AMD 4

For AMD 4, I decided to follow the suggestion and check out livemocha.com. I set up an account and started clicking around and immediately fell in love.

I chose the "study" option rather than the "conversation" option to start, but I'm definitely interested in checking out their conversational resources later. The first thing I noticed and really liked are the additional tips in English that accompany each new word or phrase. These little one or two sentence bits are really helpful, especially to clarify any confusion that may arise from interpreting the phrase from the given photo. I really like the method of associating a picture with a word or phrase. I also really like that you can pick and choose vocab from each section once you've completed it to sort and save into different flashcard decks. This makes it super easy to study smart by being able to focus on only the words I'm really struggling with, which is the only complaint I've had about the ctools flash cards.

The review lessons were also really helpful. The cover the vocab in every way! There are questions where you hear the phrase in German and have to match the correct picture and questions where you hear the phrase in English associated with a photo and have to choose the correct German phrase. There are questions where you have to read the German phrase and choose the correct photo. Making all of these different associations and practicing seamless translation has really helped these words and phrases stick, which is great because I feel vocab has always been my greatest struggle. I understand how to put sentences together in theory in my head, but I sometimes have trouble finding the words to say it!

The writing section is also really helpful. Its great to get feedback from native speakers and other people learning on the website! Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to record the speaking part, but I did practice the phrases, which was nice practice, but it would be better if I could figure out how to get some feedback!

Overall, I really like livemocha.com and would recommend it to anyone trying to learn a new language.  The social aspect of it makes it a really efficient way to practice within a community, which is super helpful if you're learning a language independently and great additional practice to formal instruction.

AMD 4

For this weeks AMD i decided to change the text settings of my phone while i was having a conversation so that they all read in german. At first it was hard because I had multiple conversations going on. Once i got really into them I started to notice that more and more words seemed to be familiar to me and I could easily understand about 60% of the messages that were coming in. And when i would send messages they were noticeably shorter than usual but I was able to get my message across. The people I was talking to was impressed at how well i could convey what I was saying once I told them that I was doing it for my German class. I only did this for 45 min or so before it was to hard when trying to send a long text talking about someone else in the future. I wasn't sure about the conjugation of all the verbs for the prescence tense.

AMD Vier

Looking to do something different for my fourth AMD I decided to go to the Duetsch Wikipedia page and look up the article on Bier. While I already knew much from both the Kultur reading earlier this semester and my own research I still learned a few interesting facts about Bier in Duetschland and how it is perceived. I was surprised at all the different categories they have for Bier; the Wiki page lists 12 categories of ales and 8 categories of Lager. Additionally it is interesting to see their beer tax system and how much stronger many of their beers are compared to ones in the US. Some Bier in Duetschland can have alcohol content as high as 16% or more with one brewery even offering a Bier with 57.5% alcohol by volume! Suprisingly I found out that Germany is actually the second leading drinker of Beer in the EU, behind Czech. I also found it intersting that the German Bier page listed all of the vitamins found in beer, something that the English beer page doesn't even mention. All in all, reading the article confirmed much of the knowledge that I had already learned but I still did find some interesting new facts about Bier in Duetschland!

AMD4

I was trying to learn the German culture through the Internet. At first I was considering to watch a movie or listen to music but I really get tired of that. I came up with the idea of knowing what kind of jokes they have and they'd love to say. After I looked up from the websites, I have the following jokes which I think they are fitting my laughing point! Wish they could bring you some happiness too!

1.Hänschen sitzt bei seinen Hausaufgaben: "Du Papa. Was ist das für ein Satz: 'Es ist kein Bier im Haus?'" Stöhnt der Vater auf: "Das ist kein Satz - das ist eine Katastrophe!"

I can see how much Germans love biers!!

2.Lehrer: "Als Alexander der Große so alt war wie du, hatte er schon die halbe Welt erobert."

Schüler: "Na, kein Wunder, der hatte ja auch Aristoteles als Lehrer."

3."Wenn ich im Bus sitze, schließe ich immer meine Augen. Ich kann alte Menschen nicht stehen

sehen."

4." Meine Frau und ich waren 20 Jahre sehr glücklich." "Und was ist dann passiert?" "Dann haben wir uns kennengelernt.."

AMD4

For the AMD4 assignment, I watched an episode of the show "Scrubs" in German. The episode I watched "My Nightingale". For the previous AMD, I also watched an episode of Scrubs in German. I definitely understood more of the dialogue this time and was able to follow what was happening more of the time. I was able to recognize some of the vocabulary we have learned so far, and guess at what some of the other phrases meant from the context in which they were said.

AMD4

For this AMD, I watched a few clips from "Friends" in German.  I was surprised at how much I was able to pick up, actually.  Even when I wasn't entirely sure what specific words meant, I could get the gist pretty well from context.  To completely understand, I had to watch the clips a few times through.  But even on the first watch through, I picked out a bunch of phrases that I was familiar with from class. For example, when Chandler first walks in Ross asks, "Was hast du?"  In another clip, Monica tries to get Chandler to smile for a photo by saying, "Du hast immer ein wunderbares lächeln."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCoNSZV--z0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLHwkNqNhoo&feature=related

Aimée and Jaguar

     For my AMD I decided to watch the film "Aimée and Jaguar". It's a love story destined to be tragic. Set in Berlin during World War II, the wife of a Nazi officer falls in love with another girl, a girl she does not know is Jewish. The story is true, based on the real life love affair between Lilly Wust and Felice Schragenheim. This film is very emotional and many scenes are very beautiful, but it's incredibly depressing. It's a fantastic insight to the prejudice and fears Jewish people faced in that time. Also, because people are so scared all the time they use a lot of imperatives! Everything seems to be life or death so imperatives were not uncommon. I think this film also captures how beautiful all sounds of the German language are. For example, when the characters are panicked  their speech is harsh and sounds scary, typical German. But for every intense perilous scene, there is a love scene and the language in that is absolutely beautiful. The speech is so tender and seems almost a different language from the scene just before it. This film makes the variety of German very apparent. Also, if you're looking for something gushy to say to a beloved you may want to take a few quotes from this movie. Some of the lines are based on real life letters exchanged between Lilly and Felice, they're so sappy. This film is risque at some points, and very very sad so it may not be for the faint of heart, but I believe it is valuable both historically and linguistically.

Zum Beispiel: Here is a scene of Felice and her friends receiving food stamps and prejudice at a party.

AMD 4

For this AMD I decided to change the language for one of the video games I play from English to Deutsch. A lot of the words we haven't learned yet like Kampagne (campaign), Kämpfe (battles), and Mehrspieler (multiplayer). There were some that we had covered in class like zurück. There is a mission called Colditz Castle, and in German its Schloss Colditz. I learned what Schlacht means from Schlacht um Monte Cassino, which is Battle of Monte Cassino. The characters that are American and British sounded weird speaking German but it sounded much more natural to hear Germans speaking German.

AMD4

For this weeks AMD, I changed the language on my phone to German when I went to bed last night and left it that way until tonight.  A lot of the words from class appeared.  Telefon, Wetter, Musik and Kalendar were some I had seen before.  New words I learned were Nachrichten, which means messages, and Einstellungen, which means settings.
In order to write an email, I had to first Entsperren (unlock) my phone.  Then select the Mail app and open my Eingang (inbox) and open an email.  I then chose antworten (to reply) to the email.  After ich schriebe sie, I chose senden (to send) it.
I had to change my Startseit (homepage) to dict.cc to look up words I didn't recognize so I could use everything, like the Rechner (calculator) or Aktien (stocks) apps.
It was an interesting experience having my phone like this and its good to know that I can figure it out in the case that someone ever pulled a prank on me by changing the language to German.

AMD4

For this blog I watched a fifteen min clip of The Six Servants (Die Sechs Diener). I found it to be very funny because the clip had many of the vocabulary from chapter 4 and I was able to pick some of it up. Since the prince is trying to rescue the princess, he says his the love of her life Leibe meines lebens.  He uses schön to describe the princess. Also the verb kommen mit was used a lot since along the way the prince found friends to accompany him through his journey. Words such as Vater, Bitte, Socke, groß, and many more!

AMD 4

For my 4th AMD, I chose to play the game "Call of Duty: World at War," more specifically a level within the game that had sequences with German speakers.  At the beginning of the level, your Russian character is a prisoner being held by German soldiers in a house during the Battle of Seelow in Eastern Germany in 1945.  After waking up, your character tries to go for a nearby gun before a German sargent kicks him in the face threatens to kill him.  Within 15 seconds later, your Russian comrades punch a hole through the house, kill the German captors and rescue you.

Why I chose this video game is because now knowing a bit of German, I wanted to go back and play a game in which I could now understand the enemy, and as in most video games set during WW2, the Germans tend to be the enemy.  Something that I recognized was when I reached for the gun, I heard "Nein! Du Russisches Schwein!  Du hättest lieber tot bleiben sollen," which translates to "No!  Russian Pig!  You should have rather remained dead.  I enjoyed actually being able to understand my enemies for once.

Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

We will be using this blog throughout the semester for two kinds of assignments:

1. Once per chapter, the homework plan will direct you to post a response to the culture readings for the chapter on the blog.

2. Roughly every other week, the homework plan will direct you to post here for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). See Was ist ein AMD, AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas. This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Whenever you post something, please include your name and the name of the assignment (e.g. AMD2, Kultur5) as labels. See "Blog: How To" for more details!