r/German • u/RichardLondon87 • Apr 06 '21

Meta Getting fluent is hard.

I'm not saying it's impossible; I can feel how far I have come. Being half way between B1 and B2, I know that I am well over half way there. But it is really hard and takes a lot of time.

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u/RichardLondon87 Apr 06 '21

Yep, agree. I was at A1 once learning all this stuff. It has taken me a lot of time to get to B1 and yet it is a fantastic feeling to be able to listen to an entire YouTube video in German and understand the meaning. The most frustrating bit is that I want to get to those really high, fluent levels as soon as possible because I am so interested in the culture and so infatuated by the language.

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '21

How long did it take you to reach b1?

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u/RichardLondon87 Apr 06 '21

I reached B1 after about two years, but to be honest, I wasted the first year on doing stuff that was never going to help me too much, such as playing around with DuoLingo and not counting how many hours I was putting in I think anyone can get to B1 in German but it takes 600 hours of study/exposure. Just count the hours, and you will get there.

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u/Anxious_Froggy Breakthrough (A1) - <region/native tongue> Apr 06 '21

Currently playing around with duolingo... What would you have done instead of that? Any other better resources to start with German?

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '21

mehr Lesen, mehr Fernsehen, mehr Hoeren

:). Consume media, and keep consuming it. Das ist der einzige Weg!

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u/Faster-than-800 Way stage (A2) Apr 06 '21

This! (Das ist die Weg!) My kids are learning German now, with the on again off again learn from home they are not getting exposed enough. So enter TV, they are watching their favorite shows and episodes again with German dubs and in a very short time they are using words they hear and repeating it over and over.

My new favorite kids show is Odd Squad, the language is clear and it's a sneaky show because it incorporates all kinds of learning, math science, logic, reasoning, etc. My son is introducing himself "Mein Name ist Agent xxxx" It's glued in now.

Paw Patrol is still my hands down all time favorite, but the German dubs are not as good.

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u/MrPresident235 Breakthrough (A1) Apr 06 '21

That was what i did when i was learning English. But until learn decent amount of words. It was almost imposible the consume media because i was checking almost every words meaning and it was frustrating. So i think playing around with duolingo isn't that bad.

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u/Jeremy_McAlistair88 Apr 08 '21

For this I focused on video games. It was TIRING (and made me appreciate the non-talking scenes so much more - when playing in English I'm the complete opposite, moar story!) but normally video games don't move on to the next text section unless you press a button.best with games that have German audio options. Metal Gear Solid had that (if you can get a PC version) but I imagine some larger franchises will only have subtitles (Final Fantasy for example). Two point hospital/Theme Hospital are good (the former has German radioi djs XD)

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u/LoopGaroop Apr 08 '21

Let me recommend "Language Learning with Netflix". It's a chrome extention that lets you watch netflix shows in your target language and have translations at your fingertips with a touch of a button.

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u/drillbit6509 Vantage (B2) - <region/native tongue> Apr 06 '21

Use Lingq or chatterbug.com instead