Denny Chapin’s Blog

I have a very crazy notion in my head that I can learn a years worth of German in 2 months.

The challenge is to be in 2nd year German at my college (Beloit) by the time classes begin.

I’ll walk into the German teachers office, tell them when I started (here’s some proof), where I’ve gotten, and if I can do an independent study or take level 2 German.

How?

A number of ways. Mainly using meetup.com and couchsurfing to find people to hang out with and speak the language.

I’ll be borrowing from many methods from Tim Ferriss. The main strategy is focused learning by determining:

1. Priority. What I need and want to learn. Focusing on specific material.
2. Interest. How to keep motivated by the process so I can cut down on repetition learning, have faster recall, and move on more quickly.
3. Process. What’s the method? Is learning the way I’m learning going to produce the most results in the least amount of time? If not, scrap and find a new method.

Soooo. How do I match up with these 3 criteria?

First off, speed usually requires the ready, fire, aim approach. Have an idea, make it happy very quickly, and modify to suit the needs of the user. Thus #3 will be a little sketchy for these preliminary ideas.

1. Priority: Philosophy. I want to be able to walk around in Berlin, order food, small talk, and speak about the following topics: Art (graphic, film, sculpture, and architecture), Books (novels, non-fiction), and Philosophy (I’d like to read Heidegger’s Being and Time Division I). And food vocab, naturally.
2. Interest. I need to find hilarious German people and drink with them. Period. TONS of German movies with subtitles. Berlin based magazines. Prints of the city from my photos and flickr. Skype conversations with couchsurfing friends from Berlin. Camping trips and day hikes with German speakers ONLY.
3. Process. From visiting Berlin and learning a few phrases I know that pronunciation will be the most difficult part to handle. I don’t want to sound like a ‘fucking American’ while in Germany. It took me two days of practicing the word I (’ich’) to get it right. Beyond that, showing up is half the battle. I need to keep it regular and consistent. I also need to figure out some reward system for motivation.

Stupid? Maybe. But oh well. Ιt’s definitely worth the try and effort.

I do want to live in Berlin and study German philosophy, after all.

Anyway this is a crazy and exciting idea. I’m ordering the CD sets now.

A much smarter idea is to resurrect my broken Spanish. As I told everyone in Spain, I understand almost everything, I just can’t speak back without sounding like a ‘nino tonto’ (silly child).

I might just try both.