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Some tips for studying languages?

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  • 08-02-2012 5:54pm
    #1
    Fmurr34
    Registered Users Posts: 21 ✭


    I'm not going to lie, I did absolutely NOTHING in relation to languages for my 1st 4 years in secondary school. I could just never concentrate on them or study them because I wasn't interested in them (and I was probably a bit immature). Sciences, maths and geography have always been more my thing :p

    Anyway I'm trying to improve them up to at least a C standard now, but I still find it difficult to study them. I don't know how to go about doing it :confused: Anyone care to help?

    I do ordinary level Irish and ordinary level German, failed pretty hard in my term exams....
    Tagged:


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    #2
    angela1711
    Registered Users Posts: 469 ✭✭angela1711


    Ordinary level German is pretty easy. You are only in 5th year so don't stress too much. However I'm doing higher so I'm not 100% sure about OL. What I would say is to learn new vocabulary it will help in your comprehensions as well as your written work. For the listening you may download some simple programmes for kids or just listen to past tapes. For the oral know your pictures well as their are guaranteed and prepare your role plays. However remember that most marks are going for the questions that come after pictures not for saying the story ! Oh and obviously know all the topics for your general questions in the oral e.g family, school etc

    I think that there is no grammar in OL paper but I'm may be wrong.


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    #3
    angela1711
    Registered Users Posts: 469 ✭✭angela1711


    And the most important thing: Learn your pictures and role plays now ! Don't leave them until LC ! If you do so you will find it difficult to prepare for you oral, listening and written exam.


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    #4
    Fmurr34
    Registered Users Posts: 21 ✭Fmurr34


    angela1711 wrote: »
    Ordinary level German is pretty easy. You are only in 5th year so don't stress too much. However I'm doing higher so I'm not 100% sure about OL. What I would say is to learn new vocabulary it will help in your comprehensions as well as your written work. For the listening you may download some simple programmes for kids or just listen to past tapes. For the oral know your pictures well as their are guaranteed and prepare your role plays. However remember that most marks are going for the questions that come after pictures not for saying the story ! Oh and obviously know all the topics for your general questions in the oral e.g family, school etc

    I think that there is no grammar in OL paper but I'm may be wrong.

    Um yeeeaaaah about that....I'm in 6th year and I'm doing my mocks right now xD But I will more than likely repeating, I'm among the youngest in my year. Thanks for the hints :) I don't find the piture series to be much of a problem, just learn off by heart really.


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    #5
    Coeurdepirate
    Registered Users Posts: 2,576 ✭✭✭Coeurdepirate


    The absolute best thing you can do, and everyone underestimates this, is to find a friend from Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein or Switzerland to speak German to on msn, facebook, whatever. At first you mightn't even understand Hallo, but you'll pick it up so so fast and it does wonders for your sentence structure.


    There are countless websites out there for which to meet people from all over the world who are interested in language exchange, interpals.net being the one I use.


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    #6
    angela1711
    Registered Users Posts: 469 ✭✭angela1711


    Fmurr34 wrote: »
    Um yeeeaaaah about that....I'm in 6th year and I'm doing my mocks right now xD But I will more than likely repeating, I'm among the youngest in my year. Thanks for the hints :) I don't find the piture series to be much of a problem, just learn off by heart really.


    I thought you are in 5th year because you called mocks "term exams" i thought you meant xmas test or something :)


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    #7
    finality
    Registered Users Posts: 1,763 ✭✭✭finality


    I would suggest a euro languages college course, but as you're in sixth year I guess it's a bit too late. I've been there as a student and then worked there last summer, and there's really no comparison between my German after it and before, especially oral. I think it's actually really hard to improve quickly in a language, because the whole thing is sort of a unit and you can't just learn certain things off by heart.

    I suppose the best thing to do would be to divide them into topics, for example "about me", environment, technology, school... and group all the vocab together for those topics, then practise questions on those topics. For German it's particularly important that you can talk about yourself and about school, comes up in the oral and the letter.


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