I have currently hit a large wall in learning German. I am 10 months in and this isn’t the first wall I have hit, but this is the biggest. I’m at a B1 level and I am trying to increase my vocab and listening. I am feeling overwhelmed and slightly disappointing. I have been putting a lot of effort into both and I feel like I’m not seeing any improvements. I don’t know if the content I am working with out of my level and I am stretching myself or what. I am currently studying in Germany and I know my German has improved since I arrived. I just feel like I have plateaued and am now lacking motivation. So what ever words of motivation or advice would mean more than you know.
P.S.- This is my first foreign language I have ever learned, so I have never experienced this “plateau” feeling.
What are you doing to learn? Is the word number shown at your German account more or less accurate?
I think it must be because about 3000 German word forms is more or less equivalent to a B1 level.
Well, there’s a “desert crossing” to be mae in passing from B1 to B2. You’ll need about 5000 “family” words, which I guess it’s about 10000 “Lingq” words to go all the way to B2. For a language like German, you’ll need over 18 months of daily work to achieve that result,
I’m at a similar level to yours in Russian and I sure sometimes find that I’m stagnating.
Keep going! Everything counts and enjoy your B1 level in the meantime. It means you can talk with people and enjoy written material.
What are you reading? I myself have found it very useful at this stage to import a nice real novel into Lingq and start reading.
Nothing very fancy. I chose a sci-fi one from Wikisource.
Get something you like that’s challenging and real, you’ll be moving much faster.
Everyone can sometimes experience such a ‘plateau feeling’ by learning a foreign language.
You shouldn’t be afraid of it.
How to recover a motivation?..
The easiest way - to step back to sorts of podcasts which are quite easy to you, from example from B1 to A2 or at least to combine some texts of B1 and A2.
The second possibility - to make a break for 1-2 weeks and then start again and from the lower level, repeating some words and structures.
About the quantity of words - your 3603 Ferman words are like 1000 English words because the German words have more flexible forms - and they all for lingq like new words, but they aren’t, for example the German words ‘sprechen’ can have such different forms: spreche-sprichst-spricht-sprechen-sprecht- sprach-sprachst-sprachen- habe gesprochen etc.
Lingq counts them as 9 different words, but really it is the same word!
But the most important thing is even not the quantity of the ‘known’ words, but how you know them - if you can guess them in the context, it’s only ‘passive’ knowledge; if you can use them in a spoken language, it’s ‘active’ knowlerdge, that’s crucial for speaking.
In any case - be patient!
Viel Erfolg!
I know the feeling . I moved to Austria 3.5 years ago and started learning German as a complete beginner. I got very frustrated after about a year by the fact that I was not making progress as fast as I wanted. I think the largest problems were vocabulary and listening comprehension, both of which take a long time and a lot of work to develop. Once you have developed them to a good level, you will be very happy that you put in the time.
Being a student in Germany of course helps, especially for motivation. Do your studies require you to learn any German?
I major in International Business and my university in the states requires so much of a foreign language to graduate with that major. I was interested in German before switching, so my decision to learn German wasn’t based on what my university wanted me to do. Thanks for the words. Just keep on pushing I guess!