Stage 3: ‘Fluency’

At this point I was able to enjoy the immersion (series, games), my vocabulary
count was around 6000 words, which were quite well grounded thanks to frequent
monolingual repetitions and grinding ‘difficult words’. Of course, not all of those
words were actively used.

The time has come to stop ‘stuttering’ German and to start speaking it
effortlessly.

By the way, my aim was to pass B2 in June. However, at the end of January I had
started classes with a new teacher and she asked me what’s my history and what’s my
aim. I told that I was learning German for around 5 months and in around 4 months I
plan to pass B2 exam and she responded with ‘Lol, B2? You could go right now and
pass it. Aim for C1’.

So my plan of passing B2 within 9 months had changed to passing C1 within 9 months.

Timeframe: February, March, April

a) How do I simply ‘flow’ in the target language?

No magic recipe here – I just ordered more one-on-one classes and spoke, spoke,
spoke. At that time, I had around 3-5 hours of classes per week.

First, I tried to speak without pauses with quite simple structures, just to keep
the flow of speech going, then I tried to expand using more complicated structures.
Everything comes with time and frequent practice.

b) How to convert my way of thinking into target language?

Each of us has a individual way in which we communicate. There are specific
structures that we use and specific register. We acquire it with life, education
and environment – obviously in our native language (in most of the cases). It your
own, natural way of communication in which you are fluent.

At that time, it was my aim to be able to express this underlying way of thinking
and speaking in German. There is no easy way of doing it. You just have to speak
and observe when ‘you lack something’, when you want to say something but you can’t
due to limitations in your TL.

Every time ask your tutor to translate what you wanted to say and write it down.
Practice it, add to your SRS, repeat those sentences with your tutor in the next
class (or better yet, ask him/her to have you translate it or something in this
vein). Whatever works for you.

Yet, the best technique that has helped me the most in achieving fluency is the
following one.

c) My special trick
From everything I have written here, the technique that I liked the most and the
one that helped me the most – especially with my fluency was to:

Think ONLY in German, all day long.

I had regular classes with one of my tutors just a few days before I invented and
implemented this technique (at the start of February) and then we had around 30-
day-long hiatus in classes. After that time (in which I tried to think only in
German), she commented that it’s almost impossible how my ability to speak has
changed over this short period of time.
However, it’s very difficult to implement this technique. There is a tendency to
forget the resolution to think only in a foreign language. Moreover, it’s a
difficult work for your mind and it does not want to do it. I’ve observed many
times how my mind simply preferred to ‘think’ of something in images, in order not
to use the words.

All in all, human mind is like an unruly cow – that wants to wander around, if you
beat it with a stick sufficient number of times it will obey you.

The time I liked to think in German the most was just before going to sleep, I did
around 15-20 minutes of ‘thinking practice’ every day before going to sleep. It has
worked wonders – at that time my fluency and speed of thinking in German was at the
peak.

Nevertheless, I set up a rule, that I will not think in German: 1) when it relates
to my medical studies (since I did not have vocabulary and it would impede my
learning speed) 2) when the situation calls for quick thinking, emergency or not

d) Considering I have a time limit – which grammar structures should I give no crap
about?
I already explained this point in section 2d, but here I will present a bit more of
my personal perspective.

At the time when I had decided that I will write Goethe C2 I had been learning
German for 7 months (late March), yet there was a lot of grammar points that I had
no idea (or a faint idea at best) about, including: Konjunktiv I, Konjunktiv II,
Präteritum, Cases, Adjective declension. The question was – which of them I use on
regular basis? I needed to know Konjunktiv II, Cases and adjective declesions.

- Konjunktiv II was a breeze, it can be literally learned in a few minutes and then
with some practice it becomes really easy.

- Then, I reviewed my knowledge on cases. I added words, which evoke certain case
(like mit is always with Dativ) to a new Anki deck. I added 1-2 sentences for most
of them and I grided the deck a bit.

- Adjective declension is a more complicated usage of the case system. I found a

table with adjective declension and I read and tried to memorise it every day in
morning and in the evening.

- What is most important – in speech I made mistakes with the cases, but when I was
writing and I had a few seconds to think about it I rarely made any mistake. To put
in different words to never make mistakes with cases is a sign of extremely
proficient language user, who had years of practice with that language. Mastery of
cases/declension comes only from practice and immersion. So, for all people that
are having problem with the cases I would just say one thing – do not worry,
everything will fall in place, with time and patience. (yes, it is possible that
someone on A2 does not make mistakes in this regard, but it is probably due to very
limited vocabulary – it is infinitely more difficult to remember on the fly the
case of every single word when your active vocab consists of 10,000 rather than 300
words)

- All in all, I did not learn Konjunktiv I and Präteritum, as they are highly
irregular and I’ve considered them a time sink. As for Präteritum, I’ve learned the
declensions of modal verbs and some basic verbs, maybe 10-15 words in total. As for
Konjunktiv I, I literally know 1 usage and 1 declension – when you are paraphrasing
what someone has said, like in “Es wird oft behauptet), dass Erderwärmung etwas
ganz Natürliches sei” – I’ve learned this to be able to put sentence like this in
my essay for the exam – as it shows you know and use Konjunktiv I.
e) ‘At this level you should only use monolingual dictionary’
I think this one major bull that is being spread on the Internet. I do not hate
monolingual dictionaries, as a matter of fact I use them on a regular basis – Duden
(German), RAE (Spanish), Cambridge (duh). They have their time and place, but they
are being overemphasized.

When you have a considerable vocabulary and you see a new word, the thing you want
to do it is to learn this word. To learn something, you have to have a clear idea
what it is. Word is simply a verbal representation of an entity in a real world.
When you see the word ‘elephant’, an image is instantly evoked in your brain – of
this entity in the real world. But if you see ‘a tall plant with a thick stem that
has branches coming from it and leaves’ no such thing happens – your brain has to
assemble and analyse this information to come to the conclusion that it means tree.
Let’s not kid ourselves, at C level you won’t learn words like ‘tree’ and
‘elephant’, 95% of what you will learn will be highly abstract things like
‘conscience’, ‘rudimentary’, ‘transcendental’ etc. How can you learn something,
when you don’t know what it clearly is? To give an example, if you want to find a
bank and ask somebody and one person tells you ‘Turn right’ and the other tells you
‘Turn left, left and left’ – yes, the result is the same, but in the second case
you are running around in circles.

If you use bilingual dictionary, you remember to link this image in your head with
a word in foreign language, using a word in your native (or another language that
you’ve already mastered) as a proxy.

So – for learning – use bilingual dictionary, or better yet, after initial

translation ‘skip the middleman’ and learn word in a monolingual matter, using this
image in your head directly, as I’ve explained a few chapters ago.

So, are monolingual dictionaries useless? No, not at all. They are great. By
reading description of the word in your TL you see a best, direct way of explaining
something in your TL. Nevertheless, they are shit for learning/memorising purpose.

I have also encountered some asinine propositions in the Internet, that at C+ level
you should learn grammar only in your TL. That’s a terrible idea. If some concept
is difficult, to learn it you need to make it easy and approachable and
explanations in TL are just going to make it more complicated and harder to learn.

4) Preparing for the language exam “ok lel, I will try to pass this C2 in two
months xD, how do I do that to stand any chance?” – 20 April-10 June
*I had to divide this post into 2, so Goethe C2-specific strategies are here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/s6vjil/
ive_passed_goethe_c2_after_9_months_of_learning/

However, those strategies can be extrapolated to other levels of Goethe and other
exams to some degree.

5) Post Goethe-C2
Currently I do not use my German actively, so I’ve regressed a fair degree. But
that’s okay – my plan is to work as a doc in Switzerland, so I will have a load of
possibilities of practice there. I’m not afraid of ‘losing’ my German – I think it
is impossible. I have seen that if a lot of effort was put into learning a language
over a sufficiently long time, it becomes a part of you. You cannot really lose it,
it’s just sitting there, in the backburner.
I’ve experienced it with Spanish already – I had reached B2ish, I’ve watched the
whole of One Piece anime (at that time it was around 900ish episodes of 20
minutes), then I did not do anything with it for around 2 years. In September 2021,
I just listened to 2 audiobooks in Spanish, while doing some other stuff like gym,
cooking, garden work etc, then ordered maybe 10 hours of classes with tutor and
repeated all the words I had in my SRS app (around 5000) and then 3 weeks later I
went to Canary Islands, where everyone was surprised, I was not a resident.

Right now, I plan to pass DELE C2 in May 2022, at the same time I plan to polish my
Hindi/Urdu to a level where I can comfortably hold a conversation for 1 hour and
watch TV series without problems. Then I have some fun idea about French <devious
smile>.

I can give you a small comparison between Goethe C2 and DELE C2… Just last week I
did reading+listening module of DELE C2, during reading I had the same speed of
work I acquired during working on my Goethe just to barely fit in time. Results? I
finished reading part in 35 minutes (you have 60 minutes), while having 93% of
correct answers.

It says a bit about Goethe C2 exam.

Nevertheless, have fun. Enjoy your language journey. Don’t compare yourself with
anybody. All in all, you are doing it for yourself – to be able to take part in the
foreign culture and thanks to that - to become a more complete human being.

WELL, THAT’S IT. Finally.