4 Crucial elements you need to know to reach your goal
Interestingly enough I had the exact same question when I learned English many years ago. In fact, I still remember my first week living in the United States, when I turned the radio on and everything sounded like a huge Kuddelmuddel (jumble)! The only thoughts that were running through my mind were: I need a break! My head is exploding!
Now, fast-forwarding—after studying speech pathology, reading numerous research articles on how the brain learns and processes language, teaching and tutoring German, and teaching in general, I discovered 4 proven elements that are crucial when learning a language.
Of course, you need to know why you want to learn German since this will guide your approach. You might want to learn German for any of the following reasons:
-You have family members/friends that speak German
-You want to be able to speak some German as a tourist when traveling to Germany
-You are just drawn to learn the language (by the way, this was the case with my husband)
-You need to learn German for business purposes
-You need to know German for your genealogy work
With that being said, let’s get rolling on this subject…
Take the necessary time to learn the German sounds correctly. In my opinion, it is super important to take the necessary time to learn German sounds correctly.
But why? When working at the college, I noticed too many students that were somewhat able to speak German but the pronunciation was not so good. Of course, I do understand that this takes some practice and time, but my observations suggested that the issue mainly stemmed from neglect.
Don’t despair though, this is not as difficult as you might think. And don’t let those long German words discourage you. German is actually pretty predictable when it comes to pronunciation. Many words in German are put together like trains. Just say each part slower and you got it. For example, the word Großmutter has the word groß (great) und mutter (mother) in it.
If you are interested in improving your German pronunciation you can click the link below to watch my free mini-course which includes a section of basic German phonetics (check out my free course below).
Learn German in context. It is proven that a language is learned dramatically quicker when studied in its context. I have looked through too many German books with lots of unconnected pieces of grammatical exercises.
Yes, it is true that you do need to learn grammar, but I don’t think this is doing you any favors when you can’t converse with people the way they actually speak. I always tell my students to watch soap operas in German. I actually really like to watch Alles was Zählt (All that Matters), but there are plenty to choose from if this particular soap opera doesn’t suit your fancy.
One of the major German channels is RTL (www.rtl.de). On this site you can find soap operas, news, and other TV shows. Of course, there are many other channels as well. Some examples are: sat1.de, ard.de, zdf.de.
One of the reasons why I am emphasizing soap operas so much is because they are highly predictable, which is an enormous benefit when learning a language.
The most obvious way to learn German in context is clearly total emersion by living in Germany for a while. But, since this is not always possible, watching soap operas might be your next best option. Finally, some additional ideas are to listen to children’s audio tapes (Alfred Hitchcock’s 3 Fragezeichen, for example) or read very easy children’s books.
Learn commonly used phrases and vocabulary. Learning commonly used phrases and the corresponding answer options is very useful and effective because it equips you with the ability to begin conversing sooner, which is a major plus, right? This can also be fun when practiced with a friend or family member. Grab my freebie below:
