Fluency in foreign languages

[JoshBB]

I took German at GCSE and I will be getting my result in August (expecting a C/B) and honestly even though I will probably have passed, I still feel that I can barely speak an awful lot of it. The course was appalling, and focused very much on learning only the specific vocab needed to pass the exam and not actually learn the language.

I'd actually quite like to be bilingual though, and I have already found a website that works amazingly to learn words (memrise, honestly its amazing I learned 400 words the day before one of my exams and it really helped lmao, i remembered at least 70% of them). My main trouble is the rules of the language and placements of certain words in a sentence.

For an example;
To say "Can you speak German?", I would get confused between the following;

"Kannst du Deutsch sprechen?"
"Kannst du spreche die Deutsch"
"Du sprichst Deutsch?"
"Kann du Deutsch sprechen"?


Like, I could probably google but I wouldn't know which one to use if I had a conversation with a german person..

Does anyone know any way I can become fluent in German that is free and preferably something I can do over the internet?

I know that living in the actual country is supposedly the best way, but since I'm currently only nearing the end of Year 9 and doing GCSE's that is out of the question lol.

[Pete.]

I did French for GCSE and forgot all of it the day after I was so relieved to be done with ha

[Pete.]

Don't you do your GCSE's in Year 11 :think:

[Marsh.]

I speak English, French, Spanish, German and Chinese. :hee:

[JoshBB]

Don't you do your GCSE's in Year 11 :think:

In my school, the higher sets do fast-track. I took German this year, will do 4-5 GCSEs next year (chemistry, biology, RE, drama & i cant remember the rest), and then the other 10 or so the year after. I'm taking 17 in total and I have no idea why my school thought this was a good idea.

[jennyjuniper]

I took German at GCSE and I will be getting my result in August (expecting a C/B) and honestly even though I will probably have passed, I still feel that I can barely speak an awful lot of it. The course was appalling, and focused very much on learning only the specific vocab needed to pass the exam and not actually learn the language.

I'd actually quite like to be bilingual though, and I have already found a website that works amazingly to learn words (memrise, honestly its amazing I learned 400 words the day before one of my exams and it really helped lmao, i remembered at least 70% of them). My main trouble is the rules of the language and placements of certain words in a sentence.

For an example;


Like, I could probably google but I wouldn't know which one to use if I had a conversation with a german person..

Does anyone know any way I can become fluent in German that is free and preferably something I can do over the internet?

I know that living in the actual country is supposedly the best way, but since I'm currently only nearing the end of Year 9 and doing GCSE's that is out of the question lol.

Your local library should have language tapes you can learn from. Or if you can access German channels listen to the newscasters, who speak clearly. But if you are starting from scratch watch sesame strasse in German, which is how most of my German was learnt. Or listen to Rammstein's music. The lead singer has a very clear pronunciation and the music is bloody good.

[Crimson Dynamo]

forget foreign languages

they all speak english and the ones that dont, well forget them


when all the best films and music and stuff are in a foreign language then I would consider it but as they aint

forget them and their forked tongues


Silver plate for thank you and Si and pourquoi

f that pish

:nono:

[RichardG]

There's a website called Shared Talk where you can talk to people from different countries with the aim of learning their language, which is pretty useful if you want the experience of talking to a native. The only problem is that the expectation is they'll help you if you help them, so they might not bother helping you or you might not be bothered helping them, and to have any kind of conversation you'd have to have a basic understanding of the language to begin with. I tried using it to learn Korean once but when the guy changed from speaking English to Korean I panicked and logged out haha. It might be a waste of time but it's free so there's no harm in giving it a try, I'm not sure how active it is these days though.

Otherwise I don't have much else to advise but if a forum dedicated to Big Brother exists then I'm sure there's ones out there for learning specific languages too where you could ask for help.

[Livia]

I speak Italian and German fairly well, enough French to get me by and I'm fluent in Hebrew, written and spoken.