I’ve never done intensive but it sounds doable for a few months at a time. Obviously it depends on your specific program, but expect like 50+ words per day vocabulary and an intense grammar program with it.
It’s pretty much the fastest you can possibly learn, which makes it a lot of work and quite difficult.
You learn so quickly that it will also go away quickly. So be sure to practice after the course if you want to “retain” it.
There was one weird agreement. During WW1, the Pope declared that a Christmas ceasefire should happen. Obviously, the Pope has no such power in these matters and the diplomats around the world failed to turn the Popes wish into any real ceasefire.
But then, a bit of Christmas magic happened. It turns out that WW1 soldier conditions were so shit, that many soldiers wanted to go against orders and proceed with the Christmas ceasefire anyway (as an act of rebellion against their commanders).
Legend has it that soldiers picked Still Nacht (aka: Silent Night), it being one of the few bilingual Christmas Carols. If both sides in the trenches started to sing the song, you knew it was safe to partake in the ceasefire, allegedly with another confirmation of Oh Come All Ye Faithful (another Christmas carol).
This all proves one thing. It’s not the leaders or diplomats that really matter per se with ceasefires. It’s the soldiers at the bottom. If they refuse to shoot, then the ceasefire will happen. With orders, or (in the Christmas miracle…) sometimes AGAINST orders.
It’s not a complete miracle, as some reports of fight / killing still happened during the Christmas Ceasefire. But there are reports of hundreds of thousands of French, British, and German soldiers exchanging Christmas gifts (coffee and other trinkets), playing soccer and more. So it largely was a success.
Which language?
85% on the final exam of my German class. It was equivalent to A2.1 (with A2.2 and A2.3 if I were to continue). Although the class was clearly good, it was substantial amounts of time and money invested, and the stated schedule feels quite slow (3 hours a day / 30 weeks on A2 alone?).
At least at my beginner level, I think I can self study further and faster (especially with 10 weeks of class under my belt). I do have a substantial amount of German exercises / books that I’ve been meaning to get through. So a few weeks (months?) of self study probably is fine.
I am worried about my speaking skills for the near future. But I do think that today, my main hold up is simply vocabulary. Reading, grammar exercises, and other activities should improve my vocab. I’ll look into speaking / talking practice later. For now, I’ll try self study / shadowing for my speaking practice.
Self study is averaging a bit above 1 Grammatik aktiv lesson a day (on good days I can get two done). I also flipped through the whole book and I think I’m actually aware of all grammar concepts from A1 through B1. I just need the practice so that my skills can do it.
Vocabulary wise, my plan is to coast on frequency list for now (while I’m focused on completing Grammatik aktiv), then use Nico’s Weg A2 level to shore up my vocab. Grammatik aktiv is 100% German so it is some supplemental vocab practice.
Anki remains set at 5 words a day (+10 cards/day) for now. I really don’t know how others can push 10, 20 or 50 words a day. My long term hope is that when I get my vocab from my graded readers or other related coursework, it’d be possible to increase back to 10 or more words/day.
Between Anki and Grammatik aktiv, that’s over an hour day commitment. Every car drive is passive listening to German music only, I do browse some German YouTube and other passive practice. I know it’s not a complete study course but it’s what I got for now…
Read with very high levels of suspicion: there’s a huge number of errors in this article.
The issues discussed seem surface-level troublesome to me. But they’re extremely weasel-words and/or exaggerated. I don’t think these guys have found a smoking gun, there’s a lot of problems with this code but…
The permission list doesn’t seem to match reality. The argument seems to be “TEMU code references these permissions, so they must try to get the permissions somehow”. These red-flag permissions aren’t on the Google Play store manifest however.
Very basic errors involving MAC Addresses and other fundamental computer concepts.
Etc. etc. The core problems here might be true, but I’ll need a more legitimate tech-site to go over the data and actually tell me what the problem is, because a lot of this “article” is just hyperbolic fluff.
Hacker News has been talking about it (a venture capitalist forum, not really about “Hackers” per se). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427008 . Good discussion so far.
This is obviously a “Bear” company blogpost that short-sells a stock and then publishes negative data on that company. So remember, if the stock price falls, this blog makes money. That’s their goal. I’m not saying that they’re wrong, or that the stock price shouldn’t fall, just remember that this is where the profits are for this “grizzly” company.
That’s why I’d personally like an Android developer / security specialist go over the claims and tell me if there’s actually a red-flag here or not.
Intensive is like 4 hours of lecture per day btw. (And a fair bit of review/study after that, daily). Obviously there is good opportunity here, but be sure you have enough time for it before committing.
Or otherwise, be sure to ask for how many hours/day or hours/week would be expected of you.