About Language Pathways
A language pathway is a guide that will take you from the beginner to advanced level. In this guide, I won’t be teaching you German directly; rather, I will teach you how to learn German. The amount of resources can be overwhelming, and you can waste a lot of time just trying to figure out what to study. That is why this guide will recommend high-quality resources and provide detailed information on how to use them. Language learning is a journey that looks different for everyone, but remember consistency and time are the keys to becoming fluent in any language.
Keep in mind that learning a language is a long journey. Despite the claims you see online, there is no way to learn a language in just a few months or even a year. It’s a long, winding path that takes time and consistency to traverse, but it’s also a lot of fun! The goal is to reach a point where you can enjoy all the things you love in your native language, such as movies, books, and video games, in a different language. There will be times when it feels frustrating and you may think you’re not making progress fast enough, but that’s something every language learner experiences. I’ll share a little secret with you: All those videos you see online of polyglots who claim to have learned a language in a few months are often fake. To make one of those videos, all you need to do is memorize some common phrases and edit out the mistakes. Don’t compare yourself to those people. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You don’t know how much effort someone has put into studying. Time spent in the language is the biggest factor in your progress. If you can only study for 15 minutes a day, but someone else can study for an hour a day, after one year, the person who studied an hour a day will likely be better than you not because they are better at learning languages, but simply because they’ve spent more time with the language. Remember, any time you spend on a language is not time wasted. You are progressing and learning, and you’ll see the results further down the line. Good luck on your journey, and have fun!
Beginner
So, you’ve decided to study German. Welcome! Whether you’re learning German because you have German relatives, are moving to Germany, or simply love German beer, this guide will help you achieve proficiency so you can feel comfortable understanding and speaking the language. You may have heard that German is an incredibly difficult language, but with the methods outlined in this guide, you’ll have fun as you learn, so it won’t feel as difficult. This guide also relies primarily on free resources, so you can learn German without breaking the bank. Most people who start learning a language never make it past the beginner phase, but with time and dedication, you absolutely can! The beginner phase will introduce you to basic grammar and vocabulary. By the end of this level, you should be ready to comfortably move on to more engaging resources such as articles, TV shows, and podcasts. The beginner level typically takes 4 to 6 months to complete, but you may progress faster or slower depending on how much time you dedicate to studying each day. Don’t rush through the basics. Building a solid foundation will save you a lot of headaches later on. Language learning requires time and patience, so don’t compare yourself to others. The only journey that matters is your own. The road ahead may be long, but you’ll have a lot of fun along the way!
Now, before you can start studying German there are a few things you’ll want to prepare ahead of time. The first thing you need to do is install a German IME on your primary devices. An IME will allow you to type German’s unique characters and use German spellcheck. I do most of my German practice through typing, since in today’s world being a good typist is more important than being able to write well by hand. However, writing by hand still has its benefits, especially when it comes to memorization, so occasionally writing by hand will also help your German.
Next, you’ll need to install Anki or another good SRS flashcard program. Anki is the gold standard when it comes to language-learning flashcard programs. It’s open source, highly customizable, and free on most platforms, so it is widely used in the language learning community.
You will also want a good German-English dictionary to support you along your language-learning journey. You will use dictionaries a lot, especially as you advance to native material. I often use dictionaries to help me make flashcards or to find example sentences. A good dictionary is a tool you will never move on from. You will use it even when you are very advanced.
Now you’re ready to start learning German! The goal of the beginner level is to build a solid foundation that will allow you to enjoy fun, native sources later on. This level is the most study-intensive because you’re starting from scratch. You’ll need to learn vocabulary and grammar to grasp the basics before moving on to more engaging resources. First, you’ll need to find a study program that you enjoy. I recommend starting with Learn German with Anaya’s beginner video program, then using vhs-Lernportal. You should begin with a language program because it’s well-organized and will gradually introduce you to the language. Anaya’s video course consists of 62 short videos, so you can easily watch two or three in a row. These videos are a great way to practice making Anki flashcards. As you watch, create flashcards with the most important vocabulary and sentences to study later. You don’t need to remember everything she says in German; she repeats everything in both German and English to help you get used to the language. Only the lesson content is meant to be memorized. You’ll tackle more complex sentences later on. If you find Anaya’s videos too slow, feel free to skip straight to using vhs-Lernportal.
Vhs-Lernportal is a free, extensive German language program created by the German government for migrants moving to Germany. The program is highly interactive, with plenty of activities and exercises. While it’s very effective, it may be a bit daunting for absolute beginners, as it encourages you to use German as much as possible with minimal support in English. If you’re struggling, remember you can use a German-English dictionary to look up words and use Anki to study the words and sentences that are challenging for you. Take your time, learn new vocabulary, and you’ll be studying German like a pro in no time.
While I recommend sticking to just one language course, if you’d like to explore others, Deutsche Welle offers a variety of free German courses. Nicos Weg is a popular video course among new German learners. Just remember to take notes and make flashcards as you watch the series, so you can review what you’ve learned.
As you study, you should also get regular exposure to German through German media. This will help you build familiarity with the language and allow you to begin picking out words you’ve learned. TV is a fantastic way for beginners to get input because it creates a fun positive environment for language learning and sets up the eventual goal of being able to watch shows you enjoy without subtitles. In the beginning, watch shows with English subtitles, focusing on the sounds of the language, and recognizing words. Watching shows dubbed in German is a great place to start because they use simpler language than shows originally in German, but any input you are interested in is beneficial!
You’ll hear it over and over again: consistency is key to fluency. Now that you know how to learn a language, you need a plan. Below, you’ll find a Notion planner with a suggested study schedule. You can either copy the example or create your own. To access the schedule template, open the link below and click the “Get Template” button in the upper left corner. If you already have a Notion account, the template will be added automatically. If not, you can create a free account.
At this stage, I recommend studying for about an hour a day—thirty minutes of German lessons using either Learn German with Anya or VHS, and thirty minutes of Anki (or however long it takes you to study your Anki decks). In addition to studying, make sure to get daily exposure by watching or listening to media in German. The planner is fully customizable, so you can adjust it to fit your lifestyle. Having a plan is great, but it’s also okay if you’re not always able to stick to it. Be sure to check off your calendar, even if you’re only able to spend a few minutes studying. This will remind you that you’re making progress, even if it’s just 15 minutes a day. Keep your expectations reasonable and stick with it! You will achieve your desired level of fluency one day!
In regards to speaking, I don’t recommend speaking a lot at this level unless that is something you would really like to do. At this level, you should mostly be focused on listening. You can’t speak if you don’t understand. Instead, I would recommend shadowing and mimicking what you hear. When you study your German lessons, repeat the words and sentences out loud. You can also record yourself and compare your pronunciation to the lesson audio. In addition, you should familiarize yourself with German pronunciation. You don’t need to go too much into the specifics until you are more familiar with the language. VHS’s alphabet course is enough to cover everything you need for now. If there are any specific sounds you struggle with, you can also use the link below to review the German alphabet.
Once you’ve worked your way up to a B1 course, you’re ready to move on! You don’t have to know every single word or grammar pattern from the course you followed to make progress. You’ll need to hear the grammar patterns and words you’ve learned several times in context before they really sink in. German grammar is quite different from English, so you’ll need more input before you feel fully comfortable with the language. That’s normal. Often, basic grammar can be some of the most complex to master and requires a lot of time and repetition. For example, der, die, and das are some of the first words you learn in German, but they will never stop being a thorn in your side. If you’ve completed VHS’s A2 course, you’ve learned about 1,500 words and are ready to move on.
Intermediate
Congratulations on making it to the intermediate level! Give yourself a chance to look back and see how far you’ve come. When you first started this journey, you knew nothing, now you should be able to read and understand simple paragraphs and know about 1,500 words. Now it’s time to move on to the fun resources! When you first start using more complex and native sources, you will struggle. This is normal. It’s called the intermediate plateau. The intermediate plateau is when you know a lot of words and basic grammar, but you still can’t understand native material. A lot of people become discouraged when they hit this plateau, and they get stuck at the intermediate level for years. But, you need to keep going. Don’t be afraid of material you don’t understand. You need to stretch a little bit to learn. This guide will help make the transition to native material as painless as possible.
Below you will find an example of an intermediate learner’s schedule as well as a link to the intermediate Notion planner. You’ll notice that this planner looks a lot more interesting than the beginner planner. That’s because your priority at the intermediate level is input. You can’t speak if you don’t listen and you can’t write if you don’t read. Your highest priority should be listening to German, then reading, studying vocabulary, speaking, and lastly writing. We’ll go into detail on all of these later. You can alter your schedule to fit your lifestyle. If there’s a day when you’re busy, your study time may be just one YouTube video. Don’t try to cram everything into one day though. Know your limits and how much you can handle. Studying for six hours is no good if you forget everything you learned. Make a balanced schedule and stay consistent. That’s the key to success.
Remember that fewer resources are better than more resources. Don’t jump around watching different TV shows or listening to different podcasts. Find one resource for each category you like, then stick with it for a while. Listen to a single podcast’s episodes or read one book during your study time. This will allow you to focus on the specific vocabulary and grammar used in that resource. Fluency comes in pockets, so every time you switch to a new resource, you’ll be confronted by a bunch of words you don’t know. It’s also always a good idea to re-read or re-listen to content. This will help you remember the vocabulary and grammar better, as well as allow you to pick up on pronunciation and intonation.
Active vs Passive Study
Your study schedule should strike a balance between active and passive learning. You may also hear other language learners refer to this as intensive and extensive learning. Active or intensive learning involves actively breaking down and understanding German content, such as studying flashcards or grammar. Speaking and writing are also considered active activities because they require active recall of the language. Passive or extensive learning, on the other hand, involves listening to or reading German without focusing on the study aspect. Instead, you’re focused on the content itself, absorbing as much input as possible. During passive study, you may use a dictionary to quickly look up words, but you’re not concerned with remembering or fully understanding everything.
The same resource can be used for both active and passive learning. For example, if I read an article and stop at every sentence to look up all the words I don’t know and make flashcards from those words to study them, that’s active learning. If I read the article, quickly look up a few unfamiliar words, and continue reading once I’ve seen the definitions, that’s passive learning. With active learning, it will take you longer to get through a resource, but you’ll remember it better and learn more new vocabulary and grammar. With passive study, you’ll get through the resource faster and gain more input, but you may not retain as much new vocabulary or remember it as well.
Your study time should balance both, as each has its benefits and drawbacks. Since active learning can be mentally draining, I recommend dedicating about 1/3 of your study time to active learning and 2/3 to passive learning.
VPN
Before we dive into any specific resources, let’s talk about VPNs. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is an application that will allow you to access region-locked content, such as German-language TV shows or apps that can only be accessed in German-speaking countries. A VPN allows for better immersion in native content, and for you to more easily connect with native speakers. Unfortunately, a good VPN is not free, but they are pretty cheap at only a few dollars a month. While not completely necessary, if you spend money on one language learning tool, it should be a VPN.
Listening
Listening to German is your number one priority from here on out. To speak and understand German like a native speaker, you’ll need to listen to the language as much as a native speaker. When studying a foreign language, many people wonder why it’s so hard to learn another language, when their native language was so easy to learn. What they forget is how much time they’ve spent listening to and learning their native language. From the moment you’re born, you are surrounded by your native language every single day. If you hear your language for a minimum of 8 hours a day, that’s about 3,000 hours a year or 15,000 hours by 5 years old, and that’s a low estimate. Most people listen to their native language for most of their waking hours. This includes TV, video games, music, and talking with other people. Then in school, you take classes in your native language until you graduate. Children are not inherently better at language learning, they are just more likely to be in an environment where they need to learn a language, and they are also ok with not understanding everything. The mistake a lot of adults make is to give up and go back to their native language when they can’t understand something. You need to be ok with not understanding everything, that’s part of the learning process. Your comprehension will get better as you progress, especially if you use content you like. Listening to German should be fun! It shouldn’t be a chore. As you improve, you’ll be able to enjoy all the things you enjoy in your native language in German!
To make the transition to native content easier, programs like Trancy and Language Reactor exist to help you along the way. Their main purpose is to assist with your comprehension of German by allowing you to click on words in the subtitles of German videos for an instant translation. These programs also allow you to add dual subtitles so you can have German and English subtitles at the same time. I highly recommend installing the Trancy or Language Reactor extension to help you watch videos in German.
Everyone enjoys TV shows and movies, and they’re fantastic for language learning because they provide dialogue in context. If you have the subtitles on, you can practice reading at the same time. When you first start watching German TV, I recommend sitcoms or dubbed cartoons, as these will be much easier to understand and the vocabulary will be more relevant for daily conversation. Begin by watching with dual subtitles, and as you improve, switch to using only German subtitles. When you make the switch to German-only subtitles, start with TV shows you’ve already seen, as these will be much easier to understand than unfamiliar content.
YouTube is a global platform with creators from all over the world making it one of the best platforms for language learning. There’s something for everyone on YouTube, and it’s a great place for free content in naturally-spoken German.
Podcasts are great for passively listening to German while you do other tasks. There are so many great podcasts for every level that you’re sure to find something you like!
Reading
Reading is a great way to pick up new words and vocabulary at your own pace, and it will dramatically increase your comprehension of both written and spoken German. You should try to read about four times a week for 20 minutes at a time. When you first start reading, you’ll struggle a lot, but that’s why there are lots of tools available to make reading easier and more fun! I usually read on my phone because it’s the most convenient for me, and it makes it easy to look up words, but you can read on any device you like, as long as you’re reading.
There are lots of reading resources out there, but as a beginner, you should start with articles aimed at non-native speakers. As you improve, you can slowly move on to novels and comics. While it may be tempting to immediately jump to the stuff you want to read, you should take it slow. Start with something you’ve already read in English, it will help your comprehension a lot. If you start with something you want to read, you’ll be frustrated by your speed and lack of understanding. It’s better to save those materials for later when you’re better at reading.
Vocabulary/Flashcards
At this level, it’s still a good idea to make and study flashcards, as they will help you remember new words and grammar patterns. Create flashcards from words you’ve encountered while reading or listening. This ensures you’re focusing on commonly used vocabulary. You should also include sentences on all your flashcards, so you can learn each word in context. You can use Anki for studying, or a dictionary like dict.cc, which has built-in flashcards. Just make sure all your flashcards are in one place and that you review them regularly. I recommend studying flashcards for 10-15 minutes every day at this level. If you don’t want to spend time creating a custom deck and would rather use a premade one, you can find a link to a premade deck with 10,000 vocabulary words in the article below.
Speaking
Even though you’ve learned a lot of German, you probably still don’t feel ready to talk. That’s ok. It takes a lot of time to speak a language easily. Shadowing will help you become familiar with speaking German and developing a good accent. Before you start shadowing, you should brush up on your German pronunciation, so you know what to look out for when you practice. You should practice shadowing twice a week for no more than 20 minutes at a time because of how tiring it can be.
If you are really excited to start talking and ready to go for it, you can use a language exchange website to connect with native speakers and practice your conversation skills. However, this is not necessary at this level.
Writing
Writing isn’t very important at the intermediate level, instead, you should be focusing on reading. If you would like to write, I recommend using a language exchange site, as mentioned above, for connecting with native speakers, so you can practice sending messages in German. This will be more helpful for your German than trying to write journals or essays at this point in your language journey.
What To Do When You Don’t Understand A Sentence
While most of the resources introduced above can easily be paired with pop-up dictionaries and other comprehension assistants, not all sentences will be understandable to you even if you know all the words. When you come across new grammar, the meaning may not be immediately clear. At this level, you should learn new grammar patterns as you come across them, so you can learn common grammar in context. The article below goes into detail on how to look up unknown grammar patterns and use grammar resources.
And that’s everything you need to know for the intermediate level. Once you can easily understand a variety of daily conversation topics and feel comfortable using tools to look up German words and grammar, you’re ready to move on to the advanced level. You should know about 5,000 words at this point and that means you’re ready to start using what you know!
Advanced
Welcome to the advanced level! Very few people make it this far, so you should be incredibly proud of yourself. You’ve come a long way since you first started. This is the level that never ends because learning a language is a lifelong journey. There will always be aspects of a language you don’t know. This is true even for native speakers. Instead of trying to learn everything, focus on the areas most relevant to you and direct your goals and attention there. For example, if you want to be able to speak confidently at a business meeting, you should read a lot of business-related articles and practice writing and speaking using business German. If you want to be able to easily understand movies, then you should watch a lot of movies and even practice writing your own script. You will build pockets of fluency in different areas, which will all come together to make you better at the language. As you progress, it will also become easier and easier to acquire new areas of fluency. At this point, you know all the basics, now it’s just a matter of practice and exposure!
At the advanced level, you should primarily be consuming media made for native German speakers. You will also begin focusing on output, such as writing and speaking, now that you’re more familiar with the language. If you look at the schedule below, you’ll see that it closely resembles the intermediate schedule. This is because you should still be getting plenty of input, but the input should be more challenging. However, writing and speaking should also have a place in your weekly routine. These activities can be draining and time-consuming, so start simple—spend just 30 minutes once a week on each, then gradually increase the time and frequency as you become more comfortable. This is the stage where you’ll see all your hard work pay off as you start having conversations and easily consume native media.
Listening
Listening is still your top priority even at the advanced level; however, you should consume content intended for native speakers almost exclusively. If you’re still using dual subtitles when watching shows, it’s time to get rid of them. You should be relying minimally on your native language at this point, only using it to occasionally look up new words or difficult grammar. Anything in German with audio is a listening resource, so it’s up to you to decide what resources are most relevant for you and suitable for your abilities.
Reading
Reading at this level will mostly consist of books and articles intended for native speakers. I highly encourage you to find your own sources for articles that interest you. If you’re looking for science articles, search wissenschaft and look through the websites that pop up. Bookmark any of the websites you like so you can return to them later. I recommend doing this for every topic you want to learn about in German.
Speaking
You should now have a solid foundation and understand enough German to start talking. I recommend continuing to shadow at least once a week until you can easily mimic native speech. You should also start reaching out to natives to schedule practice sessions and improve your spoken German. As you progress, you should try to connect with German speakers who can’t speak English, so you can fully immerse yourself in conversation, although this may be a bit difficult outside of Germany.
Writing
Writing regularly will increase your ability to think and process German. It will help you build your vocabulary and expand your grammar capabilities. I recommend starting a journal or a blog where you can keep your writing and track your improvement. You should try to write at least once a week.
Vocabulary/Flashcards
While studying vocabulary and flashcards is always useful, it’s not as necessary at the advanced level. As an advanced learner, you should be able to pick up new words through reading and listening, and then practice using them through speaking and writing. If you enjoy flashcards and find them useful, then continue using them. If you are burnt out from flashcards, take a break from them and focus on immersion.
Congratulations! You now have all the tools and information you need to achieve fluency in German. As you continue on with your journey finding new resources and learning new topics, I wish you the best of luck. New pathways and opportunities will open for you as you continue to progress and learn. Viel Glück！
