Just one. As long as you understand it and it covers your topics of interests.
For me, it was Harry Potter...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
but I get hung up on what exactly the actual translation to English is (I went, I would have gone, I did go etc.) and so get slowed down.
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I read, write and listen to English every day but I have no clue how to translate accurately or how English tenses correlate to German ones. In school I failed in every single exam that expected me to know grammar e.g. "put this in past perfect progressive" - unsolvable problem if you don't know what past perfect progressive is supposed to be. But most native speakers don't know either so I'm not overly concerned.
For any language, I study vocabulary, and read/write/listen. I don't speak much, unfortunately (I'd have to travel more, or get used to Skype). I never translate, and never make an effort for grammar. I prefer to pick it up along the way. This way I can just use whatever form "feels right". I just can't deal with having a list of hundred tenses in my head and hundred more rules when to use which, especially not when those rules turn out to be unreliable. If I make mistakes because of that, so be it.
But my personal experience is that people who try to translate everything exactly, and try to understand each and every grammatical construct and why exactly it's used there, they usually fail because they cling to their own native language way too much, and lots of times there just isn't an explanation, it just is.