Chris Abraham

Failing with Language Classes: I have been struggling with learning German for years in spite of lots of classes both in Washington, DC, as well as in Berlin, Germany, a city I moved to over Halloween 2007 through Christmas 2008. While I know a lot about the German language I still don’t feel comfortable as a German speaker.
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Learning German – Round 2: I arrived in Berlin, terrified of sounding like a toddler and a moron while trying to speak German. So, I just didn’t — I spoke English. After a while in Berlin, I signed up for another language course, again starting at the beginning. This time it was serious: three hours a day, five days a week, for four months.
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Third Time’s a Charm: In the middle of my German language learning travails, Rosetta Stone reached out to me and asked me to blog about my language-learning process in light of being able to try out their new solution, Rosetta Stone TOTALe. So, here I am.
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Listen to Reinforce Your Comprehension: I’ve learned that the only way to really learn a language is to soak yourself in it. I try to maximize my exposure to everything German as often as possible. One of my favorite ways to do this is to catch as much native content as possible.
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Finding the Native Accent: Perhaps you’re like many Americans who get so bummed out when they spend a lot of time learning a second language, and then they go abroad, excited to use their new language, and foreigners look at them perplexed.
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Have Fun with Your New Language!: One thing I’ve noticed while trying to use German during my time in Berlin is that I’m having a lot of fun. While it’s true that I’m often frustrated—by what I cannot say—I really try to celebrate all my little wins.
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Be Willing to Say “Huh?”: Nodding my head and saying, “Ja bitte,”—yes, please—is my default.
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The Dinner Party to End All Dinner Parties: I have a little corporate apartment in Berlin, in an unfashionable neighborhood called Moabit, right across from the main train station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof. My business partner, Mark, also spends half of his year—the warm months—in Berlin. He fell for the city while an exchange student in high school and he’s fluent in German.
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