with the HSK 5 (claimed to be between B1 and B2); the HSK 6 (claimed to be between B2 and C1) is somewhat trickier mainly because its writing section looks nasty, though I’ve been able to do the reading and listening sections. Similarly, on the Taiwanese TOCFL I cleared level 4 (B2) quite easily, and scraped a pass from inferring kernels of truth on level 5 (C1), though I would say my listening/reading are definitely not at C1 level (“appreciating distinctions of style” is certainly generous, to put it mildly),

For German, I’ve steered clear of the Goethe-Institut past papers for now as there are very few practice papers available online, and I’ll want to do them when I’m preparing for the actual examination. I found a slightly different source of practice material that seemed to be at an appropriate level – the UK General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). These exams are typically taken by students in England at the end of secondary school. Generally, a good GCSE seems to map to around an A2 (e.g. based on Oxford’s language program a “good but rusty GCSE” would be in line with A2, and a “recent” one with a high grade would be closer to B1; Sussex similarly places it in the A2-B1 range, though Imperial is a bit stricter and lines it up with A1+).

German is offered as one of the modern language GCSEs – others include French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. Interestingly, some of these GCSEs are tiered; that is, students must be entered for either the foundation tier or higher tier. Questions in the foundation tier are easier, but the highest grade one can obtain there is a 5 (passing grades run from 9 to 1 in the UK, 9 being the highest). The higher tier features more material and questions requiring more advanced problem-solving – as its name suggests, it is intended for more capable students. Higher tier exams are graded from 9 to 4; in particular, candidates that fail to obtain a 4 receive a U (with the caveat of a ‘safety net’ grade 3 that only goes down to the midpoint of 3). Typically, some of the questions overlap – these are the questions aimed at a grade 4 or 5 skill level.

I can see why tiering could be advantageous – it allows finer resolution when looking at students’ performance. It may also lead to a better student experience, in that candidates generally won’t find the exam completely intractable (or, conversely, find it trivial). That said, deciding which tier students should be entered at seems a tough problem, and making the wrong choice could lead to results that wouldn’t be representative of a student’s ability (a student who would reasonably score a 3 could get a U if entered on higher; a student who could score a 6 or higher would be limited to 5 on foundation tier). Furthermore, these decisions need to be made in advance, which could lead to issues if a student who would be capable, with effort/studying, perform well on higher tier have his/her motivation and/or progress curtailed because he/she was entered at foundation tier.

To give a sample of the difference in difficulty of the tasks involved, I had a brief look at the AQA German specimen papers:

• A Foundation-only task involved parsing an SMS from a friend who was running late; key-words in the text included 7 Uhr (meaning 7 o’clock), U-Bahn (subway) and Theaterkasse (ticket office) or Karte (can refer to a ticket) to identify that they planned to go to the cinema.
• An overlapping task involved identifying words like Ausland (overseas) and wichtiger (more important) to distinguish different friends in a text.
• A Higher-only task involved reading an interview of a student who enjoys travelling. Questions involved engaging/reasoning with the text, and seemed less reliant on directly identifying keywords. For example, the first question there asked why she needed a holiday every year for ten years (the answer being that she went on holiday after her exams, and she studied hard for a month for these exams).

This system isn’t explicitly used in Singapore for the O Levels which students take at the end of secondary school (perhaps apart from Elementary and Additional Mathematics, and Higher Mother Tongue options – but even then, these are considered distinct subjects). I’m not sure I’ve actually seen this system used before.

Meine Deutschlehrerin war fünf Wochen in Urlaub. Wir müssen uns selbst lernen. Sie gibt uns fakultativ Hausaufgaben; ich lese ein einfaches Buch, Café in Berlin und mache ein paar Online-Übungen. Das Buch ist ein Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten über Dinos Leben. Dino komme aus Sizilien, aber er studiert Deutsch in Berlin. Das Buch ist meistens einfach, aber es gibt ein paar neues Worter. Die Grammatik ist schwieriger – das Buch benutzt die Genitiv und der Dativ. Das haben wir noch nicht im Unterricht gelernt.

My German teacher was on holiday for five weeks; we thus must learn on our own. She gives us optional homework; I read a simple book, Café in Berlin and did a few online exercises. The book is a collection of short stories about Dino’s life. Dino comes from Sicily, but he studies German in Berlin. The book is mostly straightforward, but there are a few new words. Grammar is more difficult. The book uses the genitive and dative cases. We haven’t covered these in class yet.

Two common strategies for language learning are extensive reading and intensive reading. As the names suggest, extensive reading involves covering a wide breadth of material while intensive reading involves studying texts in greater detail, translating words that are unknown, unpacking difficult grammatical constructions and perhaps attempting to discern the rationale for the author’s stylistic choices as well. Often, intensive reading demands a large amount of mental focus and concentration, so the amount of text that can be covered is smaller.

My memories of language learning are fairly faint, as I last formally studied English and Mandarin more than 10 years ago. That was at the end of high school, and most of what I covered at the time was aimed at a C1/C2 level for English, and probably B2 for Mandarin. By that point, the courses focused primarily on understanding longer texts and, for English, figuring out how literary devices may have been used; my memories about learning more fundamental topics like grammar or conjugation would thus be even fainter. Lessons in school were largely focused on intensive reading; there were a few odd assignments that sought to prompt students to read more extensively, but these were rarely assessed which sadly often meant that more attention was paid elsewhere. I don’t particularly recall having a passion for or even an interest in reading when I was young (I remember being more interested in computer games and mathematics at the time), so perhaps the intensive reading done in class was mostly sufficient!

I have more recently learned programming languages. I picked up fragments of Java and C++ over the years starting from Secondary 1 or so (year 7; I was 13 or 14 years old then), and started refining these more carefully as I started at Imperial. Most of the reading I had done up to that point would probably be better classified as extensive; I think the control flow structures were covered in class over a few lessons, but after that I could mostly code up algorithms with practice and experience. The Software Engineering (Design) course and my internships at Google and Palantir were probably pushes towards the more intensive direction, as I learned more about principles that could lead to better code. Since then, I think code reading has been mostly ‘extensive’, especially recently (I review quite a lot of code, more than I write), with the occasional intensive deep-dive (e.g. reading parts of the Java standard library HashMap, or more recently Cassandra’s StorageProxy).

For learning German, I plan to use a mixture of both strategies, though perhaps at least initially leaning more towards the intensive side of things. There are some concepts like grammatical case and declension which I could assimilate through extensive reading, though I think it would be a lot faster or easier to pick these up by learning the relevant concepts directly. To quote an example from the book,

Ein eisiger Wind blies über den Asphalt.

I knew enough from the context to easily figure out that this means “An icy wind blows over the asphalt” (the story mentions earlier that it was snowing, and everything was white). However, it’s dangerous to generalise this to say that it is always correct to use eisiger to mean icy – it is correct here, because wind is in the nominative case, and wind has a masculine gender. If either of these is no longer true, the correct form might change, and it may take a while before the correct patterns are inferred (e.g. Ein Wind blies über den eisigen Asphalt – asphalt is in the accusative case, or Ein eisiges Auto fahrt über den Asphalt – cars have neuter gender – respectively).

This naturally meshes well with the lessons – naturally there isn’t that much that can be covered in the two hours or so of class time we have each week. Although it is a light book, I think my treatment of Café in Berlin has been largely intensive as well, or at least more focused than how I would read a book as part of the extensive reading assignments I used to have in school. Each chapter of the book is followed by a few questions that test reading comprehension; I do these. I also copy out some of the new vocabulary terms and some important words or phrases, often drawing pictures of the scenes and labelling items in them with the relevant words. Sometimes, I will also pick out a few harder sentences and attempt to determine why they are grammatically correct. Starting with extensive reading can be tricky at my (very basic) level, because there probably aren’t many texts that are suitable – and texts that are readable are likely to focus more on relatively simpler narratives, which may be less likely to be able to sustain my interest.

When I was in middle school and high school, I struggled a lot with learning both English and Chinese. In the end, I performed reasonably well in the relevant summative assessments (I obtained a 6 in English A1 SL and 7 in Mandarin B SL for my IB certificate), but it was always a struggle. I don’t think I struggled particularly with understanding or writing as far as English was concerned; I had more difficulty with decoding literary devices and interpreting poems and related themes. I found learning Chinese challenging, perhaps because I didn’t speak or listen to it much at home, and also because all other lessons were conducted in English.

I’m not sure if this has had a negative effect on my preference for language learning, though to some extent I certainly associate this with stress and difficulty. Nonetheless, about two months ago I decided to start learning German a bit more seriously.

I downloaded the Lingvist app after a colleague recommended it to me. The app performs pretty aggressive vocabulary drills – it’s been useful for plugging basic gaps and discovering new words. According to the app, I’ve learned about 1100 words; the app allows you to learn at most an additional 20 per day, though that’s usually enough to keep my hands full. I’ve been using up this quota most days.

However, the app doesn’t cover the principles underlying grammar, and of course the ability to train listening, speaking or writing is somewhat limited. I thus took an opportunity at work to start more formal lessons, which should help me get better at these skills. The teacher, Katja, has been great – I do understand a fair bit more now, and (hopefully!) sound better and clearer when I speak. I’ve found the lessons to go at a pretty decent pace; they can be demanding, but I like that.

Why German specifically? Firstly, it is a practical choice. German is relatively widely spoken especially considering the countries I might consider moving to, or at least plan on visiting for holidays in the future (which would include Germany and Switzerland).

Secondly, I’ve certainly picked up a few words from my time in Zurich, mainly “Ich spreche kein Deutsch” and how to navigate shops (imagine someone knowing that Rechnung means invoice or Insgesamt means total, but not knowing words like Vater – father – or Tschüss – goodbye), so I’m not exactly starting from zero in terms of vocabulary, even if my knowledge of the grammar and fundamentals may be lacking.

Finally, I find the way words are constructed or varied quite pleasing. I recently came across the word Nachfolger in Lingvist, which means “successor”; the parts mean “after” and “follower”. I’ve come across quite a number of words where the meaning makes sense considering the components, which is nice – Zeitpunkt (point in time) or Verantwortung (responsibility, but Antwort means answer – in a sense of being answerable for something) come to mind.

I anticipate that the grammar may be quite difficult to pick up – declension is considerably more prevalent in German than in English, where tricky cases are mainly in the pronouns, or Chinese. Gender for nouns that don’t obviously seem to have a biological or possibly identity gender is often arbitrary – for example, tables are male, flasks are female, and babies are neuter! In English, he and she are rarely used outside of these ‘clear’ cases (there are a few exceptions, e.g. ships or countries are sometimes feminine, though it generally still feels more natural to me to use ‘it’).

Grammatical cases seem to be another sticky point; articles and adjectives may be written differently depending on whether a noun is the subject or object.  Das ist ein alter Drucker means ‘that is an old printer’, but I’d write Ich habe einen alten Drucker for ‘I have an old printer’ (printers are masculine). However, if I was talking about a lamp (feminine), I would have to write Das ist eine alte Lampe.

Furthermore, sentence structure is different. English and Chinese generally follow subject-verb-object ordering in a sentence. However, German features V2 order, where the verb usually must come second, but other than that things are more relaxed. For example, Every Saturday I read a book is fine as a sentence in English; 每个星期六我读一本书 would work in Chinese. However, the straight translation Jeden Samstag ich lese ein Buch is not OK in German; the verb has to be in position two, so it would have to be Jeden Samstag lese ich ein Buch (or Ich lese ein Buch jeden Samstag, or Ein Buch lese ich jeden Samstag depending on what is intended to be emphasised).

My formal knowledge of grammatical structures within English is also fairly lacking, even though I think I am able to differentiate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in English. I had to refresh myself on what an infinitive was during the German course. German also has quite a few more constructs (e.g. accusative and dative cases) which will take some getting used to. Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed learning so far, and plan on continuing to learn it, hopefully to at least a B1 level.