Well done I hope I get there with my French Some day. If all I do is listening and reading with lingq getting to 30k how good will my speaking be? I’d really not like to focus on output for a long time but it would be interesting to know if I did a massive passive input phase whether I would have pretty good speaking anyway?
Not too good in my case 
If you do a lot reading and listening, your speaking skills will improve along the way to a surprising extent, but of course not as much as they would’ve gotten if you were also practicing speaking during that time.
I have experience with both sides of this. My spoken French is better than my German and I make less mistakes, because I actually had the chance to practice speaking French along the way. My German is worse, but given the fact that I’ve barely done any speaking practice, my often incorrect German flows out surprisingly easy when I meet people, simply because I have all that vocab and listening time in my head. If given the opportunity, I think I could improve it by leaps and bounds in a weeks time, because the pieces are there, I’d just need to get better at properly connecting them.
This comes down to long term vs. short term, effort vs. outcome, bang for the buck, etc.
Reading, and especially listening is a low effort, fun and low stress activity with massive long term benefits. Speaking and “studying” is high effort, higher stress, heavy lifting, with potentially quicker benefits.
Hey just wondering when you was studying both German and French what kind of routine did you have everyday and how long did you study?
I am currently studying for 3 hours a day a lot of reading and listening with a fair amount of passive input?
I went through Assimil French 1&2 first, then I did the Assimil “German for French speakers” books – my thinking was that this would teach me German while helping me solidify my French and from what I can tell it worked out. I was also doing a lot of podcast listening of French during that time.
After Assimil German, I moved onto my reading and listening program. With reading, I alternate my days – one day French, the next day German.
With listening, I’m on a rotation. Korean during my morning walk, French during my commute to work, German during my commute back home. I try to find 30 to 45 mins in the morning to go through some Korean. And I try to find 30 to 45 mins in the afternoon or evening to to read either French or German.
It doesn’t always work out that way with the reading and studying, but I try to keep to the routine as much as possible. But the listening time is kind of a given, even when I don’t get to read, I still have to drive, walk, shop, or do other activities that lend themselves to listening time, I usually get to do at least a little bit of something with each language on most days.
" My spoken French is better than my German and I make less mistakes, because I actually had the chance to practice speaking French along the way. My German is worse, but given the fact that I’ve barely done any speaking practice…"
On one hand, I agree that we need to speak a lot in order to be quite comfortable when we’re speaking. However, on the other hand, I think how difficult the grammar is also will affect how good we’ll do. So, as far as I know german is more - grammatically - difficult than french therefore, seems self-evident that with only passive knowledge of both languages you would do better in french.
Am I wrong or it’s expected that you’ll speak french, at least, slightly better?
That’s depressing. Can you tell me more? I guess your understanding of what others were saying was good though? Is it just that you can’t actively find the words and vocabulary you need?
That’s not a bad hypothesis and I guess you technically could be correct. German is in a different tier and requires more hours of instruction and therefore probably more hours of exposure. I haven’t thought about it that way.
Hey thanks for your reply! it is always good to get some feedback!
When you do your listening in the beginner stages ( like myself ) was you just listening to anything that was French or German Passive I don’t think it really matters what I listen to in Spanish because it is all input and is it passive I am not studying it just trying to let my Brain absorb it.
I have started to be more active in the Listening I will read a lesson move all the words to yellow or white then listen to the lession and repeat this untill the lesson is finished, then start the lesson again and just let the audio play while reading along.
I hope that this method I will hopefully see some improvement with my listening skills but I have noticed that my known words will be decreasing as I am not reading as much as before because I am taking the time out to listen but this sounds like a pretty good method to increase both!
I hope to have your number of known words one day!
Look forward to your reply.
I live in Bavaria. That may be a reason, because people here do not use the standard accent. At least they do not reply in English as it was many years ago
I do not have big problems using German with officials, per Skype or phone. But everyday conversations with my collegues are challenging. I just can guess the main theme of discussions on radio. Everything really depends on a speaker.
I need usually at least 1-2 minutes to “warm up” my ability to speak foreign language. Small talks may not be so long.