A Beginner’s Guide to Learning German – Introduction

I am in the process of writing about my experiences teaching German as a foreign language. I intend it to be a guide for learners, but also for me as a teacher: a detailed reference book, providing activities and exercises, literature and links, things to talk about on every level of learning. I intend to provide grammar observation activities and practices needed for the dialogues or conversations we are having from week to week. In that it will be a little like a diary – a diary of learning a language from scratch to level B1. (At least for the time being that’s the plan).

Even though I am still in the early stages of writing, I would like to post some of my initial thoughts.

There are mainly two things to tackle when approaching a new language. One is what I would describe as the physical side: its pronunciation. The second is understanding the language as a system with its ways of expressing meaning. How these two aspects are similar or different to your native language will have an influence on your learning process. In the context here, the native language, the background language or language of instruction is English and much of what will be said and done is related to this fact. The native language background will influence things, at least in the beginning stages before entering the phase of monolingual instruction.

I have been an instructor, coach, teacher and trainer of English for many years, but recently I was asked to teach German. I grew up bilingually with English and German as my native languages. I was born in the US, my father was American and only spoke English, my mother is from Berlin. So I had two families and developed two native languages more or less simultaneaously. The process is rarely completely simultaneous, there are always times when one or the other language is more dominant. I will name some references at the end of this introduction for anyone interested in growing up with more than one language, but for now I just wanted to give a little personal background.

Being a native speaker of a language does not automatically qualify you for teaching it. There are some things you can do to help someone develop a language without having any academic qualifications in the area (like providing ‘comprehensible input’). In general, though, I believe academic knowledge and reflection can be useful for the successful and informed ability to guide learners through their learning processes.  Experience and insights into research and the questions asked can enable teachers to give helpful advice, provide useful material for practice and exposure, pass on further tips for development and advancement, and allow for informed experimenting. Not everything done will translate into acquisition or speaking skills. A lot is trial and error. There is no foolproof recipe for how to do things best.

I studied linguistics with a strong focus on Child Language Acquisition/Development, Aspects of Bilingualism and Second or Foreign Language Learning. And even if my studies related almost exclusively to English, many insights and research results concerning language learning processes can be transferred to other languages.

I refrained from training to become a teacher in public schools, mainly for two reasons: I did not want to have to struggle with large groups and grading. I am strongly opposed to both and wholeheartedly believe that these two are at the core of any learning problems children have. Smaller classes and no grades would fix loads of problems and it is only money that keeps governments from changing a broken system. (I also couldn’t imagine teaching learners lacking intrinsic motivation, but it has been said, it’s a teacher’s job to create or help kids develop intrinsic motivation.)

I will stop ranting here, but I have strong feelings about some public school systems even though I loved going to school myself. School was where my friends were and I personally did not struggle with getting good grades. But I know what it feels like and how the whole focus of learning shifts once getting good grades takes over learning. I experienced this myself when I had to leave a school where learning was without grades to a school where it wasn’t. My whole interior motivation shifted from mere interest in and curiosity about topics and questions to a competition mode of wanting to be the best.

But enough about me and my school background and back to the original topic of how I came to wanting to write what I have started writing. After decades of being an English trainer I was asked to teach German to beginners. To be precise, to a complete beginner; someone new to the company and the country. The company had hired him because of his native language, which was English. But they wanted to assist him in learning German. His work environment would not be conducive to the learning process as all his colleagues loved having the opportunity of using their English in communication with their new American colleague. It  can be difficult for English speakers to learn German in Germany.

The project to which these are the introductory pages started as my attempt to bring everything together that my first German ‘student’ and me did. I wanted to describe the process, give learning tips and observe how we gradually built up his German skills. Or rather: How he gradually developed his German skills with my assistance.

As already explained above, this text will be in English as our language of instruction was English. I did not follow a dogmatic ‘one language only’ approach. We didn’t have the time for that and I believe there are some advantages of having a common language for deeper thoughts and explanations, especially in the beginning of the learning process.

We didn’t speak English that often, though. Sometimes I explained more complex things in English, e.g. to point out differences and similarities between the two languages. German and English are historically related so we tried to identify cognates and false friends, structural differences and similarities right from the beginning. Having grown up bilingually himself, he had a strong tolerance for differences and ‘the unknown’ and did not worry too much about ‘not getting it right’ straight away. Mistakes, especially structural ones, I collected and created observation exercises to let him find out the differences himself. I didn’t want him to use incorrect sentences for too long. We analyzed mistakes together and tried to link them to the differences between the two languages.

All of the things we did, I documented. I wanted to follow the path for as long as possible. Never having taught German and never having analyzed it meta-linguistically, at least not in detail, this was something I had to learn by doing.

So even though I was not necessarily able to describe all of German’s grammatical features, quirks and regularities from the start, I was able to build up that knowledge along the way.

I did not want to use any course books and be restricted by a prestructured course. I wanted to be guided by myself, my learner and the situation as it unfolded and see how things would fall into place.

In addition, I started reading up on research literature, especially on the question how different kinds of instructions are processed by a learner – in other words, what kind of activities translate best into language acquisition (see Bill VanPatten (ed.), Processing Instruction: Theory, Research, and Commentary (Second Language Acquisition Research), 2004.

There is no straightforward answer to this. Much depends on the individual learner, and on the situation of learning. In the end, I experimented a lot, did what I thought fit at any given time and came up with a mix of thoughts, conclusions and suggestions – all of which I will try to summarize and share.

To a large extent, the language learning process involves memorization, learning things by heart. When we develop our first languages, this memorization happens without much effort. We are doing nothing else than exploring the world and realizing the functions and benefits of the sounds that make up the language/s spoken around us day in day out. That’s what childhood is for.

We know from various research that the linguistic environment of a child is of utmost importance for how much language and knowledge a child acquires in his or her first years. A linguistically (and educationally) impoverished environment will deprive a child of developing to his or her full potential – cognitively and psychologically. The more language a child’s mind has to work with, the more ‘input’ a brain gets, the more material it has to extricate the patterns and meanings expressed by the system.

Note on the side: The input should not come from screens; the detrimental effects of digital media on the young brain are being researched extensively and the verdict so far is not good. We might soon get recommendations for digital and social media in the hands of children similar to those for alcohol and cigarettes. For many kids it might already be too late.

Pattern recognition is what our brains are good at. Patterns are also structures humans (human brains) seem to like to create. We see them in cloud formations and we hear them in music. We try to describe them theoretically – in grammatical terms with language, and theories of harmonies and keys and chords in music – but in the end, the systems we created intuitively are so intricate and complex that no theoretical model will ever be able to capture each and every aspect of them.

Our theories, models and grammars are attempts at pattern description. They are not books of rules we need to follow precisely and meticulously in order to be able to speak ‘correctly’. They are guiding structural descriptions of frameworks that make communication, speaking and telling stories possible. Speakers of a language can only communicate adequately if they agree on how the elements of the system go together to create meaning. They need to agree on what a set of sounds refers to in order to understand each other. There is still room for misunderstanding and need for negotiating of what is being said sometimes. Language systems bear a certain amount of flexibility that allows us to deviate and create new meanings, new words, new combinations of elements – some still comprehensible, some not.

In other words: I believe in patterns and the need to recognize and learn them. I don’t believe in grammar rule books.

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An adult can and does approach a new language differently from a child. Adults have already gone through the process of first language development and this experience we can use – one way or the other – for developing a second, or third etc. language.

Various methods of memorization have been tried and tested that I will introduce. Learning things by heart will be an essential part of the process, especially in the beginning. There is no way around quantitative exposure and practice. There are no short cuts. Those words need to be learned in all aspects of their semantic and structural features (if you want to be able to use the language intuitively some time).

As adults we don’t have the luxury of endless time at our disposal like the child does. However, we can still try to surround and expose ourselves to as much of the new language as possible. And this needs to be done, I strongly advise it. The more the better.

Note: As a student, I read Stephen Krashen, and his theories have been of significant influence to me (e.g. the importance of ‘comprehensible input’). Stephen Krashen, who, in the meantime is over 80, is still active in propagating his theories, supporting them with decades of research. I came across a youtube video I recommend watching: Stephen D. Krashen – Language Acquisition. Here, he describes his experiences and observations of the impact comprehensible reading material has on the process of second language acquisition. (He doesn’t seem to set much value in flashcards, but I still believe they can be a valuabe supplement, especially (or maybe more) in the context of EFL (English as a Foreign Language).

Basiswortschatz mit Bildern – Picture cards German (1) Flashcards | Quizlet 

Basiswortschatz mit Bildern – Picture cards German (2) Flashcards | Quizlet 

Basiswortschatz mit Bildern – Picture cards German (3) Flashcards | Quizlet 

Basiswortschatz mit Bildern – Picture cards (4) Flashcards | Quizlet 

If you have an adequate tolerance for listening to things you don’t understand everything of, going into authentic material like TV programms, videos and podcasts on the internet early on, can benefit your ability to generate the sounds of the new language and familiarize your ears with what might sound like gibberish in the beginning. Many people, when starting to learn English, feel that they already know some of the language. They feel familiar with what English sounds like, having already heard so much of it when listening to music. So listen to as much as you can.

In this connection, there is one more thing I would like to add. When children develop their language, they go through a long phase of only listening. They start with first words around the age of one. Sometimes I think that adult learners struggle to speak fluently too early.  They seem to believe that you learn a language by speaking it. Speaking, however, is performing. And you can only perform (with) what you have already learned or acquired. Speaking is using the language you have learned so far. If this language is sketchy and structurally rudimentary, and you perform with this level too long, sketchy and rudimentary your language skills most likely will stay (we call this process fossilization)

I go with my guitar teacher here who says when you practice a new chord, chord change, scale or song, take it slowly. Get the structure right, don’t go so fast that you make mistakes. The more often you repeat something, the more your brain will think that’s what your going for. If you struggle with correct word order, focus on form for a while and practice saying correct sentences, even if it feels a little ‘drilly’. If you speak fast too soon and too much, you are in danger of ‘fossilizing’ on that level. You might be able to communicate certain things, but your accuracy will suffer, and in the long run, communication too.

If you want to continue building up your skills, try to get the basics right straight from the beginning. Unlearning something you have done for a longer time is difficult as your brain already believes it to be the right thing. That said there are features of languages that are more difficult to internalize or acquire and getting them right may not be of essential importance for successful communication.

Allow yourself more time for listening to things you can already understand a little. You don’t have to understand everything. DW (Deutsche Welle) has a large section of videos you can watch and listen to for level A1 Nicos Weg | DW Deutsch Lernen. Take a look.

Also good practice:

Einstufungstest | Einstufungstest | DW Deutsch Lernen

Choose any test you like, don’t worry too much about the levels. If you find the questions and tasks too difficult, take a level lower.

Literature

Baker,Colin, Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Clevedon: 1996

Rösler, Dietmar, 2012, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, J.B. Metzler

Rösch, Heidi, 2011, Deutsch als Zweit- und Fremdsprache, Akedemie Verlag

Deutsch als Fremdsprache – Wikipedia

For more see: Resources, References and Recommendations | Pat’s Language Cabinet (language-cabinet.de)

And my post on How languages are learned