Learn German Quickly

Learn German Quickly - Back To The Basics (Part 4)

The last of the four main basic abilities you need to learn German quickly is the ability to speak. It is much easier to understand German when spoken than it is to express yourself in German. Why? Because it is less difficult to translate German into English when you hear it, compared to when you have to translate English into German when you want to speak it. This is because there are German words that we can recognize easily when hearing German called "passive vocabulary". And there are German words that we struggle to recall when speaking German called "active vocabulary", but when heard we instantly remember them. You should aim to get more experience listening to and speaking real day-to-day German. More exposure to German, as it is spoken on the street, will improve your oral proficiency and make your spoken German sound more natural and less like your German textbook.

Learn German Quickly

Learn German Quickly

Learn German Quickly - Back To The Basics (Part 3)

One of the four main basic abilities you need to learn German quickly is the ability to write. A great way to practice your written German is to find a German pen pal. You and your pen pal can write about a specific topic in his/her own words and then compare the versions. You should rewrite your paragraph several times making the corrections with each edit. This seems tedious but you'll see an improvement with your written German. When you want to learn German quickly, writing in German not only gives you a "formal" grasp of German but it also will improve your grammar and vocabulary and hence overall proficiency in German.

Learn German Quickly

Learn German Quickly

Learn German Quickly - Back To The Basics (Part 2)

One of the four main basic abilities you need to learn German quickly is the ability to read. Most of us don't realise that when we are reading a text, we read sentence by sentence and not word for word. A sentence is several words in a specific sequence. It is the whole sequence that we subconsciously register. Therefore, just knowing the keywords in a sentence is enough to comprehend what you've read.

The same format should be applied when reading German. Language students usually make the mistake of reading slowly word by word thinking that they need to understand every word of the sentence in order to comprehend the text. This results in low comprehension despite a good knowledge of German vocabulary. When reading German, you should read the WHOLE sentence or clause at once and you'll learn German quickly. Why? Because you'll be more quickly able to distinguish the sentence structure and also its meaning.

Learn German Quickly