105 Journal #10

[Anela Halilovic]

During this year I tried to read books, scientific papers and news articles in German. I do not really have a problem understanding the context of any written work, because I have a rich vocabulary. However  if the unknown word is the key word in a sentence, or even a paragraph, I try to guess its meaning, but sometimes I have to look up the word in a dictionary. I do try to use a monolingual dictionary, because I found it more useful to be able to explain a word in the same language, rather than associate it with a word in another language. In fact, bilingual dictionaries are useful for being able to translate text from one language into another. Monolingual dictionary sometimes provides synonyms and antonyms as well, which I find useful in my own writings. When it comes to writing, I still struggle with indirect speech, in particular using Konjunktiv, because it is not used that often in daily life. Furthermore, I sometimes make mistakes using the Praeteritum Tense for irregular verbs, because it is not as often used as the Perfect Tense. Basically, one has to learn all verbs and the way they change in praeteritum by heart. There is no trick, which makes it hard. I also need to improve my punctuation. It is especially hard, because the punctuation in German is different than the punctuation in English and Bosnian. Other than that, I think that my writing is good, but I do have to improve my writing style, because I tend to use informal or less scholarly language.