120 Hour Update / 5 Year Update
Hello. I'm Atila and if you want to know how long I've been learning German and why I'm only at 120 hours after all this time. Click Here For Why
Here are my hours.
I started immersing seriously from the 19th of June 2023 but the thumbnail above is from over the last 2 years.
LISTENING
I'm trying to catch up my listening to my reading and it's very fun to just hear things and have that meaning as I didn't really experience that in Portuguese as my listening has always been good for Portuguese.
I was on holiday so I could listen to lots of podcasts especially on long car rides.
The "Easy German Podcast" carried me through listening as their podcasts interest me and are quite comprehensible.
I especially love passive listening.
Free Comprehensible Input
I go to school where I'm learning German and my teacher speaks only German therefore I receive free comprehensible input. It's quite epic.
READING
I finished Harry Potter book 1 after hopping on and off it again and again.
Reading became a lot more comfortable after I decided to read with an audiobook (so I highly recommend it(reading with an audiobook)). However I wish I had chosen an easier book first, Harry Potter is way too hard at the beginning.
ATM I'm reading both SAO and Momo. SAO is incredibly comprehensible now after the first slog through the first chapter.
SPEAKING
My output is terrible. I had a test and I really don't want to output.
I had a test on househusbands and how fatherhood has changed in German Speaking Countries and nothing really flowed.
WRITING
Vocab is good because of Anki.
Grammar is patchy due to lack of immersion but is slowly getting better.
ANKI
I wasn't very consistent with Anki this year mostly due to exams and peer pressure (My friends told me to stop doing Anki and revise but then I did neither(no offense to them as they were just looking out for me))
Overall I've spent 222 hours in Anki. And my Heatmap looks like this 
I'm learning 20 words a day and because my teachers kept saying I had a test when they never actually did it, I was doing 40 cards a day for a few weeks.
Recovering from that has been rough but necessary.
I'm mindful now that language learning isn't all about Anki but I've been careful to keep them in some sort of balance as I don't want to neglect either Anki or active immersion.
RESOURCES AND LEARNING MATERIALS
Grammar
I learn grammar at school and can ask questions about sentences that come up in my immersion. For grammar teachers are very helpful.
Anime
Here's my anilist.
Overall I really enjoyed "Princess Mononoke", "Whisper of the Heart" and "Bloom Into You" as due to the community effort in the German Refold Discord they have accurate subtitles. It made sentence mining effortless. /
For Free-Flow I watched "Cowboy Bebop" - Sci-Fi is something I've never interacted with but it was mostly quite comprehensible.
Books and Book Club
The Book Club in the German Refold Discord was and still is very important to my continued motivation and enjoyment of German literature as many books that are voted for are written by German authors while I mostly stick to translated works. They also provide a platform where one can talk about the book as well as keeping you consistent in reading a number of chapters each week. Overall Mistcurve, who runs the book club, has been really consistent and made cool surveys and has made the book club very simple to participate in.
PLANS AND GOALS
- Actively immerse 1 hour a day at least
- Reach 3-4 hours total immersion time per day
- Finish Momo
- Maybe finish Gray
THANKS
Toast - Inspiration as they are always in the Group Study channel immersing.
Atian - Reading his blog post inspired me to write this one. And their massive dedication is impressive
TD - Don't really see 'em anymore but insanely grateful for the SOL anime and transcriptions
Mistcurve - Running the book club, being active, being helpful
Cagnolia - Inspired my mining setup, kept on the grind
Skinnybirch - Being an understanding moderator
Asriel - For immersing with me in the German Discord Server
To anyone who posts progress updates and to those who hang in group study VC
There are so many others in the Refold Discord Server aswell.