“Is this… perfectionism” *** *** Hallo Leute, and welcome to day 21 of this year’s Advent Calendar. And today, I actually would like to … uh… “start a conversation”. Which is influencer speak for ranting about something :). Yes, I’m going to rant again. Seriously though, I want to share some thoughts about a trope in language learning that I find to be… not so helpful maybe. Learn it 100% right I don’t know if this is the best way to phrase it. But let me explain. The perfect example are the German genders and specifically the articles der, die das. And especially as a beginner, you’re likely to hear or read something like this, be it in a textbook, a course or a Youtube video: German Gender is really important and you should really learn it along with the noun. Now there’s nothing wrong with learning the gender alongside with the noun. What I do have a problem with is that teachers and other sources often imply that if you DON’T learn the gender along with the noun you’re making a mistake, because: “It’s really hard to unlearn a mistake.” As if learning something is akin to carving…
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I was in the “Perfectionism” camp when I first started, but I have since moved on to “if I don’t just throw myself into the ring, I’ll never learn!” side of things. It is a lot less stressful, and I trust that the little errors I make will eventually work themselves out of my system.
Totally agree that relearning is not a problem. I try to memorize words (including articles). and grammar and them use it whenever I get the chance. Those words where I thought I knew but was wrong are the ones that I will remember the best, because you learn from your mistakes.
A great man once said, “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”. We have to start somewhere!! YoYo Ma didn’t stop playing because he made mistakes as a 4 yr old.
I think your approach is spot on!!!
(Sorry this is a late post–trying to catch up on my reading! haha)
Camille
Haha, no worries… the posts are not going anywhere. Read them in your own time.
Do you have a memory of where you learned the wrong word lest and phrase swell day?
What’s the problem with “lest”?
I have known it for years and I don’t recall where I picked it up.
“Swell day” is either from Reddit or YouTube.
Not any problem! I was just curious and I haven’t seen or heard them anywhere until now
Oh, but you called “lest” wrong in your comment, so I thought I used it the wrong way.
My mind skipped it lmao i didn’t mean to say wrong, only word. Sorry
Rest assured that “lest” is a perfectly good word, if a little “highfalutin”. Furthermore, in your original sentence you also used the correct (I think) subjunctive verb form afterwards: “…lest it become a habit” instead of the probably more common “…lest it becomes a habit”. So, you’re doing better there than the majority of native English speakers. Kudos!
the ‘moving house’ and language learning analogy is perfect.
I generally learn the gender along with the noun, and have done since the beginning. At first it did slow me down, until I acknowledged that’s what was happening and actively chose not to let it stop me from talking. And many of them I’ve learnt much better through creating Eselsbrücken and being corrected when I get it wrong, rather than just trying to learn them by rote, e.g. when I was corrected for writing “ich hatte einen großen Abenteuer” to my friend, because i thought it should be der because it ends in -er.
It seems like I use the correct article (both gender and case) more often than other learners at my level (B2), and I can use them fairly fluently in speech although I make more mistakes there than when writing. But I also find it distracting when other non-native speakers get the articles wrong, which might not happen if I just didn’t notice the mistakes, so maybe that’s an argument against learning them
Now that I know a lot of articles for a lot of nouns, I am pretty good at guessing the article when I learn a new noun. They don’t feel so random to me any more, so I would say that is also an argument for learning as you go.
Spot on! For myself, I long ago realized not to assume someone else wants to correct my grammar. That to me is rude, self-centered and disrespectful. Besides the whole idea of learning another language is to communicate. Period.
And….it is all quiet funny when one makes mistakes. Last year while traveling around with one of my dear german friends I was trying to ask how old some building was (A church to be exact). And Bernd kept asking “Was?” and I would ask again…and again only to get “was?” He finally busted out in English, “Just to be clear, you want to know how old the cherry is?”. Church-Cherry. Good luck with that pronunciation. Super tricky for this American. But also super super funny!! Talk about a great way to bring laughter and joy into a day!
So I just bust out my german, in all its glory, and we just laugh and figure it out as we go.
I think the emphasis on learning as a non-linear process is helpful. There can be an emphasis on progressing through the levels as quickly as possible. I occasionally look at the German Language Subreddit and there are many posts about getting to B1 in the quickest time possible. I don’t want to knock anyones achievement but I’ve wondered what kind of German someone who gets to B1 in a few months speaks -as someone who has progessed more slowly these posts can be demoralising. I’ve looked at the Goethe Institut’s B1 wordlist and think what it actually means to really confidently understand all of these words – to have them in ones active vocabulary with their different uses, their conjugations or articles as well as the grammar.
I think there is a lot to be said for slower progressions – to really properly learning something before moving forward. To returning to topics and repeating levels.
I think its helpful to think of learning as an intensive as well as extensive process. I read an interview with a dj who spoke about an interest in getting better at playing the records he already owned rather than simply getting new ones all the time and i liked this somehow as an analogy for a style of learning.
I’m studying for b2 now, but I will constantly return to earlier topics periodically as I see them as the core of the language. I’ve even wondered if would be interesting to restart completely at a1 again. Perhaps there is kind of a perfectionism here on my part.
As for mistakes I have different issues. I speak fairly confidently and make mistakes. I don’t get nervous about that anymore. What i’ve realised is i actually would benefit from slowing down a bit and actually thinking about the grammar more. I think i get slightly nervous that people will get impatient with me and so speak as fast as i would in english. So my problem is a different one.
As for learning stuff incorrectly, I agree this isn’t so bad. I use a memory palace technique and I have rebuilt certain areas when there has been a need to, its no disaster to muddle a article and have to relearn it.
I’m following the perfectionist line – and, yes, you’re right that my conversational German was bleh! My reason for trying to get it right first time is that, as a child, I taught myself to play piano. Later, as an adult, I failed dismally because I wasn’t correctly reading the bass clef. I never was able to unlearn what was already programmed into my brain.
With the genders correctly learned I had no problem with correct endings. Now everything is beginning to flow.
Perfectionism has certainly been a big barrier for me in initiating conversations. It’s actually quite pernicious, because not only does the perfectionist struggle with getting the initial foray into the conversation correct, they also start worrying about the possible responses that they’ll receive, and how they should be dealt with. That is, you end up like some 1970’s chess-playing algorithm, drowning in a combinatorial explosion of possible scenarios. And of course if you do formulate a beautifully correct first sentence (“Ich hätte gern die Würstchen aus Tofu mit Kartoffelsalat und Sauerkraut”) with good intonation, a decent accent, and fast enough to please the inner perfectionist then you’re more than likely to get a mouthful of native-level (speed and difficulty) German back in your face before you’ve barely taken a breath. And that’s when the big freeze strikes. Umm… And the whole façade comes crashing to the ground.
I vividly remember waiting at Hamburg’s Hauputbahnhof several years ago, proudly composing an order for kebabs, salads, and just the right bread, rehearsing it until it almost came out seamlessly, then approaching the counter and delivering the sentence. Before I’d uttered the last crowning word of my mini-Mount-Everest, a very compressed, blurry “Essen oder mitnehmen” flew back at me, which I didn’t parse at all (but was perfectly clear and obvious in retrospect). I’d mentally prepared for the branches involving Senf/Soßen/Getränke/usw, but we’d skipped them completely. After another attempt by the guy serving someone kindly noticed my lack of vocabulary, and offered a simple “take away?”. At which point good old signing kicked in as I gestured towards the tables associated with the shop. My whole initial construction was pointlessly, stupidly overengineered, purely in order to avoid embarrassing *my inner self*, yet that’s exactly what it ended up doing: if you make the opening move so ridiculously convoluted you’ve stacked the odds against yourself for the remainder of the conversation, even when that first piece manages to emerge perfectly from its incubator.
It’s a battle! ;-)
As far as genders go, I have the luxury of not *having* to learn the language in a hurry, and by now I think I get about 90% of the genders of new nouns correct. But never trust self-reporting! My perspective would doubtless be completely different if I needed to pass a B1 test in 6 months to get a job in Germany and thereby feed a family.
In any case, there are plenty of signals of gender in German that become ingrained with repeated exposure. Rather than the useless simple refrain of “LEARN THE ARTICLE WITH THE NOUN”, or the recommendation to colour-code every noun (which can work OK with *things*, but with abstract nouns, hmm….) I think it’s 100% better to make a semi-educated *guess* at the article when you encounter a new noun, and *then* check whether your guess is correct. If so, then is there a reason why you got it right (“-ung”, “-keit”, etc)? If not, what, if anything should have indicated to you that it’s “das Ergebnis”, and not, say, “die Ergebnis”? That is: I think it’s best to try and reinforce the patterns that occur within the genders (“nouns with a verb-y stem and ending in “nis” tend to be neuter). They eventually start to become second nature, to the point where it’s less and less likely that you’re utterly dumbstruck by the gender of new nouns, and even when you are it can be quite interesting to investigate it a little. Again, the overriding question is “how could I have seen that?”. Every now and then it’s a simple “that’s just the way it is”, of course, with words like “die Kenntnis” or “die Erlaubnis”, for example, but the aim is to whittle that list of exceptions down to a minimum, and maximise the length of the list of words with genders that (most likely) follow simple rules.
Oh hey. I could have written both of your comments pretty much word for word :)
I think it’s 100% better to make a semi-educated *guess* at the article when you encounter a new noun, and *then* check whether your guess is correct.
This is the way!!!
It’s a good idea to learn these little triggers like “-keit” or “-ung” very early. Not all of them, maybe, but the most important ones. And then guess and when in doubt, use “die”. It sounds the least weird if it’s not the correct one and you can “mumble” it into a “de” which then could pass as “der, dem, den” and “even “das”.
Think of the endings of the articles as an addition so better to go for the core.
Isn’t ‘die’ 70% of the articles? I think I learned that someplace.
I freely just pick one when I don’t know.
I don’t think it’s 70%. That’s way too much. Maybe like 40% or a bit over. Which is still the best pick.
But more importantly, it sounds the least “out of place” if it is in fact “out of place”.
“And of course if you do formulate a beautifully correct first sentence … “
1000%!!! That’s why I think all these courses and programs that “prepare” you for a dialogues are a idiotic. Conversations do follow a plot, but they do NOT follow a script.
So you learn your opening line, but then the person does not respond as you’ve learned and boom, that’s it. And the better you say your line, the more “native-ness” will be thrown in your face.
Some people are good with this. I’ve seen it in action many times. Some people just don’t freeze up. Those can go ahead and speak from day 1. But for the rest, it’s good advice to get to a level where you can read a magazine article before actually engaging in conversation.
Oh, completely off topic, but you mentioned chess, and if I remember correctly, you are into computer science at least to an extend. Have you seen Computer Chess, the movie?
I’ve never heard of it before (and I’m about a billion miles from being a chess nerd (he says, protesting just that bit too much!)), but having watched the trailer it definitely looks like a cool piece of work, and “up my alley”, so I’ll give a watch tonight. Thanks very much for the recommendation.
exactly. And what a great funny story. We have all lived it who have tried.
Oh, thank god! I’m terrible at memorisation, just can’t actively do it. Flash cards, memory palace, etc etc have never worked. I cant get any info to stick in my head just for the sake of it. But I know heaps of nouns by something naturally making a connection from the first time I hear it, so there is no active need to remember it, it’s just there. But, this means I currently know about 2000 German nouns, but I only know the genders of about 5% of them. I struggled with speaking when I didn’t know the gender, now I just assume everything is die (because I’m also not sure sometimes if I mean the plural).
I am guilty of asking/expecting a listener to correct me… I think it’s a really great point that it’s not their job and it’s not what they signed up for when they decided to get into a conversation with me. This will definitely stick in my head in the future… I need to focus more on being there, less on being perfect. Thank you.
Specifically on gender, there are definitely articles I get right because they have just stuck in my head from learning them in like 5th grade or whenever, so it’s definitely worth putting them on the flashcards and such.
Beyond that, though, I think you’re totally right. I always tell people starting with the language to remember that this is going to be a lifelong project, and I think folks really need to hear that it’s OK to relearn stuff, fix mistakes that have gotten stuck in your head, that kind of thing. Functionality is always key.
Some folks in the comments have mentioned this, but it’s worth highlighting how helpful it can be to find someone who can be your Language Helper. It could be a teacher you pay for tutoring, or somebody you buy lunch or a beer for in return for regular conversation. If you’re both clear on the expectations, then you can also work together to figure out what’s a helpful amount of correction. I had a tutor whose method was to just have me talk for the better part of an hour while she took notes, then went back through and corrected mistakes and suggested better vocabulary, expressions, etc. A colleague of mine has blitzed through language study, and he’s had a tutor who wouldn’t let him get 4 words out if he couldn’t do so without a mistake – and he was all right with that! So it’s also really, really OK to figure out your own learning style and try to find ways to thrive as you develop.
I’m with you on that, finding your own style. I think there are probably about as many different ways to learn as there are people learning. Heck, what I like changes over time. Try stuff out, love it, hate it, stand on your head if you want.
I would get nervous if someone took notes on me for that long. I like to just chat about whatever. Maybe ask a quick grammar question or use them as a dictionary, but for the most part, just a low key, normal conversation.
“I would get nervous if someone took notes on me for that long.”
Hah… that could be something you can easily fix by just exposing yourself to it for a couple of weeks. I think after a few days, once you feel “safe” you’d stop caring. It’s just a little anxiety to be “good enough”, in my opinion.
I think this is the best way to individually teach anyone at a high B1 or above. You have a conversation, let it flow and your main job as a teacher is to identify systematic mistakes and then pick one or two to fix.
Randomly correctly stuff left and right is a waste of time and energy.
Really interesting discussion. I learned gender with flashcards and color and it really helped. I still see the colors in my head when I’m trying to think of the gender of a word. However, I will say, I wish I had cared more about prefixes than gender. It’s rare that a native speaker will not understand you because you used the wrong gender. I’ve gotten myself into trouble many times for using the wrong prefix, though. Oh, and I think more emphasis should be put on collocations, too. Just today I was trying to tell someone that I took their suggestion, but I froze when I got to the verb… “ich habe deinen Vorschlag……”
Prefix verbs don’t get enough attention in learning material overall.
They’re such a powerful tool because having a “feel” for it can unlock so much vocabulary for “semi” free. But I’m working on it. App, book, card game… all in the works.
My teacher in college, Herr Doktor Professor Fuller, said to just speak so fast they don’t hear which “the” you used, because “nobody is going to really care anyway.”
True. When I once asked about how to pronounce some word that I was struggling to get out (something like nichts) my German teacher just said to say it quickly and no one will notice!
(Jumps up and down enthusiastically) Yes! A thousand times YES!
So many are afraid to engage native speakers, for fear of making a mistake. A long time ago I embraced making mistakes – and if I wind up making said native speaker giggle, hooray! I’ll remember that bit for sure next time!
And this holds for all subjects. I’m so sad for kids who are punished for errors, or insufficiently high marks. Even rewards are questionable.
How to squash the love of learning – put a price on it.
I’m a perfectionist. Not as much as before, but it’s there. I’ve found two things that make me freeze up and get nothing done: trying to get it 100% right from the get-go, and staring at a pile of mistakes that I feel like needs to all be fixed at once.
So if I had to put my approach in a nutshell, I’d probably say….try to get as much as I can right based on my current abilities. I’m gonna forget stuff, probably a lot. And make mistakes. OK. That’s normal. I try to notice a few things I did right and be happy about that. And just be open to realizing that something is a mistake and trying to fix it. Slow and steady, one piece at a time. There are good days and bad days, and that’s part of it too.
Hey,that fly thing with a flashlight really works. Ain’t that crazy!
Oh you tried it? Nice :)!!
Totally agree! Whenever I took German classes, there was SO MUCH FOCUS on getting genders and adjective endings right. Then I went to Germany and discovered for the most part that nobody cared, and much of the time it’s not that obvious whether you used -em or -en or -er anyway. I did get corrected occasionally but mostly for more substantive errors. One case where I WAS corrected for gender was one where I already knew the gender but then didn’t use the right pronoun. Something like “Ich habe meinen Schluessel verloren! Wo ist es?” and my friend said “DER Schluessel. Wo ist ER?”. Pretty sure I just glared at him and said “ES. Das Ding.” But I started to learn that, at least.
That’s really helpful at my stage of learning: I seem to be forgetting at a faster rate than I’m learning.
I’ve been back over several Advent items and found it useful. The bite sized pieces are easy to review.
Happy Christmas