My New Year's Resolution

In 2013 I am going to ....

use Krashen's ideas to acquire some German.  This will be a real test of comprehensible input because I don't have the time or means or will to take lessons from a teacher.  If I could find a TPRS German teacher, maybe, but I also don't want the constraint of fixed times for lessons. 

I studied German in college, mostly out of curiosity.  I had already studied French, Spanish and Latin in high school and I even signed up for New Testament Greek. I happened on an excellent teacher who was using the Natural Approach, speaking only in German from day one.  This put quite a few students off.  They complained that they understood nothing of what she was saying.  I enjoyed the challenge and did get quite a bit of comprehensible input because I was motivated enough to make the effort required to guess at what she was saying. After two semesters our final exam was oral.  We had to go in and tell her a German fairy tale.  I had chosen the one about a fischermann who lived in a vinegar jug.  I passed with flying colors and was considering changing my major from French to German. But the following year the teacher accepted a better paying job in a bigger school and her replacement disappointed me.  Whereas we had spoken only in German in the first year, our second year classes were mostly in English.  The new teacher wasn't convinced we knew our declensions. After one semester I dropped out of the course with a B.

On a short trip through Austria and Bavaria in 1968 I realized I had lost most of my German and would have been totally unable to tell the story of the fischermann in a vinegar bottle, even if someone had wanted to listen to it.  About ten years ago I sat in on German lessons in my lycée for a while, hoping to get some of it back.  The teacher was a kind friend and did try to speak in German as much as possible, but also felt it was necessary to explain quite a bit of grammar.  I was able to attend only one out of three classes, so most of the time I was trying to figure out what had gone on in the classes I had missed.  But it was an interesting experience to be a student again, a student that was at a definite disadvantage. The following year my timetable made it impossible for me to attend any classes and the year after that my friend was assigned to a different school.

I think being able to speak and read and understand German (again)  has been one of those goals I've had in the back of my mind for many years, like learning to ride.  And you get to a point where you have to say, it's now or never.  I went back to horse riding after a 25 break in 2005.  I'm still learning, but today I can ride any reasonably well behaved horse. Recently on the moretprs forum someone who is not a teacher but has read up on Krashen's theories asked how he, as an adult, could learn Spanish, saying there were no TPRS teachers near him.

I replied that it's possible to learn a language through watching films with subtitles.  One of my granddaughters became fluent in English after watching Pirates of the Caribbeans 27 times and High School Musical almost as much.  I had a student whose English was so good that I assumed she had lived abroad.  She told me no, but she had spent the summer watching her favorite series through streaming.  Even as I sent off my somewhat glib reply to the forum, a little voice inside was saying, "Physician, cure thyself."

So this is my challenge for 2013.  I'm going to watch German films in German with German subtitles.  When I don't understand, I'll switch the subtitles to English and then go back to German.  I'll watch the same scenes over and over, until I feel I've acquired the language. A German teacher on the forum suggested "Errands for Angels" as an interesting film that has German and English.  I'm open to other suggestions, since I know next to nothing about the German film industry.  I guess I could watch old Derrick shows, but they always put my husband to sleep.  

Since I often advise my students to watch films in English, this will be a good test of how effective it is.  And I'll keep you posted on how well Krashen's theories work out in the process.