How To Learn German Faster

HOW TO
LE ARN
GERMAN
FASTER
A book by
Michael Schmitz smarterGerman
02 TABLE OF CONTENT
Introduction 05
The Learning Cycle
07
Step 1 Learn Vocabulary 11
1. Context & Chunks 11
2. Learn Relevant Information Only 12
3. Recommended tools 12
4. Memrise 13
5. Alternatives to Memrise 13
6. Use an Online Dictionary 14
7. Analytical Reading for German Learners 14
8. Readlang 14
9. Don’t use Books from your German Classes 14
10. Don’t read the news & stay away from Children’s Books 15
11. Your Personal Blacklist 15
12. A Powerful Mnemonic Tool 16
Step 2 Read Texts 17

1. How to read in German 17
2. Recommended Tools 19
3. The idea behind this step 19
Step 3 A Write What You Hear 20

1. How it is done 20
2. The ideas behind this step 21
Step 3 B Oral Dictation 22

2. The ideas behind this step 22
Step 4 Learn Some Grammar 23

2. Useful tools 24
Step 5 Preach 25
1. How it is done (Basic Approach) 25
2. Advanced Approach 26
3. List of possible preaching patterns in German 26
4. Recommended tools 29
03 TABLE OF CONTENT
Step 6 Listen 30
1. Active Listening 31
4. Passive Listening 31
7. What To Listen To 32
8. The Advanced Learning Cycle 32
Step 7 Write Freestyle 33

2. Extended Instruction 34
4. How to Simplify Your Writing 37
Step 8 Basic Cycle 39

Step 9 Oral Translation 40

Useful Tips 41
1. Setting the Right Goals 41
2. How to find the right Motivation 41
3. Getting Help 42
4. How many Hours a Day Should One Study? 42
Tracking Time 44
1. So, how long does it actually take to become fluent in German? 44
2. Total immersion 45
3. Is Learning German Abroad Really Better? 47
4. Cultural Fluency 47
Easy German Learning? 48
Avoid Group Courses 49
Do not Learn German on your Own 52

Apps can help me learn German, right? 52
04 TABLE OF CONTENT
What is Functional German? 53

Finding a Speaking Partner 54
Keep a (Voice) Diary 55

Don’t use Flash Cards for Vocabulary 55
More Useful Tools 56
Get a Conversation Tutor 57

Pronunciation Course 58
Improve your Reading Skills 58
Danksagung 59
Appendix 60
05 INTRODUCTION
Introduction →
This course contains the essence of my insights from over 15 years of teaching
German and of my personal studies in the field of learning how to learn. My aim is to
provide you with a clear and simple structure that will help you learn German faster
and better.
I teach this structure to all my students and have achieved wonderful results with it.
We have an exam success rate of 98% and most of them achieve an 80% score or
higher. Many get a 100% score in their oral exam.
You might be learning German in a group course, with a private tutor, or on your
own. This course will help you get the most out of your German learning situation. I
will show you how to increase the efficiency of your language learning. Your German
will not only become better in quality but also you’ll also feel more secure with it.
The more secure you feel, the more likely you are to make good use of your new
skills.
I have managed to teach individuals German from scratch to level B1 in as little as 14

days. While these were exceptional achievements, they show what potential there is
in your German learning. With the majority of my students, I work for three months
as they are usually working in very demanding jobs and have only a little time to spare
every day. This is also a good amount of time to make sure that their German absorbs
properly and sticks with them for life. My main aim in my doing this is to teach my
students how to learn on their own once I am gone. To me, that’s the main purpose
of a teacher. This course shall help us achieve this goal.
The current system applied by language schools, private tutors, and software is
massively flawed. The main problem is that they all seem to think from their own
perspective, but never from the point of view of the language learner, namely you.
I’ll go into more detail later in this course.
smarterGerman is a highly empathetic approach applying logic, analytics, and

common sense. There’s no magic in what I do: just simple, scientifically proven
didactics.
My aim is to share the love with you that I experience when teaching German. Every
lesson I give is a gift to me and to my student. Thinking of sharing this experience
with you and all the other hundreds of thousands of German learners on this planet
touches me deeply.
06 INTRODUCTION
I want you to enjoy your German learning fully and to free your invaluable lifetime
which you then can use for whatever you like, maybe even more German learning.
The sG approach is the most efficient German language learning method that I have
found in 20 years of intensive research. Make rich use of it.
I would like to thank you for supporting my work and for taking on the challenge
to explore yourself and to become a better human being by learning the wonderful
German language.
Von Herzen
Dein
Michael
07 THE LEARNING CYCLE
The Learning Cycle →
In the following chapters, I will introduce you to a very effective learning cycle
that I have developed over the last years and that has been applied successfully
by over a hundred clients of mine. You can adapt it to your individual learning
speed and needs. For those interested, I will explain the idea behind each step and
how it works at the end of each chapter. There are a basic cycle and an advanced
cycle. Here is a quick overview of the steps:
1. Learn vocab

review 5mins here & there new words max. 20 mins.
2. Read text

while listening along. Hhighlight new words. Pause frequently.
3. Write a dictation

A. Written dictation
I. Listen. Pause. Write. Do not rewind audio. Leave gaps.
II. Write 5-7 sentences max.
III. Listen again. Pause. Fill in gaps. Correct mistakes.
IV. Compare with original text. Do NOT correct. Highlight mistakes.
V. Note number of mistakes.
VI. Repeat steps i.-v. immediately.
VII. Continue with cycle BUT
VIII. Repeat dictation a 3rd time a few hours later.
B. Oral dictation
I. Listen. Pause. Repeat. Do not read.
II. Record your voice + original audio
III. Listen to the recording
4. Study grammar

watch 1 grammar video in chronological order + exercise with pdf.
See next Page →

5. Preach
A. Write down quickly 7 items/ sentences (EN).
I. Translate into German.
II. Write down gender
B. Learn gender properly
C. Write down preaching sentence in Google docs & leave comment
for teacher. Example: Ich sehe einen (grauen) Drucker.
D. After teacher’s ok, write sentences on post-its/flash cards like this:
FRONT Drucker ← no other info at all
BACK Ich sehe einen (grauen) Drucker.
E. Stick that post-it wherever you want.
Do not label things in your flat.
F. Whenever you pass by a post-it,

try to remember what is written on its BACK.
G. If you are right a few times in a row,
put the post it into your archive (e.g. a fridge door)
H. Once you got the BACK right,

repeat the sentence 2x more fluently.
I. Record yourself and listen to it afterwards.
Pay attention to gender. Send recording to teacher.
[see ‘How to Preach’ over page]
6. Listen
A. Actively listen to audio of text. Pause frequently.
B. Passively listen to any kind of audio in background.
Do not focus on it.
See next Page →

ADVANCED CYCLE
7. Write a text

… about a topic you like. 80 words. 30 mins max.
A. Write a draft in English.
B. Simplify the draft (imagine a 10yo reader)
C. Translate into German.
D. One sentence per line.
E. Write unknown words in English, look them up later.
F. Highlight looked up words.
G. Run Checkup.
8. Dictate
A. Record 3 mins of yourself talking spontaneously about any topic
B. Send it to your “secretary” who transcribes text & highlights
mistakes plus one trigger per sentence
C. Analyze mistakes (with tutor’s help).
D. Use triggers to repeat the exact same sentence
E. Record yourself again and get final check up.
9. Translate
A. Listen to a sentence in German. Do not read.
B. Translate loudly into English.
C. Record yourself and listen to your work afterwards.
10 BASIC CYCLE
Basic Cycle
1. Learn vocabulary
2. Read text
3. Write what you hear
4. Study grammar
5. Preach grammar & structures
6. Listen
Advanced Cycle
1. Write text
2. Speak to yourself
3. Translate what you hear
→ download the pdf
Every step should last between 20 – 30 minutes. Take breaks frequently. It is in the
breaks that your brain processes what you have just learned. Theoretically, you can
study up to 9 – 12 hours per day but even 30 minutes daily will yield tangible results.
Let’s get started.

11 STEP 1 LEARN VOCABULARY → 1. CONTEXT & CHUNKS
Step 1
Learn Vocabulary →
1. Context & Chunks
There is no way around learning vocabulary and it’s one of the most challenging
tasks when learning any language, but does this complaint seem familiar to you?:
»I understand every word of that sentence, but can’t put them together so that they
make sense.« This is a typical experience for those who learn isolated vocabulary.
The best way to learn new words is to learn them in the context of a text, which is
why I combine this step with the next one called Reading.
→ Chunks that are 2–4 words long will not only help you memorise words better, but
also retrieve them faster. There is no benefit in knowing thousands of words when one
can’t retrieve them when needed. Here is one example to illustrate the power of context:
I usually use a
1
literal, word-by-
word translation to
the German word Bank (f*) ❶ is a so-called homograph. It could mean either bench illustrate the German
sentence structure. That
or bank (i.e. the institution dealing with money) or even river bank or reef. While you might sound strange to
you, but it is exactly
might eventually have to learn several meanings of Bank you don’t have to do so at what you will have to
deal with when learning
once. If you read the two sentences: German, which most
likely has a different
sentence structure than
your native language.
Er geht in den Park und setzt sich auf eine Bank.
He goes into the park and sits himself onto a bench. ❷ 2
You will come
across (m), (n), (f),
(pl) quite often in this
book. Those refer to the
Hans arbeitet bei einer Bank. gender of nouns and to
the (pl)ural. The genders
Hans works at a bank in German are:
(m)asculine, (f)eminine,
(n)euter.
You would very easily be able to figure out which meaning of Bank you are dealing with,
even if you didn’t have any translation at hand: the words »Park« and »setzt sich« would pro-
vide sufficient context to figure out that Bank in this context means bench. You would also
have associated the new word with a little background story. Suitable chunks might be:
sich auf eine Bank setzen

bei einer Bank arbeiten
Or
Heidi setzt sich auf eine Bank.
Peter arbeitet bei einer Bank.
It might seem that you have to learn more words than with the classical wordlist
approach, but the additional information actually helps you recall it much more
easily and quickly when needed.
12 STEP 1 LEARN VOCABULARY → 1. CONTEXT & CHUNKS
→ 2. LEARN RELEVANT INFORMATION ONLY
→ 3. RECOMMENDED TOOLS
ein schweizer Bauer a Swiss farmer

hat einen Schatz gefunden (has) found a treasure
römische Münzen Roman coins
der 83-jährige the 83-year-old
das historische Geld the historical money
zwischen den Obstbäumen der Familie between the fruit trees of the family
im Dorf Ueken in the village of Ueken
zwischen Basel und Zurich between Basel and Zurich
2. Learn Relevant Information Only
The more relevant something is, the better we learn it.

Learning just any word that you come across is not really efficient. My approach of
organising your learning with help of a learning cycle makes the vocabulary you learn
100% relevant because you will use all of it already in the other steps of the cycle.
While there are about → a thousand words that everyone should know, you can
basically learn the vocabulary you need right from the beginning. If you are an engi-
neer, a pilot, a waiter, an artist, etc., there is no law against studying words that are
relevant for your field of interest from day one.
Do not use paper flash cards for vocabulary learning. They do not provide sufficient
context, are usually used wrongly, and are a colossal waste of your precious lifetime.
3. Recommended tools
I do not recommend using any external vocabulary trainers, but, if you can’t help
yourself, you’ll find two of the most popular apps below. Before deciding, hear why
I don’t like them:
Vocabulary trainers usually train vocabulary in a very mechanical and isolated way.
While the idea to use technology to time your repetitions of the words you have
not yet fully learned is appealing, you’d still be learning isolated words. I have also
experimented with creating courses in Memrise (see below) that contained chunks
instead of individual words, but it turned out that my clients, quite soon after having
started to learn German, invested way too much time in their vocabulary training
with these apps. And it stressed them out a lot. It doesn’t make sense to invest up
to 60 minutes in trying to memorise words out of context.
13 STEP 1 LEARN VOCABULARY → 3. RECOMMENDED TOOLS
→ 4. MEMRISE
→ 5. ALTERNATIVES TO MEMRISE
The approach I describe in this book is far more natural and satisfying. Give it try for
two weeks and you’ll see for yourself that your vocabulary is growing and that you
don’t feel like you have to hammer any words into your brain.
If you don’t yet trust my experience with over 250 individual learners over the last
four years, simply try those apps below and remember my words when you realise
that you have just spent an hour mostly reviewing vocabulary.
4. Memrise
→ Memrise is a vocabulary training app free of charge. Unfortunately, most courses

created on memrise lack an understanding of learning psychology. The problem is
that almost all of them offer you a random set of isolated words.
The app is self-explanatory, but contains a few hidden features that you should look
out for. Create an account and then try to figure out the following points to become
familiar with all its lovely features:
1. How do you ignore a word that you already know by heart

(desktop version only)?
2. How do you download a course (mobile only)?
3. How do you change the amount of vocabulary that is being learned or reviewed?
(check the settings on the desktop version)
mems are word
4. How do you create your own mem ❸ (desktop only)? 3
associations. I
explain this technique in
5. How do you enter the German umlauts (ä / ö / ü), and the ß? detail in my German
grammar course but
Memrise also guides you
through the men-creati-
You can easily create your own vocabulary course on memrise. Make sure to on process.
→ check out this video of mine which will show you how to create your own vocab-
ulary course quickly for any German text you want to work with.
The Premium version of memrise adds a few more functions that I have not found
to be worth the money. Memrise itself has certainly earned your support, so you
might opt in for the Premium package nevertheless, simply to support their hard
work.
5. Alternatives to Memrise
→ The app Anki might be an alternative to memrise. Give them a try, but be aware
that the creation of your own vocabulary courses with Anki might not be as quick as
with memrise. I also found ANKI to be far too detailed for the average user. ANKI’s
great for foreign scripts like Chinese or Korean, but it costs 24,99€ for the iOS ver-
sion while the Android version is free of charge.
14 STEP 1 LEARN VOCABULARY → 6. USE AN ONLINE DICTIONARY
→ 7. ANALYTICAL READING FOR GERMAN LEARNERS
→ 8. READLANG
6. Use an Online Dictionary
If the material you use is well crafted you often won’t really need a dictionary in
the beginning. Of course, as soon as you progress with your German, you will come
across words in the outside world and want to look them up.
Here are four dictionaries that I use regularly:
google translate
dict.cc
leo.org
linguee.com
They are also available for most smartphones and at times even enable you to down-
load the dictionary for offline use.
7. Analytical Reading for German Learners
I have created a reading course for German learners. → “Learn to Read German”
comes with audio in two speeds. It also contains 54 videos in which I analyse each
sentence of the book. This is the closest you will ever get to passive learning, as you
will learn a lot about the German language if you follow my analysis and explanations
attentively.
8. Readlang
There is one alternative vocabulary app which I found quite helpful: → Readlang.
Readying automatically creates relevant vocabulary courses and even allows you to
Copyright Warning
upload your own German texts ❹. But you can also read news sites with the brows- 4
Uploaded texts will
be visible for all users of
er add-on which is pretty neat. Readlang and therefore
there might be a
copyright infringement.
Using illegally uploaded
texts is also not legal, but
might not have legal
9. Don’t use Books from your German Classes ramifications. A good rule
of thumb when it comes
to copyright is that, if you
had to pay for the
Books that are used in group courses at language schools are not suitable for self- information elsewhere, it
is rather unlikely that
study (nor are they of much use in a group). Readlang or its users
have the permission to
They are made for hundreds of thousands of students and usually are so generic offer it for free.
and politically correct that you want to gouge your eyes out. They also are usually
monolingual, meaning that they are written in German only. So you will not really
understand what is written there without the massive help of your dictionary.
15 STEP 1 LEARN VOCABULARY → 9. DON’T USE BOOKS FROM YOUR GERMAN CLASSES
→ 10. DON’T READ THE NEWS & STAY AWAY FROM CHILDREN’S BOOKS
→ 11. YOUR PERSONAL BLACKLIST
The worst is that such books are not authentic and therefore they have some weird
feel to them. They also never really come with instructions on how to study German
on your own. You usually have to rely on a tutor and a group to make at least some
use of them. If your book doesn’t include an answer key, throw it away as you will
always depend on your teacher to provide you with the correct answer and you
can’t even do your homework with them efficiently.
10. Don’t read the news & stay away from Children’s Books
Besides being mostly depressing these days, news-German is quite different from
spoken German. Most vocabulary in new-articles is irrelevant to daily or even pro-
fessional life. Unless you want to become a journalist, you are wasting precious time
and make your German learning life much harder than necessary.
Instead, read short stories that contain a lot of dialog, e.g., criminal stories of Sher-
lock Holmes or works by Agatha Christie, who have been translated into German, or
read love-stories if you are into that.
There are two kinds of children’s books: those written for very young children and
those which are far too difficult for any language learner below B2 level.
The simple ones are an insult to most adults’ intellects and will provide you only with
very little input. Should you have to purchase these books, you might end up paying
a fortune to be exposed to a reasonable amount of useful vocabulary. The grammar
will also be rather simple and not get you far.
The good children’s books are very lovely. I can at the very least happily recommend
»Die Kleine Hexe«, »Krabat« and actually anything by Ottfried Preußler, Michael Ende,
Astrid Lindgren, and Erich Kästner. But the words and grammatical structures used
in these books are far beyond anything that a beginning German learner should be
exposed to.
They use a lot of Präteritum (that’s something similar to the Simple Past in English)
which you would never really use in spoken German language. Starting with such
books could rather harm your motivation because it would likely bore or frustrate
you quickly, forcing you to look up many words in your dictionary. Postpone reading
such books until you have finished B2 level.
11. Your Personal Blacklist
You will come across words that simply won’t stick in your memory, no matter how
often you seem to look them up in your dictionary. For these words I recommend
that you create blacklist.
16 STEP 1 LEARN VOCABULARY → 11. YOUR PERSONAL BLACKLIST
→ 12. A POWERFUL MNEMONIC TOOL
On that blacklist, write these difficult words, ideally in a useful chunk or phrase and
maybe with a quick note citing the text you came across it (TEXT TITLE, PAGE).
Once your blacklist has a few entries, you may choose to apply the → key-word
technique (see also next chapter Mnemonic Tools ↗).
Simply sit down somewhere uncomfortable and tell yourself that you won’t get up
until you have mastered at least 10 of the nasty words on that list.
You can also quickly go through the list every night before falling asleep. Always try
to remember the text where you first discovered blacklisted words in. Your brain will
continue to work on this information while you are sound asleep.
12. A Powerful Mnemonic Tool
Vocabulary is very abstract information. Mnemonic tools are the perfect tool for
this kind of task. There is a very powerful, but also very dangerous memory tech-
nique called the → key-word technique that you should use only for words on your
blacklist. All other vocabulary you should learn with the help of the learning cycle. ↗
The key-word technique is “dangerous” in the sense that it encourages the learning
Be careful
of isolated words which leads to a less “natural” ❺ language acquisition. You would 5
whenever
someone uses the term
be able to memorize many words with the help of this Technique, but you will en- “natural” with language
learning. Usually what
counter problems trying to retrieve them quickly. they mean is that you
are not supposed to use
your mother tongue
when learning a new
Ideally, you use the key-word technique only for words that you have difficulties language. That idea was
debunked by scientists
remembering or whenever an association comes quickly. For a more detailed ex- long ago. For further
information, read
planation of this tool with exercises, see above the video and my → A1-B1 German → Wolfgang Butzkamm.
Grammar Course.
The app Memrise encourages users to create so-called mems. To create mems, you
have to apply the key-word technique.
17 STEP 2 READ TEXTS → 1. HOW TO READ IN GERMAN
Step 2
Read Texts →
Reading is the most efficient way to get to know a new language and to learn vo-
cabulary.
You can take all the time you need to work through your text. It is easy to recognise
similarities to your mother tongue (if any) and to discover recurring patterns.
1. How to read in German
1. Quickly browse through the text and highlight any word that you don’t under-
stand quickly. Do not read for understanding. Consider this to be a purely tech-
nical task. Use a bright color to visualise your knowledge (or lack thereof) and
do not use either a pencil or a ballpoint pen. The example below illustrates the
difference.
2. Stop reading once you have highlighted approximately 9 – 12 words. Because
your short-term memory can deal with only a limited amount of information at a
given time, the fewer words you highlight and master at a time, the better.
Simone sagt zu Thorsten, dass sie über sein Angebot nachdenkt. Simone says to Thorsten, that she about his offer reflects. First
Zuerst muss sie ins Archiv, alte Artikel mit dem aktuellen Fall verglei- must she in(to)-the archive, old articles with the current case com-
chen. Vielleicht hat sie Glück und findet relevante Informationen, die pare. Maybe has she luck and finds relevant informations, that the
den aktuellen Fall betreffen. Sie setzt sich an einen Tisch mit Compu- current case concern. She sits herself at a table with computer - until
ter – bis zum Jahr 1995 sind alle Artikel digitalisiert. Nach und nach to-the year 1995 are all articles digitalized. Step-by-step enters she
gibt sie die unterschiedlichen Namen der Personen ein, die etwas mit the different names of-the persons, that something with the case to
dem Fall zu tun haben: Blumfeld, Schmalbach und Steinbrech, so hieß do have: Blumfeld, Schmalbach and Steinbrech, like-this was-called the
die alte Frau – nichts, außer einem Bericht über ein städtisches Gar- old woman - nothing, except a report about an urban gardenproject, at
tenprojekt, an dem Klaus Blumfeld als Gärtner mitgearbeitet hat. Da- which Klaus Blumfeld as gardener cooperated has. After-that tries she
nach versucht sie es mit dem Namen der Straße, in der die Villa steht it with the name of-the street, in which the villa stands - also nothing.
– auch nichts. „Verdammt!“, grummelt Simone. Die älteren Jahrgänge „Damn!“, grumbles Simone. The older years are only on microfilm ar-
sind nur auf Microfilm archiviert. Jetzt muss sie Schritt für Schritt je- chived. Now must she stepy for step every regional part look-through.
den Regional-Teil durchsehen. After a-few hours looks she on(to) the clock: ten past eight. It is
Nach einigen Stunden schaut sie auf die Uhr: Zehn nach Acht. Es already late. Simone has-difficulties herself to concentrate. She has
ist schon spät. Simone fällt es inzwischen schwer, sich zu konzentrie- nothing found … For today wants she the work finish. Just as she the
ren. Sie hat nichts gefunden ... Für heute will sie die Arbeit beenden. microfilm-machine turn-off wants, falls her gaze upon the last opened
Gerade als sie das Microfilm-Gerät ausschalten will, fällt ihr Blick auf page: An article about a defect at a chemical factory with a big picture.
die letzte geöffnete Seite: Ein Artikel über einen Defekt bei einem „That face know I doch …“, mumbles Simone.
Chemie-Werk mit einem großen Foto. „Das Gesicht kenne ich doch...“,
murmelt Simone.
1 1
18 STEP 2 READ TEXTS → 1. HOW TO READ IN GERMAN
Do not look up words in this step. It would break your workflow and would make
your reading a far more frustrating experience than necessary.
Deutsch Englisch Sample
Angebot offer Ich mache Dir ein Angebot.
aktuellen current Ich lese die aktuellen Nachrichten.
findet relevante finds relevant Er findet immer relevante Informationen.
Fall case
unterschiedlichen different
städtisches urban
Verdammt! Damn!
Jahrgänge years
Regional-Teil regional part
4. Make a list of all highlighted words.→ 1 Enter or copy your list of new words into 1 You can create that list
in a vocabulary
→ translate.google.com. Google will then quickly translate all words into your na- notebook or in an Excel
spreadsheet. The advantage
tive language and provide you with the necessary genders. Copy the translations of the notebook would be
that you could refer to it
and genders into your vocabulary notebook. Always instantly learn the gender of easily while reading your
text.
nouns as you come across them. It takes only two minutes, but will make a huge
difference when it comes to the quality of your German. If you are looking for a
lovely technique on how to learn the German genders, → watch this video, or get
my app (coming March 2017) that will help you to learn the gender of 2,000 Ger-
man nouns quickly.
5. Read the text for understanding. Never aim at 100% understanding. 50% might
be enough if you are a beginner. As you continue to work with my cycle, you’ll get
Please Do not write any
more and more familiar with the text. → 2 2
translation into the text
itself. It would retard your
learning significantly. Your
mind’s eye would always
6. Read the text again, but this time listen to the audio that came with your text bypass the German word and
use the English one.
while you read along with the text. You can refer to your vocabulary list when you
need it. Pause the audio as often as you like to give your brain a chance to process
the new information. Repeat this step once or twice as you like.
7. Review old texts regularly, e.g., at the weekends. You will notice a significant pro-
gress after just one week.
19 STEP 2 READ TEXTS → 2. RECOMMENDED TOOLS
→ 3. THE IDEA BEHIND THIS STEP
2. Recommended Tools
Get Texts with Audio

The best source for words are texts with audio recordings. If you are a German
learner, take a look at my course → “Learn to Read German Quickly”, which will
provide you with an interesting detective story with audio recordings in two speeds
(slow and normal), a challenging exercise book, and a 54 videos in which I analyse
every line of that book in very comprehensible English. It will help you read German
texts of any kind.
There are so-called easy readers for German out there which make it easier for you
to get into the German language. But, whatever you read, make sure it comes with
audio as otherwise you’d be wasting a lot of potential.
3. The idea behind this step
Reading
Vocabulary is best learned and used in context. Books provide us with context.
Many situations in literature are predictably familiar and rely on our experience.
Books are patient, mobile, and can be used almost infinitely. Words can be under-
stood more easily due to the given context and their probable similarity to English.
The written word is also a visual aid that should not be underestimated. Very often,
when I try to remember a word, I imagine how it is spelled/written and I have met
many others who do this.
Listening while Reading

Whenever we read, we pronounce those words in our minds.
Speed readers learn how to deactivate this inner pronunciation, but learning Ger-
man is not about becoming a speed reader.
You are very likely to pronounce all German words you read with a strong accent.
Listening while reading along will improve your inner pronunciation.

You will also be able to recognize words you hear in a conversation at one point and
you’ll be able to write them correctly. → 1 1 Not only will you
expose your brain to
proper German intonation
and pronunciation, but you
will also learn how to read
better. Listening while
reading along will improve
your inner and outer
accents.
20 STEP 3 A WRITE WHAT YOU HEAR → 1. HOW IT IS DONE
Step 3 A
Write what you Hear →
Dictation is a very powerful learning tool. It trains almost all skills you need for Ger-
man learning: listening, reading, writing, grammar, and making assumptions about
what is being said.
1 How it is done
Overwiev
1. Listen to 2–3 sentences. Pause at will. Write down what you have heard from
memory.
2. Do not rewind. Listen one more time and fill in gaps and correct mistakes in your
text.
3. Compare your writing with the original text and highlight all mistakes. Do not
correct anything here.
4. Analyse your mistakes. Try to understand what you have misunderstood.
5. Hide the original text and your first writing and write the same sentences again
the same way you did the first time (Repeat steps 01–04).
6. Write the text a third time after a break of several hours.
Detailed Process Description

1. If you are a beginner, pick 2–3 sentences from your text. If you are an advanced
learner, you can pick 7–9 sentences. Less is more.
2. A Listen to a sentence or part of a sentence, depending on how many words you
can keep in your short-term memory.
B Pause the audio, then write what you have just heard.
C Do not write while you are listening. If you do not understand a word, leave a
visible gap. Do not rewind the audio. That would disturb your work ow mas-
sively.
D You will listen to the audio one more time later.
3. At the end, listen to the same sentences once again. Fill in the gaps and correct
any mistakes in your text that you hear.
4. Put the original text in front of you and compare it to the words you have written
down.
5. Do not correct anything anymore. Simply highlight your mistakes, so that your
performance becomes instantly visible. No mistake is too tiny. Incorrect capital-
isation is especially a sacrilege for many Germans. There’s no need to be gentle
with yourself in a dictation, but there’s also no need to beat yourself up if your
first version looks devastating. You will improve significantly and rapidly if you
stick to my approach.
21 STEP 3 A WRITE WHAT YOU HEAR → 1. HOW IT IS DONE
→ 2. THE IDEAS BEHIND THIS STEP
6. Write down the number of mistakes for later reference and comparison between
all your writings.
7. Look at your mistakes to try to understand what went wrong. If a mistake is not
clear, put it into your grammar notebook to discuss it with your German tutor or
on a → German language learner’s forum. Move on quickly, even if you don’t get
an answer to your question right away.
8. Write the same sentences again immediately after step 7.
9. Repeat steps 1–8 and again write the number of your mistakes below your dicta-
tion. You will most likely have fewer mistakes than before.
At this point you can continue with Step 04 - grammar training ↗
10. After a few hours, write the same sentences again to sear it into your long-term
memory.
2. The ideas behind this step
You have already worked with the sentences of your dictation in the former steps of this
cycle, so some of the words you hear should sound familiar. If you do not understand
anything, use → The Quicktime Player 7 from Apple or the → VLC player which allows
you to slow down the speed of the audio. If this still doesn’t help, simply repeat the pre-
vious steps of this cycle. A dictation requires and trains several skills of yours at once:
Listening
You need to listen very attentively in order not to miss even a nuance of what is
being said. → 1 While in real life you won’t always have to listen to every detail, at 1 There will be sounds,
mainly word-endings,
times they might be important, e.g., it matters a lot whether someone says that you simply won’t be able
to hear, no matter how much
you try. After the age of 16,
most people lose the ability
Ich möchte einen heißen Tee. to distinguish sounds that do
not exist in their native
or language.
Ich möchte einen Eistee.
Writing
Many German learners complain about their weak writing or not quite as weak spell-
ing skills. After a few dictations, you will know how to spell many German words as
your brain will have noticed recurring spelling patterns, e.g., the letter combination
“sp” is usually pronounced “shp” as in “spielen”: to play → speak: shpeelen
22 STEP 3 A WRITE WHAT YOU HEAR → 2. THE IDEAS BEHIND THIS STEP
STEP 3 B ORAL DICTATION → 1. HOW IT IS DONE
→ 2. THE IDEAS BEHIND THIS STEP
Reading
What you write, you will automatically read. You will also listen to the audio again
after writing and read along your freshly written lines. Should you have any gaps in
your first draft, now is the time to fill them.
When reading along with the text while listening, you will “hear” missing words bet-
ter because you can sometimes predict them, thanks to their context.
Grammar
There are words, spellings, and endings that can’t be heard properly. You have got
to learn those by heart.
Your grammar skills will help you to “hear” whether the speaker said: “Ich habe den
Mann informiert.” or “Ich habe dem Mann informiert.” (the first sentence is correct,
the second one not).
Step 3 B
Oral Dictation →
The oral dictation trains your listening and pronunciation skills. It prepares you for
real conversations. In a real conversation, though, you won’t have to listen to every
single word as you do here. So, your training will be a bit harder than necessary. You
don’t mind, do you?
1. How it is done
This tool is very similar to the written dictation cited above.

1. Pick 2–3 sentences from your text that you’d like to understand better.
2. Listen to them one (part of a) sentence at a time.
3. Pause. Then repeat what you have heard.
4. Repeat the same (part of a) sentence once or twice before playing the next one.
Try to sound like the speaker. Copy his his pitch, his word and sentence rhythm.
5. Record yourself and (!) the original audio while you do the oral dictation.
6. Listen to your recording and compare your pronunciation with that of the native
speaker from the audio.
Without this step, this exercise is useless.
2. The ideas behind this step
Targeted listening requires a lot of concentration which needs quite a lot of training.
While in real life you will rarely have to listen to every word of your conversation
partners, the oral dictation will help you distinguish individual words and sentences
23 STEP 3 B ORAL DICTATION → 2. THE IDEAS BEHIND THIS STEP
STEP 4 LEARN SOME GRAMMAR → 1. HOW IT IS DONE
when you are listening to others. It will also sharpen your senses for (your) correct or
incorrect pronunciation. By repeating every sentence three times, you will not only
remember it better, but also get closer to sounding like a German.
Step 4
Learn Some Grammar →
At times you need to give your brain a little break. You don’t have to stop learning
German, but switching the topic to something quite different helps you stay moti-
vated and lets your brain process the information that you just learned.
My German grammar videos make a lovely “Pausenfüller”. They are between 5–10 min-
utes long and they are in English to make sure that you’ll understand everything clearly.
The videos come with an extensive handbook with intelligent exercises and an answer key.
If you would like to practice your German grammar even more, take a look at the
→ online exercises of the Schubert-Verlag.
1. How it is done
Watch a video or read a chapter of your grammar material and work through the
accompanying exercises of your grammar course.
When you check your answers, try to understand what went wrong in case you
made a mistake.
If you don’t understand why your answer is wrong, write the task down and ask your
conversation partner or tutor next time you see her.
Write it down by all means.

You will not remember it otherwise.
smarterGerman learners:
→ If you work with my video course, do not just watch the videos. That would be
a waste of time as you would only cheat yourself into believing you have learned
something when you haven’t.
Always test your understanding after watching or reading with the help of the exer-
cises that come with the videos.
If you need to learn something by heart, learn it by heart thoroughly before moving
on to a new topic, otherwise you will end up with a lot of confusing half-information
in your head.
24 STEP 4 LEARN SOME GRAMMAR → 1. HOW IT IS DONE
→ 2 USEFUL TOOLS
2. Useful tools
→ The smarterGerman grammar course

It explains all relevant German grammar in clear English and teaches you extremely
efficient memory techniques that will help you save a lot of time and stress in the
long run. Your German will also be more precise. I’ll talk more about grammar and its
importance later in this book.
The smarterGerman irregular verbs app

I have created an app (→ Android version and iOS version) that helps German
learners master the German irregular verbs. You can try it for free. The full version
costs around 2,99€. You could learn all important irregular German verbs in less
than 3 hours.
I don’t recommend apps like Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Busuu, or Babbel. They are
rather to be considered games which you may use to fill waiting times, but you
should not expect to make genuine progress with your German learning. If you are
interested in the particular reasons I have for this non-recommendation, please read
this article of mine.
Grammar is a lovely time-saving tool. It helps you make use of recurring patterns in
German. Instead of having to learn the plural of 3,000 German nouns, you can learn
just two simple patterns once and you’ll have covered 2,400 of them. It will take you
only one minute to learn the rule which you then can make use of for a lifetime.
There’s no need to learn fancy grammatical terms or to be afraid of them. You might not
have to deal with more than 10 new words and I am certain that you can manage those.
The grammar lesson will also distract you a bit from the reading text so that it can
sink in a while before listening to it again in Step 6. ↗
Just watching videos or reading through the explanations of your grammar book
won’t be enough. While you might understand certain aspects of the covered topic,
it is by reviewing the matter that you make it stick. You could watch or read any
explanation a hundred times and still might not be able to apply that information. I
strongly recommend that you work your way through a number of related exercises
and, of course, this cycle after you have learned a new piece of grammar.
25 STEP 5 PREACH → 1. HOW IT IS DONE (BASIC APPROACH)
Step 5
Preach
Basic Preaching →
Advanced Preaching →
I call this step “preaching” because you’ll repeat certain grammatical structures until
you and all those around you believe yourself. It is basically a solid pattern drill with
a gradual increase of difficulty.
1. How it is done (Basic Approach)

1. Choose nine items around you.
2. Translate them into German and write down their gender like this:
(m) for masculine
(n) for neuter
(f) for feminine
3. Learn the genders properly (!) before moving on.
4. Write the first nine preaching sentences down and let a German native check
your sentences for mistakes.
Write like this: Hund: Ich sehe einen (grauen) Hund (m).
5. Write them on Post-its or flash cards like this:
Front Hund ← no other information like gender or plural or anything
Back Ich sehe einen (kleinen) Hund
6. Stick that post-it wherever (!) you like. It doesn’t have to stick on a dog if it says “dog”.
7. Whenever you pass by a Post-it, stop for a few seconds, read the trigger (here:
Hund), and try to remember what you wrote on the back of that Post-it. Always
check your answer by looking at the back of the Post-it.
8. Say the answer out loud in the following way. This is very important as it pre-
pares you for speaking with people:
a) Ich sehe einen Hund.
b) Ich sehe einen kleinen Hund.
9. Just saying things out loud is not useful unless you record yourself. Record all
nine sentences at once.
10. Now listen to your recording and listen for mistakes. You may look at the back of
your Post-its to control whether what you have said was correct. Ideally, you’ll
have a German listening to your recordings every now and then to spot mistakes
that might have slipped your attention.
26 STEP 5 PREACH → 1. HOW IT IS DONE (BASIC APPROACH)
→ 2. ADVANCED APPROACH
→ 3. LIST OF POSSIBLE PREACHING PATTERNS IN GERMAN
11. Repeat these steps until you can say all sentences without mistake.
12. Once you remember all sentences well, pick new words and switch to the ad-
vanced approach for this pattern / topic.
13. A s soon as you feel confident with the grammar or pattern that you have drilled
so far, pick a new one.
2. Advanced Approach
For every pattern that you preach, you need to write down only the nine sentences
which you practice until mastery. After that, you can work with trigger lists (see
example below) and do not have to write down the answers anymore. Other than
that, follow all steps from the Basic Approach. Have your recordings checked by a
German if possible. If you don’t have a native German around, an advanced German
learner might do the job. She should have finished at least the B2 level.
tion tion
Dativ + Loca Dativ + Loca
(m) Ich sitze auf einem kleinen Stuhl Stuhl Stuhl

(n) Du sitzt auf meinem neuen Handy Handy
(f) Er sitzt auf seiner neuen Couch Couch
3. List of possible preaching patterns in German
Many topics of German grammar are also found in other languages which makes it
easier to compare German to your native language. Pay attention to the similarities
and differences between German and your native language.
1. Accusative - indefinite articles:

Ich sehe einen (kleinen) Hund (m). ← you can easily use: meinen or keinen
Ich sehe eine (kleine) Katze (f). or ask questions: Siehst du…?
Wo siehst Du
Ich sehe ein- (kleines) Tier (n). einen kleinen Hund?
2. Regular & Irregular Perfekt Past tense + Accusative:

Ich habe einen (kleinen) Hund gekauft. ← regular past
Hast du einen (kleinen) Hund gesehen? ← irregular past
Er hat keinen kleinen Hund gesehen.
27 STEP 5 PREACH → 3. LIST OF POSSIBLE PREACHING PATTERNS IN GERMAN
3. Regular & Irregular Perfekt Past tense + Accusative + definite articles

Ich habe den (kleinen) Hund gekauft.
Hast du die (kleine) Katze gesehen?
Er hat das kleine Tier gesehen.
4. Perfekt Past with “sein”

Ich bin nach Holland gefahren.
5. Dative + Locations
Ich sitze auf einem (bequemen) Stuhl (m).
Du sitzt auf meinem (neuen) Handy(n).
Er sitzt auf seiner (neuen) Couch (f).
6. Dative + Locations + Perfekt Past ← always combine patterns carefully.

Ich habe auf einem (bequemen) Stuhl (m) gesessen.
Du hast auf meinem (neuen) Handy (n) gesessen.
Er hat auf seiner (neuen) Couch (f) gesessen.
Other Location-verbs are:

stehen → gestanden
hängen → gehangen
liegen → gelegen
stecken → gesteckt
7. Dative + Time
Nach einem Monat (m) fahre ich wieder nach Hause.
In einer Woche (f) fahre ich wieder nach Paris.
Seit einer Stunde (f) lese ich ein (gutes) Buch.
An einem schönen Tag gehe ich spazieren.
8. Dative + Time + Perfekt Past

Nach einem Monat (m) bin ich zurück gekommen.
Vor einem Jahr (n) bin ich in Paris gewesen.
An nur einem Tag habe ich 2 Kilo abgenommen.
9. Plural indefinite
Ich besitze viele (kleine) Tische (m)
Hat dein Adventskalender auch viele (kleine) Türen?
Nein, er hat nur wenige (kleine Türen)
Hast du viele (kleine) Türen geöffnet? ← add Perfekt past
28 STEP 5 PREACH → 3. LIST OF POSSIBLE PREACHING PATTERNS IN GERMAN
10. Plural definite

Ich liebe die (kleinen) Türen (m) von meinem Adventskalender.
Hast du auch die (kleinen) Türen (f) geöffnet?
Er hat nicht alle (kleinen) Türen geöffnet.
Sie hat keine kleinen) Türen geöffnet.
11. Konjunktiv II BASIC

Ich würde gern nach Hause gehen.
Würdest Du gerne was essen?
Wo würdest Du gerne hinfahren?
12. Konjunktiv II HABEN + SEIN

Ich hätte gern einen (schwarzen) Kaffee.
Wärst du gern eine (starke) Frau?
Ich wäre nicht gern an deiner Stelle.
13. Dependent clauses ← you might want to preach each

subordination on its own
Weil ich keine Lust habe.
Ich weiß, dass du einen kleinen Hund hast.
Ich weiß nicht, ob er einen kleinen Hund möchte.
Damit ich dich besser fressen kann.
14. Dependent clauses + Perfekt Past

Weil ich keine Lust gehabt habe.
Ich weiß, dass du einen kleinen Hund gekauft hast.
Weißt du, ob er einen kleinen Hund bekommen hat?
15. Passive
Ich werde (gerade) angerufen.
Wirst du (manchmal) angesprochen?
Dein Auto wird (gerade) abgeschleppt.
16. Passive Präteritum (you can skip the Passive Perfekt until C1)
Ich wurde gestern angerufen.
Wurdest Du schon Mal interviewt?
Wer wurde hier ermordet?
17. Relative Clauses + Nominative

Der Mann, der (m) in meinem Haus wohnt, … ← keep it short
Das Kind, das (n) in meinem Haus wohnt, … for now
Die Frau, die (f) in meinem Haus wohnt, ….
Die Menschen, die (pl) in meinem Haus wohnen, …
29 STEP 5 PREACH 3. LIST OF POSSIBLE PREACHING PATTERNS IN GERMAN
→
→ 4. RECOMMENDED TOOLS
18. Relative Clauses + Nominative Advanced

Kennst du den Mann, der (m) in meinem Haus wohnt, … ← keep it short
Kennst du das Kind , das (n) in meinem Haus wohnt, … for now
Kennst du die Frau, die (f) in meinem Haus wohnt, ….
Kennst du die Menschen, die (pl) in meinem Haus wohnen, …
19. Relative Clauses + Accusative

Das ist der Mann, den (m) ich liebe.
Das ist die Frau, die (f) ich liebe.
Das ist das Auto, das (n) ich fahre.
Das sind die Nachbarn, die (m) ich gern hab.
Slowly add the Perfekt past to it, then the Konjunktiv II.
20. Relative Clauses + Dative

Das ist der Mann, dem (m) ich manchmal helfe.
Das ist das Auto, dem (n) ich folge.
Das ist die Frau, der (f) ich vertraue.
Das sind die Nachbarn, denen (pl) ich nie guten Tag sage.
21. Relative Clauses + Dative + preposition

Das ist der Mann, mit dem (m) ich zusammen lebe.
Das ist das Auto, mit dem (n) ich fahre.
Das ist die Frau, mit der (f) ich zusammen lebe.
Das sind die Nachbarn, mit denen (pl) ich Urlaub mache.
4. Recommended tools
Get some Post-its or Flash Cards

Start with 100 pieces. That should do the job for most of your German learning ca-
reer. Use them only in the way that I described above for the Preaching Technique.
If you use them to write vocabulary or grammatical information on them and then
stick them to the respective items in your flat, you are wasting your time and money.
See my chapter about how not to use flash cards or Post-its.
You will need a voice recorder. If you own a smartphone you will certainly have an
app that allows you to record your voice. You could also record yourself.
30 STEP 5 PREACH 4. RECOMMENDED TOOLS
→
STEP 6 LISTEN
Messengers
Use WhatsApp or any other messaging service to send your recordings to your Ger-
man tutor so that she can listen to your recordings and provide you with feedback.
Keep those recordings under two minutes. Then the listening will be more enjoyable
for you and for your tutor.
The words on the front of each Post-it serve as triggers for your memory. With their
help, you should be able to remember the sentence on the back. The writing on the
Post-it is already part of learning the grammar. On the front of the Post-it, there
must never be anything other than a single word or, if the preaching is a bit more
complex, two words in their simplest, unaltered form:
• no gender (not: das Haus or Hause m but: Haus)

• no plural (not: Autos but: Auto)
• no conjugation (not: er kommt but: kommen)
The reason behind this minimalism is simple: reading is good to take in informa-
tion, but it is highly inefficient when it comes to learning something. You need to
strengthen what you have learned and, at the same time, train a recall mechanism.
Please note that I am
Reading doesn’t require you to recall much, if anything at all ❶ and, therefore, does 1
not saying one should
not read beautiful literature.
not count as learning when used as the only learning activity. My trigger-approach I come from the standpoint of
efficient language learning.
is a bit more difficult in the beginning, but many times more rewarding in the long
run on all levels. Try it for a week and you will understand and feel the benefit of
this beautiful technique.
Step 6
Listen →
Most German learners would like to have a conversation in German at one point, but
real life rarely provides us with ideal conditions for conversations.
We have to be able to understand others in a loud environment, via the phone, or
Skype which often is far from optimal. To be able to understand spoken German,
you must learn how to recognise relevant key words. In the beginning, everything
sounds just like one big blur.
This step will help you fine-tune your listening skills. The better you understand
what others are saying, the more secure you will feel with them and the greater the
beneficial effect on your speaking skill.
31 STEP 6 LISTEN → 1. ACTIVE LISTENING
→ 2. HOW IT IS DONE
→ 4. PASSIVE LISTENING
There are two kinds of listening: Active and passive listening.
1. Active Listening →
2. How it is done
Simply listen to the audio of the text that you have been working on in the steps before.
Pause frequently to let sink in what you have heard. The second time you listen to
the audio, try to pause less frequently. Feel free to listen several times and to
look up an occasional word in your vocabulary notebook while listening, just in
case you need it.
Listen until you feel you understand most of it when playing the audio in one piece.
Do not overdo it though. Always remain aware of your exhaustion and frustration
levels. I will talk about this awareness in a later chapter.

To be able to recognise individual words, you must at first “cognise“ them, know
them. This step is what you have been preparing for with the help of the steps be-
fore. By the time you have reached this step, you should be familiar with the mean-
ing and the sounds of most words that you are listening to. But take things easy. Do
not expect to be perfect too soon. Understanding words that you don’t know yet
remains a challenge and it will certainly take you a few months until you can com-
fortably follow a conversation among Germans. → 1 1 It is crucial to pause
after a certain amount
of input as your brain should
have the opportunity to
digest what it takes in. If you
don’t pause, new
4. Passive Listening → information might disturb
your memory trying to save
Unless you are a heart surgeon, you will find plenty of occasions on which you are just learned information and
saving old information might
able to listen to some native German for a few minutes. Those moments are pre- prevent new information
from sinking in.
cious. Here is how to make best use of them:
5. How it is done
Whenever you are busy doing your chores or any activity that doesn’t require
your full attention, just listen to some German audio. Listen to it at a low volume,
so that you can just recognise that you are listening to a German piece. Ideally,
you listen to it 24/7, but, of course, it should not distract you nor annoy you. So,
find your ideal balance between exposing your brain to the German language and
staying sane.
I strongly recommend audio plays like the → Radio Tatort as they create a a natural
atmosphere as if you were listening in to the conversation of two Germans.
If you pick up a word or phrase from what you hear, that’s fine and a good sign, but
32 STEP 6 LISTEN → 5. HOW IT IS DONE
→ 7. WHAT TO LISTEN TO
→ 8. THE ADVANCED LEARNING CYCLE
do not consciously try to understand anything of it. For conscious learning, you
have the active listening step.

Sometimes people like or hate the sound of German.
The reason for that is psychological. To put it in simple words: they are not used to
it and what they don’t know makes them uncomfortable. Because you have chosen
to learn German, you most likely like the sound of it already. But already, but it will
still be hard to distinguish all these new words from each other in the beginning
as you are simply not used to German sounds yet. You need more exposure. But,
before you book a flight to Germany, behold. You can get used to the sound of
German with passive listening. And it doesn’t require your attention at all. → 2 2 If you have a choice,
you shouldn‘t come to
Germany before you have
mastered B1 level. Total
immersion can be quite
overwhelming for a
7. What To Listen To beginning German learner
and therefore seriously
I do not recommend listening to the news in German or to audio books that are read harm your motivation. But
more about that later.
by a single person. The way news is spoken is rather unnatural and won’t help you
follow a conversation with / among native Germans at all. Their melody and intona-
tion are very different. Also, the vocabulary is rather specific. If you are interested
in the German view on things that are happening in this world, simply use Deutsche
Welle’s German news in English.
Books read by a single person might do the job if that person is doing an outstanding
job like the works of → Harry Rowohlt (Pu der Bär), → Dirk Bach (Die 13½ Leben des
Käpt’n Blaubär) or → Mark Uwe Kling (Die Känguru Chroniken).
Movies will not do the job here as they are too cumbersome to work with and pro-
vide too much help in the form of visuals. In a conversation, all you see will be your
conversation partner’s facial expressions and that’s it. Audio plays prepare you much
better for such situations.
The Advanced Learning Cycle

You will need to have acquired some vocabulary and gone through some of the
Basic Cycle’s steps a few times to be able to benefit from the following techniques.
Usually the moment that a dictation becomes a lot easier is a good indicator for you
to reduce the number of dictations to once a week and to integrate Step 07 - Free-
style writing into your learning cycle.
33 STEP 7 WRITE FREESTYLE → 1 . HOW IT IS DONE
Step 7
Write Freestyle →
1 How it is done
A very powerful way to apply and review what you have learned is by writing texts.
But writing without an efficient feedback mechanism is a waste of time and might
result in your writing complete gibberish. Here is how you make writing one of your
most powerful learning and review tools. You will need a bit of external help, but
that might not cost you much if anything at all.
QUICK INSTRUCTION
1. Find a topic.
2. Write a draft in English
3. Limit your initial writing to 40 words. Less is more. → 1 1 In an exam, you are
required to write texts
4. Write one sentence per line in your draft AND in the final German text. of 40 and 80 words length
(Goethe B1) or 120–150
words (TELC B1). For B2
you will have to write
Write the number of words to the left of each sentence. 200–240 words.
Leave two lines distance between each sentence for more control over the text and
corrections (See example below).
07 Ich habe gestern einen tollen Film gesehen.
10 Er hieß Titanic.
16 Es ging um ein großes Schiff.
5. Simplify your English draft.

6. Translate your draft into German without a dictionary. If you can’t find the fitting
German word simply write the English one instead. Highlight the English word(s)
so that you can easily find it/them later when you are allowed to look it up.
7. Once you are done with your translation, either encircle the remaining English
words or look them up in a dictionary. Make sure to add them to your blacklist.
8. Take a little break before continuing with the correction.
9. Welcome back. Go through your text two more times.
The first time, check for verb positions and verb endings.
The second time, check all datives and accusatives especially after prepositions
(vor, hinter, über, mit etc.) and personal pronouns (mich, mir etc.)
34 STEP 7 WRITE FREESTYLE 1. HOW IT IS DONE
→
→ 2. EXTENDED INSTRUCTION
10. Congratulations. You have written your first German freestyle text.
11. Now you need a German to check your writing. If you write your texts in Google
docs, you can invite Germans to comment on them. Make sure to ask them to
explain their corrections as fully as possible. Watch → this video and explain or
share it with them how they should correct your mistakes.
12. Analyse your mistakes as usual. If you don’t understand what went wrong, ask
your tutor.
2. Extended Instruction
1. First of all you need a topic. In textbooks and in German-language exams, you
always have to write responses to birthday invitations or about what to visit
when in your home town. In real life, I fear no one ever writes such letters
anymore. So, unless you are preparing for a Goethe or TELC exam, why don’t
you write about something that actually interests you? This way, you will not
only be more motivated to do your daily portion of German, but will also learn
faster, as we tend to remember things better that are relevant to us. If you
need help finding an interesting topic, search the internet for “questions to
If you are preparing
write about”. → 1 1
straight for an exam,
check out the LINKS IN THE
APPENDICES.
They will give you access to
2. Write a quick draft in English or in your native language to get the thinking out of all free German mock exams
for each level. But also, if you
the way. DO NOT SKIP this step, even if you are an advanced learner. It shouldn’t are not preparing for any
exam, I recommend that you
take you longer than 3–5 minutes anyhow. Your aim is not to write a novel in work according to the
following instructions.
German, so please keep things simple.
3. Write one sentence per line in your draft and write the number of words to the
left of each sentence. This way, you have control over the time and length of
your letter.
Write one line, then leave two empty lines below that before you write anoth-
er line. This way, you will a) gain a better overview over each sentence and b)
leave sufficient space for corrections.
07 Ich habe gestern einen tollen Film gesehen.
10 Er hieß Titanic.
16 Es ging um ein großes Schiff.

35 STEP 7 WRITE FREESTYLE → 2. EXTENDED INSTRUCTION
4. Before you write a single German word, you need to go through your draft again
and simplify it. Write as if you were writing to an 8–10 year old. It doesn’t have to
be a childish letter. Keep sentences short. At most, write a combination of two
sentences like: I won’t go to the restaurant with you (first sentence ends here)
because I am not hungry. (second sentence ends here). ❷ 2
If you don’t know what
a sentence is, please
ask any teacher you can get
hold of. A sentence is the
A few tips: same in English or Arabic as
in German. Sometimes,
avoid using -ing and constructions with “to” as they are extremely complicated to put into Germans use two sentences
where English speakers need
good and mistake-free German. So instead of writing: just one, but the principle is
still the same.
“I’d appreciate if you could consider doing your drilling elsewhere.” write:
“Can / Could you please drill elsewhere?”
“Ich würde es dir hoch anrechnen, wenn du in Betracht ziehen könntest, wo

anders zu bohren.“ versus “Kannst / Könntest du woanders bohren?”
For more examples on how to simplify texts. ↗
5. Now you can begin to translate your draft into German. Do not change any
content. Keep things simple:

A Sentence order is always: I love you or in grammar terms: Subject (Who?) Pred-
icate (is doing) Direct Object (what?).
B Maximum length should be no more than two sentences: One main clause
(Ich denke,) one dependent clause (also bin ich). No need to use too many
dependent clauses though.
C Use full stops and avoid commas. Use commas only after: Sehr geehrte Damen
und Herren, / Hallo Lisa, and before (!) subordinates (I call them pushers) like
weil, dass, ob, wenn, damit, and a few others. This rule suffices until you have
finished B2 level and most likely even beyond that level.
6. Set a time limit. 30 minutes for practice is ideal. In exams you will have either
30 minutes for a text of 120 – 150 words or 60 minutes for three texts of 80-
40–80 words. In B2 you will have to write texts between 180 – 240 words within
roughly one hour.
7. Write quickly and don’t get hooked on the grammar. You will have sufficient time
to look out for mistakes afterwards.
8. Once you are done, stretch half a minute, walk around to try to empty your mind
of the text you have worked on. Think of your happy place, then go through your
text again twice to look out for only one specific kind of mistake at a time.
36 STEP 7 WRITE FREESTYLE → 2. EXTENDED INSTRUCTION
If you look out for just any kind of mistake, you will waste time on less important
mistakes and overlook important ones which might cost you the exam.
A. The first time, check whether all verbs are on their correct position (I, II, or
end) and whether they have the correct ending (ich habE and not: ich haST).
B. The second time check your accusative and dative objects and prepositions.
Assume that everything is accusative unless you find a clear signal or reason
as to why you should use the dative instead. If you are not sure what to use,
always use accusative.
C. If you have time for one more check, check your adjective endings / capitali-
sation, depending on what you struggle with most.
9. Finally, have your text checked by a native speaker. He should not correct an-
ything, but only highlight your mistakes. And also, not just highlight the precise
mistake, but rather the whole word, so that you are the one who finds the pre-
cise mistake and who has to think about how to fix it. You can find those exam-
ples here → »Hello Talk« and → »Lang-8«.
Writing seems to intimidate many German learners, but, with the right approach, it
is actually one of the easiest skills to acquire.
Writing gives you the chance to apply the grammar and vocabulary you learned
in the previous steps of your learning cycle. It also allows you to think about the
German sentence structure and to compare it with your native language. There is
always a very limited range of texts that we have to write in daily life, which means
that you will very soon be able to write what you have to write in German. To give
you an example, here is a list of letters that I write daily or weekly:
• Invoices (templates) with introductory letter

• Offers (templates that need only to be adapted to the individual case)
• Tech support due to corrupted accounts (template)
• Invitations to Skype calls (template)
• Suggestions for appointments
• Request for (more) information
• Short messages to my friends via mobile phone
These types of texts cover over 90% of my needs. Beyond that, I write books like
this one or blog posts which then are proofread by a native speaker as they are ev-
The texts that you will
ergreen content. What I’m saying is that, even after 25 years of constant training in 1
write in German are
most likely of a simple and
the English language, I still have important texts proofread as it saves me a lot of recurring nature. You can
work a lot with templates as
time. → 1 well.
37 STEP 7 WRITE FREESTYLE → 4. HOW TO SIMPLIFY YOUR WRITING
4. How to Simplify Your Writing
Avoid -ing / to do constructions like:

1. I am hoping to meet you again soon.
2. I don’t have time to read all this information.
3. I am going to jump.
The problem in I) and II) is that these constructions contain two main verbs (high-
lighted in the sentences above) which in German can not co-exist in a single sen-
tence. So you’d always have to break those into two sentences like this:
Sentence 1 Sentence 2
Ich hoffe, dass ich Dich bald wiedersehe.
Ich habe keine Zeit, all diese Informationen zu lesen.
But these constructions are advanced. You could simplify them by leaving out the
parts that do not provide crucial information or by segregating them into two indi-
vidual sentences. E.g.:
1. Wir sehen uns hoffentlich bald wieder.

2. Ich kann diese Informationen nicht lesen. Ich habe keine Zeit.
3. ???
Sentence number 3 can be easily simplified by using the will-future. Don’t worry
about your English being wrong here. After all, you want to learn German, right? And
your Your German also doesn’t have to be cutting-edge yet and can be simplified.
A proper simplified text is much better than an incorrect, sophisticated one. You
first need to build a solid base before you can think of adding ornaments to your
language. So here is my suggestion for number 3.
3. Ich werde springen. or just: Ich springe.
Set verb-limits even if you are an advanced writer

Limit the lengths of your sentences to two main verbs in a sentence-combination.
Avoid constructions like:
Yesterday, I heard that Tarzan kissed Jane before going to work.

Gestern habe ich gehört, dass Tarzan Jane geküsst hat, bevor er zur Arbeit gegan-
gen ist.
A much easier (in German) construction would be:

I heard that Tarzan kissed Jane. Then he went to work.
Ich habe gehört, dass Tarzan Jane geküsst hat. Und dann ist er zur Arbeit gegangen.
38 STEP 7 WRITE FREESTYLE → 4. HOW TO SIMPLIFY YOUR WRITING
If you are a total beginner, you could simplify this sentence even more:
Have you heard? Tarzan kissed Jane. Then he went to work.
Hast du gehört? Tarzan hat Jane geküsst. Und dann ist er zur Arbeit gegangen.
Use objects rather than constructions with prepositions

Prepositions (→ watch Days 14, 16 and 18 of my A1-B1 German Grammar Course)
are tricky because, in German, we use different prepositions than they do in English.
Ideally, you avoid using them unless you are crystal clear about which one to use.
The sentence:
He bought a birthday present for his mother. could be rewritten as:
He bought his mother a birthday present.
In German you wouldn’t use “for” at all:

Er hat seiner Mutter ein Geburtstagsgeschenk gekauft.
He gave a beer to his mother.

He gave his mother a beer.
Er hat seiner Mutter ein Bier gegeben.
Not all prepositions are avoidable nor are all of them problematic. Only those that
belong to the topic of verbs with prepositions (see my grammar course) need be
dealt with.
39 STEP 8 SECRETARY TECHNIQUE
Step 8
Secretary Technique →
Not everyone is so lucky as to have a native speaker around at all times, but, thanks
to simple technology, you are able to practice your speaking skills almost on your
own. The Secretary Technique is a powerful speaking practise and learning tool. All
you need is a voice recording device like your smartphone and, ideally, a German
native speaker or advanced German learner (at least level C1 CEFR).
1. How it is done
1. Think of a topic that you could speak about freely in German for about two min-
utes. Write down up to 10 key words (no full sentences please).
2. Speak about that topic with help of your notes and record yourself for up to two
minutes
3. Afterwards listen to your recording and note any mistakes you hear.
4. If there are not too many mistakes, send your recording to a German speaker
who will act as your secretary.
5. Your secretary should transcribe only those sentences of your recording that
contain a mistake, highlight the wrong words, and then send the transcription to
you.
6. Try to identify your mistakes and correct them.
7. Repeat steps 01 – 05 with help of your key words until your text sounds good.
Do not aim at 100% perfection.
If you don’t have a German speaker at hand, you will have to transcribe your record-
ing on your own. Being able to read what you have been saying makes you become
aware of the mistakes you make when speaking. You might try the app “Hello Talk”
to find a secretary or several secretaries.
One of the biggest problems German learners have is that they are rarely corrected
properly or, worse still, are corrected in an offensive manner. By offensive I do not
mean only that one might be made to feel belittled by the corrector, but also that
the corrector might rob you of one of the most rewarding experiences in German
learning: to find and correct your own mistakes.
But, without any feedback, there would be no learning. The secretary technique
is a wonderfully flexible tool that requires only very little interaction with a native
speaker. This way, everyone saves a lot of time and you remain mostly independent
40 STEP 8 SECRETARY TECHNIQUE → 2. THE IDEA BEHIND THIS STEP
STEP 9 ORAL TRANSLATION

in your German learning process. It is important that you repeat the steps above at
least once as it is only by sufficient repetition that new information is reinforced and
consolidated in your long-term memory.
Also, be sure to → watch my video on how to correct german learners properly.
Step 9
Oral Translation
Many language teachers condemn translating. That’s a pity because translation is a

key skill when learning any new language. Even bilingual children use translation to
widen their range of vocabulary and to understand grammatical structures. For more
information → see Butzkamm. Used in the right doses, translation is a powerful tool.
1. How it is done
1. Record all the following.

2. Listen to a sentence from the text that you worked on in the previous steps. Do
not read that text.
3. Pause.
4. Translate the sentence that you heard out loud (!)
5. Listen to your recording to compare the original text with your translation.
6. If available: Let a native speaker listen to your recording. She might not speak
your native language, but can certainly tell whether a translation makes sense.
There is are only few things worse for a German learner than not to understand
what is being said to him or her. Adult language learning is often compared to the
way children learn languages which is well established to be a completely differ-
ent learning process. For more information read → Butzkamm. Certain schools like
Berlitz or Inlingua even make it a rule that not a single word in the learner’s native
language should be spoken during the lesson.
The teacher has either to show or paraphrase any (!) word that is being taught. This
leads to ridiculous situations where the teacher is still trying to find ways to explain
words like “fluffy” or “fairness” while the learners quickly look up those words in
their bilingual dictionaries.
Even language teachers who swear on the monolingual approach when learning a
new language long to understand the new language fully. Let me assure you that it
41 STEP 9 ORAL TRANSLATION
USEFUL TIPS
→ 1. SETTING THE RIGHT GOALS
→ 2. HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT MOTIVATION
is absolutely okay to translate vocabulary into your native language at times. You
will feel less and less desire to do so as you proceed naturally. There is no need to
suppress your desire to understand what is being said fully.
Useful Tips
1 Setting the Right Goals
When you set out to learn German, you are confronted with an infinite amount of
information. To stay sane and to be able to come out of this journey successfully,
you need to set clear goals. They will also help you be efficient.
The right goal is a SMART goal.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time bound
“I’d like to be fluent in German” is none of the above.

“I’d like to have a conversation in German for more than 10 minutes (Measurable,
Attainable) about soccer (Specific, Relevant) by the end of March (Time bound).”
that’s SMART.
A more common and even better measurable goal is to set out to pass any of those
German language exams according to the → Common European Framework of Ref-
erence (CEFR). For example: “I will pass the German B1 exam with a score of at least
80% by the end of March.”
2. How to find the right Motivation
Very often, I come across someone who has tried to learn German on and off sev-
eral times to no avail. They are very motivated - why would someone try something
over and over again despite constant failure otherwise? - but they usually have no
clear aim nor are they aware of the true source of their issues. In these cases, I rec-
ommend the writing of two letters in English or one’s native language. The topics of
these letters are:
• Why I love the German language.

• Why I love the German culture.
42 USEFUL TIPS
→ 2. HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT MOTIVATION
→ 3. GETTING HELP
→ 4. HOW MANY HOURS A DAY SHOULD ONE STUDY?
Do as they do. Write for 30 minutes even if, after 15 minutes, you run out of ideas.
Remain on in your chair, your mobile out of reach, and endure the silence. Maybe af-
ter 5–10 minutes of emptiness, new emotions and ideas will occur. In the worst case,
you will have sat in silence for 15 minutes. In today’s hectic times, that’s something
rather soothing. You can write both letters on different days.
When you are done writing your letters, take a break for as long as you like. Later
that day or the next day, read your letters and pay attention to your mind’s and
body’s reactions. You don’t have to show these letters to anyone, so you don’t have
to censor yourself. If you think it would help you to send your letters to someone,
feel free to send them to me. Not only will I be touched by your trust, but it will also
help me understand human nature better and I’ll be able to help others like you with
their German even more.
3. Getting Help
Once you’ve set your goal, you need to plan the route. This is what this course is
all about: How to achieve your German learning goal the most efficient way. But I
strongly recommend that you use a tool like → beeminder.com or → stickk.com to
support your goals. They are self-explanatory, so I won’t go into detail here. Be careful
not to be too ambitious, as that can create a lot of pressure which not everyone is
able to cope with well. If you are not very sure about how realistic your goal is, ask a
few of your friends or your conversation trainer whom I will introduce you to later on.
4. How many Hours a Day Should One Study? →
Ambitious learners
If you are aiming at German level B1 in 30 days you need to put in at least 4–6 hours
a day and follow the instructions of this book meticulously and also → use my other
materials. The problem will be to make sure that you are on track, as you won’t have
my supervision. You have to be very careful not to overestimate your ability to study
German. The risk is that, after an initial high, you will stagnate, get very frustrated, and
drop the pen for good. Pay close attention to your body. If you notice signs of fatigue,
finish the task at hand and take a short break.
Scientists suggest that you take breaks in the following pattern:

After 45 minutes, take a 2–5 minute break.
After 90 minutes, take a 15–20 minute break.
After 135 minutes, take an hour off.
If you learn longer than 2h15 minutes, repeat this pattern.

43 USEFUL TIPS
You can’t lose the race

Be aware of the differences between learners. We all have a different backgrounds
and different learning conditions as well as different language-learning skills. It
doesn’t make sense to compare yourself with other German learners, as that would
mean comparing apples with oranges. Imagine yourself as being the only runner in a
half-marathon. The only goal is to reach the goal in no matter what time. There are no
other runners competing. You can fully enjoy the marathon and I am certain you are
aware of the fact that no one ends a marathon successfully without proper prepa-
ration. Begin with learning 2 hours daily for the first week and then add 30 minutes
with every new week until you have reached your optimal learning time.
Less ambitious learners

In case you are working full-time or simply want to enjoy your German learning
calmly at a slower, steadier pace, you might get solid results with as few as 60 min-
utes per day. Even 30 minutes per day might show some notable effect if you follow
the learning cycle of this course.
Less more often is more than a lot less often

Rather study 1 hour daily than 2 × 3.5 hours per week. Unless you really have no
other choice, try to study every day for a bit rather than squeeze everything into
the weekend. Learning takes place when you drop the pen. The more often you drop
the pen, the more you step out of your brain’s way and the better it can process the
information you have taken in.
By when will I reach which level?

Please treat the following numbers with care. They are just a rough estimate based
solely upon my personal and professional experience for average results. I also as-
sume that you work with a private or conversation tutor and with my materials.
Daily study time A1 A2

30 minutes 2 months 4 months
1 hour 1 month 2 months
2 hours 2 weeks 1 month
4.5 hours 1 week 2 weeks
Daily study time B1 B2 C1

30 minutes 12 months 24–36 months unlikely
1 hour 6 months 12 months unlikely
2 hours 3–4 months 6–8 months 12–16 months
4.5 hours 1–2 months 3–4 months 6–8 months
44 USEFUL TIPS
TRACKING TIME → 1. S O, HOW LONG DOES IT ACTUALLY TAKE TO BECOME
FLUENT IN GERMAN?
As a comparison, here are the times you’d need in a so-called intensive course in
most language schools. In an intensive course, you’d study 5× per week for 3 hours
per day plus 1.5 hours of homework (total: 4.5 hours). You’d reach:
A1 → 2 months
A2 → 4 months
B1 → 6 months
B2 → 9 months
C1 → 12 months
C2 → theoretically in 15 months, unless you want to become a German tutor
yourself or work as a professor in German studies at a university, you can
easily ignore this level.
Tracking Time
The problem with language learning is the difficulty measuring one’s progress ob-
jectively. There are two ways of measuring yourself. One is by keeping track of the
time you need to master all the different tasks you need to manage when learning
German. Another is by taking an exam.
If you read and comprehend a given text in one hour in the beginning, but, after four
weeks of German learning, read and comprehend that text again in half an hour, you
could see your progress easily, which is very motivating.
Keeping track of the time you spend learning German also helps you feel good about
yourself and helps you judge your achievements more realistically. You are certainly
rational enough to understand that you can’t expect miracles when you invest only
one hour per week on your German. But often we delude ourselves by thinking that
we have actually spent more time than we really did. Tracking your language learning
can help you get a better feel for your progress.
I can recommend → Toggl, which is a free tool, but you might simply search the in-
ternet for time tracking tools for alternatives.
1. So, how long does it actually take to become fluent in German?
While I have managed to bring → a young and gifted woman to level B2 with-
in three months and believe that we could also have achieved that in just two
months, the average learner will most likely need anything between one and two
years.
While your progress depends on quite a few factors (age, intelligence, knowledge,
education, motivation, living situation, to name just a few) it is mainly determined
by the quality and amount of work you invest in to reach your goal. If you invest
45 TRACKING TIME
→ 1. SO, HOW LONG DOES IT ACTUALLY TAKE TO BECOME FLUENT IN GERMAN?
→ 2. TOTAL IMMERSION
only 30 minutes daily in your German learning, you will certainly need longer to
achieve your goal than if you invested 4.5 hours daily (like they do in an intensive
German course, for example.)
The problem is that you most likely will have to work in addition to your German
learning and those 4.5 hours of studying are quite exhausting and difficult to fit into
your daily schedule.
Make sure to set realistic goals and to adapt them according to your working and
living conditions. The learning cycle that you find in this book will help you fit your
German learning into your day as it can be separated into 20–30-minute pieces,
which is much easier than finding 90 minutes in an eight-hour workday.
2. Total immersion →
When I started working for Berlitz in 1999, I was told that I should never use the
student’s native language in the classroom, but only German. They told me that
this would be the best approach to learn good German. Nowadays, 99% of German
language schools in Germany and maybe even worldwide still use only German in
the classroom. This approach is called the Monolingual Approach and should be
forbidden as it is harmful in many ways:
It ignores almost all your knowledge

It is scientifically proven that we learn much faster and remember better when we
can connect new information to things that we have learned previously.
When someone speaks to you in a language you don’t understand, you have no way
to connect what you hear or read to what you already know and therefore unnec-
essarily slows you down significantly.
It leads to low quality results

Without using the learner’s native language, the teacher can present information
only in a very structured and simplified way. The student then is fully responsible
for making sense of what he sees on the board. Unfortunately, not everyone is a
natural when it comes to recognising grammar patterns or other similarities between
the German language and his native language. Very often German learners make up
their own rules just to fill the void and to get rid of the uncertainty that this unfor-
tunate approach creates. The outcome is usually pretty bad. And would you want to
invest hundreds of hours and dollars in learning German just to sound bad?
Think of someone who speaks poor English. What do you think happens in the
minds of those who listen to him speaking in poor English? Will they consider him
more or less intelligent than he might actually be?
46 TRACKING TIME
→ 2. TOTAL IMMERSION
It makes learners feel insecure longer than necessary

As you can never be sure about whether the rule you have just figured out all by
yourself is accurate, you will always feel insecure about your German skills. Insecu-
rity is natural when learning a new language, but it doesn’t have to be encouraged
by a wrong approach.
Why is this approach still applied then?

There are quite a few reasons as to why this approach is still heavily pushed on
millions of language learners in all languages, none of which is beneficial to you, the
language learner. One is that it works.
The problem is that it works extremely slowly, causes an immense and unnecessary
amount of frustration in the learner (and teacher), and lets the learner do all the
(guess)work with often very low-quality outcome and it leaves a feeling of insecurity
in the learner.
The language-teaching business is a highly competitive one. Schools have to run

their classes economically. To do so, they can either put as many students as possi-
ble into one class and offer lower prices than their competitors or they charge a lot
of money from their students in return for smaller classes. Prices in Berlin currently
(2016) vary from 200€ per month to 1,200 € per month. Ironically the more expen-
sive courses didn’t necessarily have fewer students than the cheaper ones. The only
way to get a sufficient number of students into one class is by making the classroom
language the same for everyone: the language they want to learn, i.e., German in
our case.
The teachers can’t use English in class because, if there are students who do not
understand English, they will complain of being left out.
If schools organised classes according to the native language of the students, they
would have to raise the fees, as classes would most likely be very small, especially
when the students do not speak a common language. Then try to find a German
tutor who speaks Japanese or Chinese or even Arabic. Most people who speak such
second languages will most likely be in a much better paid profession.
Another problem of language schools is that they usually have a high fluctuation
of language teachers, but, even if their employees remained with them for longer,
they don’t have to look for teachers who are specialised in English-German or Ar-
abic-German with the current approach. It is sufficient if the teacher speaks only
German. This way, language schools have a wider choice of employees.
47 TRACKING TIME
→ 3. IS LEARNING GERMAN ABROAD REALLY BETTER?
→ 4. CULTURAL FLUENCY
3. Is Learning German Abroad Really Better?
German is best learned in a country in which it is spoken, right?

Not necessarily, especially if you are a beginning German learner, it doesn’t really
matter where you learn it. Actually, it is much easier to get started while still in your
home country. The reason is very simple. When going abroad, you will have to deal
with a lot of things at the same time. You have to find a place to stay, explore the city,
hang out with your new classmates — who are all non-German by the way — and, if
you came to stay, you have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy and also with cultural
differences. And all this without really understanding anything language wise.
This is such an overload for anyone that your German learning will certainly suffer
from it.
At home, you at least know your way around and don’t have to worry about any of
the above. You also save a lot of money as you can stay at home and maybe even
work parallel to learning German.
I can promise you that you won’t get in touch with any locals anywhere, e.g., if you
come to their country out of the blue and stick mainly with your classmates. And,
even if you met a local, what would you speak about, with your almost non-existent
German vocabulary and grammar?
This book shows you ways of exposing yourself and practising German with very
little help from the outside so that you, e.g., can prepare your stay in the new coun-
try and have simple but proper conversations with its natives. Be smart and learn
German from home until level B1. After that, come to Germany, but don’t expect to
learn anything automatically just because you are abroad. Most foreigners also fail
bitterly when it comes to connecting to native inhabitants of a new country. I’m not
saying it is their fault. It is just not easy to overcome one’s inhibition to sound less
intelligent than one is used to in front of a stranger.
Make sure to read the next chapter about culture as there is no language without a
culture.
4. Cultural Fluency →
There is no language without a culture. You could be fluent in German, but fail bit-
terly to connect to German native speakers, if you are not aware of their culture.
You need to study their habits, their rules, their ways of thinking and communicat-
ing next to learning their language.
48 TRACKING TIME
→ 4. CULTURAL FLUENCY
EASY GERMAN LEARNING?
While there are so-called intercultural trainings out there, they are often quite ex-
pensive and, in my eyes, rather unnecessary for the average German learner. “All”
you need to do is to be aware of things being different and to keep a positive atti-
tude.
Whenever you feel negative emotions coming up, either in yourself or in your con-
versation partner, remember that this might be due to a cultural misunderstanding.
Nowadays, I always assume first that what upsets me wasn’t said or done on pur-
pose, but rather because of a misunderstanding. It is still unpleasant for a moment,
but the anger very quickly passes. You might be able to figure out some of your
misunderstandings by addressing the matter openly. You could share your feelings
and add that you are confused due to the behaviour you have experienced. Be very
careful though to always stay with yourself. Never say things like: „You hurt me.“ or
„You insulted me.“ Rather express it like: „I feel hurt because I heard you say …“
My experience of the last 20 years on the job with people from all countries of this
planet and from all races and classes is that usually people do not mean harm, but
rather seek agreement and acknowledgement. This is true for 99% of the people I
have encountered and I’ve encountered several thousand such people in my career.
So why not assume good intentions first? It will definitely be a better base basis for
your communication.
While such interpersonal skills are not put into our cradles, they can certainly be
learned. I wasn’t born with this attitude nor skill either. And it is also quite difficult to
stay relaxed and positive if one is not in a familiar and safe environment.
If you plan to come to Germany, I strongly recommend the book: → Doing Business
with Germans by H. Schroll-Machl. It is not only for those who want to work in Ger-
many or with Germans, but it also reveals a lot about the problems that non-Ger-
mans have with my compatriots. I myself learned a lot from it about why I tick the
way I tick.
Easy German Learning?
Let me keep things real: Nothing worth having comes easy. As the Americans say,
„There’s no such thing as a free lunch“ (Nichts ist umsonst.). The same is valid for
German learning. There are many German courses and apps out there that claim to
make learning German fun and easy. I can tell you from 20 years of experience that
fun and easy alone will not get you far. Learning German is hard but rewarding work.
And, yes, it is also enjoyable. Very much so, but you need to invest a lot of work. To
become as fluent as a native speaker, you need to invest at least a year if not two,
depending on your conditions, skills, and investment in time and work. It is very
49 EASY GERMAN LEARNING?
AVOID GROUP COURSES
difficult to stay motivated and disciplined over such a long time. Successful German
learners make learning and speaking German their habit. They do not always enjoy
their work, but they stick to it just long enough. If you follow the learning cycle and
advice in this book, you will work very efficiently and notice quick progress. This
will keep you motivated and help you create the necessary habits to finally reach
proper fluency.
Avoid Group Courses
From 1999 until the end of 2012, I taught German almost exclusively in groups. It
often was a very exhausting and frustrating experience, not only for the learners,
but also for me. And I have seen many colleagues at their limit after a few years on
the job. After 13 years, I had to quit my safe job → because I couldn’t take it
anymore. Looking back, it became obvious why.
From the Teacher’s Perspective

Teaching at any private language school is usually underpaid and highly unreward-
ing. There’s a high fluctuation of students to which I constantly had to adapt. Results
were rather disappointing and, if they ever appeared, they took a very long time to
do so. B1 in an intensive group course takes six months, while nowadays I teach that
level from scratch in one to three months.
Most of my daily work was to entertain the group which usually was so diverse
that many students had not much in common beyond the desire or need to learn
German.
True communication with students was difficult if they didn’t speak English. Have
you ever tried to talk to someone who didn’t even speak your language? That might
be interesting if it is for a few minutes, but try that for three hours per day over six
months.
Of course I also enjoyed certain aspects of the job and most of my students were
good hearted and spirited people, but the system was and still is massively flawed.
From the Student’s Perspective

In an average group of ten German learners, you have ten individuals with ten differ-
ent backgrounds and goals, with many different abilities, learning speeds, cultures,
native languages, educations, behaviours, and motivations, but you have only one
teacher at a time who has to adapt his teaching style to please all students equally
or to force them to adapt to his style. It should become obvious to you that that’s a
ridiculous set-up for a language learning situation to be successful.
You are an individual and deserve individual support. A language is more than just
a set of rules, structures, and words that you just present to someone and they
50 AVOID GROUP COURSES
pick it up. Language learning is deeply connected to our emotions and our desire to
understand and to be understood. In a group, these desires are mostly ignored. The
emotional threat of a group might be bearable for younger learners, but the older
you get, the less likely you are to enjoy a group course.
When learning a new language, we are thrown back to the very core of ours elves
→ . We are not able to express anything and can’t display our identity as is cus-
tomary. This causes fear in most language learners. Less easily intimidated learners
tend to dominate the classroom. They are not to blame for that, as that is their na-
ture and it is good for their language learning. It is just a pain in the neck to level all
these different aspects to get the necessary work done.
In addition to these points, you will usually also find:
• t hat you are rarely corrected, as the teacher has to deal with several people
at once.
• that you’ll rarely speak (measure your actual speaking time in a 3-hour course)
and interact with a German native (as there is usually just one native in class
shared by all participants)
• that most of the time you’ll hear bad German pronunciation and structure as
your speaking partners will be non-German
• that your homework might not be enough for your needs or that it might not
even be corrected and if so, correcting homework that you could easily do
yourself free of charge at home takes up far too much time in class which you
are charged for
• that the speed in class is either too fast or too slow. Only a part of the group
will find the speed accurate
• that they do not explain things in English (or any other language you under-
stand) to you, but make you do all the work by letting you figure out the rules
• that, if you miss a class due to illness or an important appointment or event,
you will have trouble catching up as the class moves on with their tight
schedule.
• that they teach you stuff that is supposed to satisfy hundreds of thousands of
German learners, but, in the end, leaves all of them at least partly unsatisfied
due to dull material
• t hat you will not get to know any native speakers, but rather get dragged into
the expat bubble which is a cosy comfort zone, but which also contains no
German practise at all and therefore is not beneficial for your aim to learn
German
• that there are annoying people in class who attract most of your teacher’s at-
tention, but not for the good of the group.
• t hat you might feel embarrassed to speak broken German in front of the oth-
er learners
51 AVOID GROUP COURSES
How much time would I save when learning with a private tutor?
Learning German in a group at first glance seems cheaper than private tuition.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s the math:
In a cheap German course in Berlin you’ll pay 200 € per month. You will need at least
six months which will sum up to 1,200 €. Adding the costs for course material, all admin
and exam fees getting from scratch to B1 will cost you roughly 1,500 € and six months
of your time. During this time you will most likely not be able to work full-time, if at all.
Now you have to know that the B1 exam success rate for such a six-month intensive
course lies at 60%. Ask your school for the numbers if you don’t believe me, but you
can also take a look at page 125 of the → German government’s statistics. In case
you are an average learner, you might need 1-3 months more to pass B1 level, if at
all. This brings the total course costs at 1,700 €–2,100 €.
You also have to add your missed income. If you made only 8,50 € per hour, which is
the minimum wage here in Germany, and worked only 38,5 hrs per week, you’d miss
out on → 989,50 € net per month. Times six, that’s 5,937 €. The total cost therefore
is between 8,037 € (for six months) and 10,405,50 € (for nine months).
If you worked twice per week with a skilled private tutor who charges 40 € per
45mins lesson (which is already quite high) you’d end up paying 320 € per month.
Add some material for, let’s say, 100 € and 180 € for an exam (external participants
usually pay a bit more). The mere course costs - assuming that you would need the
same amount of time to get to B1 which is highly unlikely — would be 2,200 €. That’s
only 100 € more than you’d pay for a group course. Yet your advantages are plenty:
• You’ll learn at your own speed

• You’ll be more flexible in your learning which might allow you to work at least
part-time
• You’ll most likely be able to work 2–3 months sooner as you’ll learn faster
• You’ll have at least 50% speaking and listening time with a German native
speaker
• You’ll get individual, instant, and relevant feedback
• You can ask any question you like without fearing to disturb others
• You won’t be bothered by others asking irrelevant questions
• You can ask your questions in English and therefore be sure you understood
the matter fully
• You wouldn’t have to travel to school as you could easily work via Skype
• You’ll feel less embarrassed to actually speak German
If, after reading this, you still want to take part in a group course, I can only recom-
mend that you work with my material which will help you fix or avoid altogether a
few of the shortcomings that I mentioned above. You have already taken your fate
into your own hands by purchasing this course. Make the best use of it. Your lifetime
is as limited and as precious as you are important.
52 DO NOT LEARN GERMAN ON YOUR OWN → APPS CAN HELP ME LEARN GERMAN, RIGHT?
Do not Learn German on your Own
You might have come across someone’s YouTube channel or blog in which they claim
that you could learn German on your own. That advice leads down a dangerous road.
While there are of course people who have learned German mostly on their own,
those are rather the exception. Especially polyglots, individuals who speak several
languages fluently to some degree, can be considered highly gifted learners and sta-
tistically make at best 1% of our population. While a lot of their advice is certainly
useful in itself, you can’t really compare their path to success in language learning
with your own unless you are a highly gifted individual yourself. .
The problem with learning German on your own is that you not only lose a lot of
time due to being inexperienced in regard to how to organise and structure your
learning schedule and materials, but also you most likely lack the necessary feed-
back provided by a tutor. As a consequence, you are likely to end up speaking bro-
ken German, which is incredibly hard to fix.
Learning German is overwhelming for most learners for quite some time at the
beginning — think of all the words you have to learn, the seemingly complex gram-
mar, the pronunciation, maybe even the alphabet. Failure and frustration are part
of every (language) learning process. Without proper support from a tutor or an
extremely well structured and thought through German course, chances are high
that you might simply give up on your goal to become fluent in German before you
even had a chance to get a real glimpse of the beauty of the German language. And
giving up can mean that you simply decide to stick with functional German. (I’ll ex-
plain what that means in more detail in the next chapter).
Take a look around. Ask your friends and family whether they have ever started to
learn a new language, but gave up at some point. People give up language learning
all the time, even when learning with a tutor. Guess how many people have „learn a
new language“ on their list of New Year’s resolutions?
Apps can help me learn German, right?
It depends on what you mean by “help”. I estimate that 90% of users of any language
learning app do not use those apps longer than three months. Ask the app makers
about that and they most likely won’t answer you as it is rather embarrassing. I heard
from a sales manager of one of the bigger apps that my estimate was far too opti-
mistic, but don’t take my word for it. Ask them yourself.
I understand that professional German tuition costs quite a bit of money, but look
at it this way: You learn German for decades to come. Most of you will have 30–50
53 DO NOT LEARN GERMAN ON YOUR OWN → APPS CAN HELP ME LEARN GERMAN, RIGHT?
WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL GERMAN?
more years left to make good use of it. If you invested 2,000 € now, that would
mean it would have cost you 40–66 € per year or 3,33–5,55 € per month. That’s a
caffè latte here in Berlin or a pack of cigarettes less per month.
For 2,000 €, you can get 100 sessions with an affordable private tutor whom → you
can find on italki. Meet her twice per week @ 45 minutes, and you get a full year of
tuition out of it. With the help provided by this course’s structure, I estimate that
you will achieve twice as much than if you had sat in a group course in some Ger-
man language school and very likely infinitely further than if you had tried studying
German on your own.
If you are not an experienced language learner, meaning that you do not already
speak three languages, I strongly recommend that you get professional support for
your task to learn German. A polyglot or any other successful language learner is
not automatically a professional. You will save yourself a huge amount of stress and
reduce the risks of quitting or, worse, settling with functional German.
What is Functional German?
The main aim of most German learners is to communicate with other German
speakers. Depending on what you intend to do with your German skills, this goal
is achieved sooner or later. If you “just” want to get by in a German speaking
country, you might achieve your goal sooner than someone who wants to use
German in a professional context. For every persistent German learner, there
comes a point when things kind of work out. Most likely they are not properly
fluent yet, but simply get by in most situations of their daily life. Their Ger-
man just functions hence the term functional German. The problem with that is
that functional German is still full of mistakes, one is a fluent Falschsprecher (lit.
wrong-speaker). Their fluency conceals the fact that they haven’t achieved prop-
er fluency yet and their motivation to improve on their German sinks with every
“successful” German speaking situation.
You don’t want to end up being a fluent Falschsprecher because you will miss out
on many subtleties in your encounters with native Germans and, therefore, never
really connect with them on a deeper level. You will also be very aware of the fact
that your German is a mess. I very often hear people apologising for their crappy
German. I don’t think that being self-conscious about one’s lack of any ability leads
to a happier life.
Make sure to have someone at your side when starting this challenging task of
learning German. It is okay to ask for help and to be aware that it costs a lot more
money than many offers out there suggest. I promise you that it will be worth
the investment.
54 FINDING A SPEAKING PARTNER
Finding a Speaking Partner →
To get better at speaking, you need to speak a lot; however, your speaking needs to
be controlled. That means you need to get constant and intelligent feedback about
your pronunciation, choice of words, and correctness.
The problem with correction is that either natives won’t correct you (out of a mis-
placed sense of politeness) or, worse, that they correct you in a way that makes you
feel bad about yourself. Read or watch the chapter about corrections in this course
to find out how to correct others intelligently and sensitively or how to instruct oth-
ers to correct you in an effective and self-empowering way.
The Preaching ↗ and the Secretary Technique ↗ are wonderful tools to practise
speaking on your own while making sure you get all the feedback you need.
While I am not a big fan of so called Tandems, language exchange partners, (→ read
this article to find out why), you might still want to give it a try with the list you find
in the mentioned article.
55 KEEP A (VOICE) DIARY 1. HOW IT IS DONE
→
DON’T USE FLASH CARDS FOR VOCABULARY
Keep a (Voice) Diary
Keeping a diary has been proven to increase memory retention, even in normal life.
Why not make use of it for your German learning? You can keep either a written
dictionary or a spoken one or both.
1. How it is done
At the end of each learning day, simply write down or record 1-2 minutes about your
experiences of that day in German. You don’t have to re-read/listen to it right away.
Let a few weeks pass and then go through your record(ing)s again.
Start each record(ing) with (saying) the current date and time. You can do so in
English in the beginning, but, as soon as you have mastered the German way using
them, switch to German.
The most motivating experience while learning German is to become aware of

one’s progress. Depending on how often you are exposed to situations in which
you can make use of your German, those experiences are usually rather scarce
in the beginning. By recording yourself without correcting anything, you take a
“screenshot” of your progress at a specific time in your German learning process.
If you listen to yourself four weeks later, you will notice a significant increase in
your learning and feel good about it.
Should you not hear any improvement, you should also be thankful for this tech-
nique as you can then realise that you haven’t been learning properly and should
take a closer look at how you have been learning so far. If you combine this tool
with tracking your learning time, you will become a more and more efficient learner.
Don’t use Flash Cards for Vocabulary
Flash cards have a long tradition. A long tradition of being used the wrong way for
language learning. Often I read the advice that one should write a German word or
phrase on one side of the flash card and the English translation onto the other side,
or I read that one should label one’s furniture with Post-its that have the German
word with their article and plural written on them.
Both approaches are highly inefficient and waste invaluable time. Here is why:
56 DON’T USE FLASH CARDS FOR VOCABULARY
MORE USEFUL TOOLS
Isolated vocabulary. I explained this issue in the beginning of this course. Please re-
fer to the chapter about learning vocabulary for details. In short: You need to learn
vocabulary in a natural context as that method will not only help you to memorise
the vocabulary more efficiently, but you’ll also be able to recall it more quickly.
Reading is not learning. When you put a German label on your furniture or on a
poster, all you do is read the German word. Reading has very little effect on your
learning. Of course, you need to read in order to take in new information, but read-
ing alone, especially reading isolated words or phrases will not do much for your
learning. You need to use your brain in order to store new information deeply in
your memory.
This can be achieved simply by putting a Post-it with a blank front on your furniture.
On its back, write the German name of the object that you have been labelling for
control. This way, whenever you pass by the Post-it, you then try to remember what
it was called in German and what its gender and plural are. After you have made this
effort, you can check the back of the Post-it for immediate feedback.
Flash cards and Post-its are review tools, not learning tools.
More Useful Tools

Good tools alone do not make a good handyman, but good tools in the hand of a
good handyman make a hell of a difference. In this course, you will find the most
important tools I used for my projects: German B1 in 30 Days and German B1 in 14
Days as well for my daily work with my actual clients. While my main experience is
with German learning, most of the following tools will certainly also be useful for
quite a few other languages.
57 GET A CONVERSATION TUTOR
→ Get a Conversation Tutor
I know money is often an issue, but, seriously, if somehow possible, get a German
conversation tutor.
You are about to learn a very beautiful language that you will speak for the rest of
your life and your lifetime is running out as we speak or rather as you read. A conver-
sation tutor will not only save you invaluable time, but most likely also your German.
I know there are people out there claiming that everyone can learn German on the
streets, but that’s true for only about 1% of this planet’s population. If you belong
to that 1%, my congratulations. If not: get that tutor.
You can find affordable ones here → Italki

Take a look at three to five or even more of the tutors there and follow your feeling.
Go with the one you trust the most and do not hesitate to change your tutor should
you realise you have made the wrong decision. The tutor will probably survive if you
leave, but your German might not if you stay with the wrong tutor.
Depending on your schedule, I recommend at least two sessions of 30 minutes per

week with the tutor. If you have already passed level B1, you might want to take
45-minute sessions with him or her. Yet, for a beginner, 30 minutes are more than
sufficient.
So, if a tutor charged you 24 € per hour you’d pay 2 × 12 € per week × 4 weeks = 96 €
per month.
If you took 3 × 30-minute sessions, you’d have to calculate 144 € per month.
If you are aiming at learning B1 in 30 days, I suggest you make it 5 × 45 minutes
per week, starting from week two resulting in 15 sessions á 12 € = 180 € for one
month. Your German should be worth that. And, if your financial situation doesn’t
allow that, I strongly recommend you take care of your situation first before being
concerned about learning German in 30 days. In such a situation, it is far better to
take a slower, more methodical route.
If you take 45 minutes as a beginner, make sure that the conversation lesson is
segregated into 30 minutes of conversation training and 15 minutes in which your
trainer tries to answer all the questions that you are bound to have when learning
properly according to my instructions in this book.
One last thing: loved ones or friends do not make good conversation tutors. They
might be good speaking partners, but even that is rather rare. There’s no way around
a professional if you want to take your German learning serious. If you aim at learn-
ing German just for leisure, you can take things a lot easier, but then you wouldn’t
expect any significant outcome from your efforts anyway, right?
58 GET A CONVERSATION TUTOR → PRONUNCIATION COURSE
IMPROVE YOUR READING SKILLS
Pronunciation Course →
As a little add-on to your conversation training, I recommend my → German pronun-

ciation course to be able to practice a bit on your own as well. As an English speaker,
you might not have many issues with German pronunciation, but I am certain you
will find things that you could improve when it comes to your pronunciation. The
learning cycle that you got to know in this book also contains two techniques (oral
dictation ↗ and secretary technique ↗) that will help you control your pronunciation
in German.
But also the two steps of the learning cycle, reading and listening, will help you with
your pronunciation as they set the ground for a proper understanding of what you
will hear in real life.
Improve your Reading Skills
I have created a → reading course for German learners that comes with a ready-
made vocabulary course on memrise. It contains about 1,200 words that are 100%
relevant and comes with an interesting criminal story as a pdf and with audio in
normal and slow speed. In addition to that, I have created 54 videos in which I an-
alyse every single sentence of that book. Even if you think you are not particularly
analytical, I promise that you’ll be fascinated by the logic of the German language.
Take a look at the free previews on my homepage.
59 DANKSAGUNG
Danksagung
This course is the result of thousands of interactions with wonderful people. Without
them my work would be not what it is today. I sincerely thank all my students for
investing their time and trust in me and for believing in what I do. I also thank Mar-
gareth Jabczynski, my partner in crime, for all her lovely and mind-blowing input that
contributed greatly to smarterGerman.
I also send → Rebecca Crawford my wholehearted thanks for creating the wonder-
ful videos that come with this course and to William Russell for providing the in-
spired and wonderful intro to the videos. I’m looking forward to making many more
of these with you, William.
Danke especially to Matt Gaffney for making sure that my English is actually under-
standable and for being so flexible and quick in your work
Danke particularly to → Florian Hauer for designing this document.
And last, but not least, Danke an Dich, who bought this book and still read these
lines. Without you, my work would be superfluous. Your support helps me create
many more wonderful products like this course and, thanks to your learning German -
and hopefully one day soon, also other languages — will one day have the reputation
of being a pleasure to put up with ;)
Von Herzen
Michael
60 APPENDIX
Appendix
German Language Mock Exams
→ A1 Goethe
→ A2 Goethe
→ B1 Goethe
→ B2 Goethe
→ C1 Goethe
→ A1 TELC
→ A2 TELC
→ B1 TELC
→ B2 TELC
→ C1 TELC
Recommendations For German Learners & Tutors
→ Doing Business with Germans by Sylvia Schroll-Machl

→ Make it stick by Peter C. Brown
For German Tutors only
→ Sprachenlernen leicht gemacht by Roberth Kleinschroth

(In German language only)
→ Wolfgang Butzkamm

How To Learn German Faster

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HOW TO

Step 2 Read Texts 17

Step 3 A Write What You Hear 20

Step 3 B Oral Dictation 22

Step 4 Learn Some Grammar  23

Step 7 Write Freestyle  33

Step 8 Basic Cycle  39

Step 9 Oral Translation  40

Easy German Learning?  48

Avoid Group Courses 49

Do not Learn German on your Own 52

What is Functional German? 53

Keep a (Voice) Diary 55

Don’t use Flash Cards for Vocabulary 55

More Useful Tools 56

Get a Conversation Tutor 57

Improve your Reading Skills 58

I have managed to teach individuals German from scratch to level B1 in as little as 14

smarterGerman is a highly empathetic approach applying logic, analytics, and

The Learning Cycle →

1. Learn vocab

2. Read text

3. Write a dictation

4. Study grammar

See next Page →

F. Whenever you pass by a post-it,

put the post it into your archive (e.g. a fridge door)

H. Once you got the BACK right,

See next Page →

7. Write a text

→ download the pdf

Let’s get started.

1. Context & Chunks

sich auf eine Bank setzen

ein schweizer Bauer a Swiss farmer

2. Learn Relevant Information Only

The more relevant something is, the better we learn it.

→ Memrise is a vocabulary training app free of charge. Unfortunately, most courses

1. How do you ignore a word that you already know by heart

6. Use an Online Dictionary

Here are four dictionaries that I use regularly:

7. Analytical Reading for German Learners

11. Your Personal Blacklist

12. A Powerful Mnemonic Tool

1. How to read in German

Deutsch Englisch Sample

Angebot offer Ich mache Dir ein Angebot.

aktuellen current Ich lese die aktuellen Nachrichten.

findet relevante finds relevant Er findet immer relevante Informationen.

Regional-Teil regional part

Get Texts with Audio

3. The idea behind this step

Listening while Reading

Listening while reading along will improve your inner pronunciation.

Detailed Process Description

At this point you can continue with Step 04 - grammar training ↗

2. The ideas behind this step

Ich möchte einen Eistee.

This tool is very similar to the written dictation cited above.

2. The ideas behind this step

Write it down by all means.

→ The smarterGerman grammar course

The smarterGerman irregular verbs app

Step 2 Read Texts 17

Step 3 A Write What You Hear 20

Step 3 B Oral Dictation 22

Step 4 Learn Some Grammar 23

Step 7 Write Freestyle 33

Step 8 Basic Cycle 39

Step 9 Oral Translation 40

Easy German Learning? 48

Avoid Group Courses 49

Do not Learn German on your Own 52

What is Functional German? 53

Keep a (Voice) Diary 55

Don’t use Flash Cards for Vocabulary 55

More Useful Tools 56

Get a Conversation Tutor 57

Improve your Reading Skills 58

1. Learn vocab

2. Read text

3. Write a dictation

4. Study grammar

7. Write a text

1. How do you ignore a word that you already know by heart

1. Accusative - indefinite articles:

2. Regular & Irregular Perfekt Past tense + Accusative:

3. Regular & Irregular Perfekt Past tense + Accusative + definite articles

4. Perfekt Past with “sein”

6. Dative + Locations + Perfekt Past ← always combine patterns carefully.

8. Dative + Time + Perfekt Past

10. Plural definite

11. Konjunktiv II BASIC

12. Konjunktiv II HABEN + SEIN

13. Dependent clauses ← you might want to preach each

14. Dependent clauses + Perfekt Past

17. Relative Clauses + Nominative

18. Relative Clauses + Nominative Advanced

19. Relative Clauses + Accusative

20. Relative Clauses + Dative

21. Relative Clauses + Dative + preposition

STEP 9 ORAL TRANSLATION