How to Speak German — Easy and Fast With a Smartphone

by Peter Fornai

Learning German was one of the most important achievements of my life. After I received my first official German Certification from Goethe Institute, and I also helped some friends, I decided to write this article to share ideas, tips, tricks, apps and books with a wider audience. After all, if I can do it, anyone can! This article is targeted to people, like me, who have hard time learning a new language.

I always a had hard time learning languages, in fact, I almost dropped out of my class in primary school, and later again from high school, simply because I was one of the worst language students in the class.

My school experiences did not boost my self-confidence, but I decided to never ever to give up on my purpose to learn German one day.

I wanted to socialise with German men and women, to learn more about their culture better. I also wanted to get a better professional career, improve my memory, and simply stretch my abilities. I wanted to be able to read the news, watch an original movie or read some of my favourite books in their original German language.

Smashing Through the Barriers

So “learning to speak German” remained on my bucket list for almost 20 years.

One nice day, I created a list of all the problems that I needed to overcome in order to finally learn this language. I knew from experience that if I just could name my problems, as noted below, I would be able to find a solution for each one of them:

• No energy and motivation. I failed so many times.
• Not enough time.
• Hard to memorise words and expressions.
• German grammar is difficult.
• Tongue-tied in speaking.
• A language class never worked for me.
• No opportunities to speak with native Germans.
• It is too late and I am too old.

Extrovert and Introvert Learning

Extrovert learning is about interaction, going out and socialising with others. On the other hand, the methods in this article belong to the introvert learning style. It is done alone. It is not suitable for everyone but has its advantages compared to the way extroverts learn: a larger vocabulary, a better knowledge of grammar, a shorter time to cover a wider knowledge area, and it does not require that one has access to a German-speaking community.

People say, it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert, but, fortunately, learning a language takes much less time.

Finding Who Could Help

One of the vital tricks that I learned in order to solve problems was asking these two questions:

1. What is the problem?
2. Who can help with it?

After searching on the Internet, I found that I am not alone. There are language learning communities out there, with like-minded people, who support each other in learning new languages.

I learnt about people like Ottó Gaál who passed 27 language exams, or about Benny Lewis, whose book, blog, TEDx talks and newsletters are an excellent source of motivation.

I realised that the world of study has revolutionised the 21st century. I found that for every problem I had, someone has already provided a solution. All I needed is just to simply find the right tools and use them to make my own language learning easy, fun and fast.

For any old learning method, we can now find a faster or better way. I decided to find the tools that work for me.

I also learnt the following nugget of wisdom: emotions come and go. Enthusiasm to reach a target will ebb and flow. There is no point in trying to always stay motivated. Instead, I must find a learning system that can keep me moving forward, no matter how I feel on any given day. Systems are more stable than emotions.

I did not try to stay motivated; instead, I kept my system in operation every day.

Setting the First Target

The Common European Language Framework defines six language learning levels: A1 (Beginner), A2 (Elementary), B1 (Threshold/Intermediate), B2 (Upper Intermediate), C1 (Proficient) and C2 (Mastery).

I set B1 as my initial target. B1 level is a threshold level. Under this, you will not really able to express yourself fluently, and above this you are becoming an independent user of the language. This is the very first level at which one reaches enough fluency to deal with every day situations in life. For example, you can find your way around Germany and speak with someone — even though you may speak slowly — about a topic that interests you.

In other words, B1 was the perfect level to boost my self-confidence.

By the way, B1 is also the level required to obtain a German citizenship.

Winning the 1,000-Hour Challenge

I well remember that day in Russia. It was not exactly a life and death situation but unless I found the toilet, and fast, it was about to became a very embarrassing day for me. We were too far from the hotel to change cloths.

I was running and searching frantically in the building, and, of course, I wanted to stop to ask someone but could not remember a word of Russian. I was taught (but hadn’t learnt) Russian for more than 200 class hours.

Distressed, I finally found two doors marked with “м” and “ж”. After 200 hours of teaching, I could not even tell which door to enter! I thought “м” was for “Madam” so I went for the other door…., where a bunch of furious women greeted me with a few choice words that I fortunately did not understand. Well, I know now that the spider-looking Russian letter (ж) stands for ladies.

I knew that more than 200 class room hours were worthless for learning the Russian language but I wanted to know: how long will it take for me to learn alone?

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) published these estimates for English-speaking students reaching the proficient (C1) level:

1. 600 class hours when the language is related to English: Portuguese, French, Swedish, etc.
2. 750 class hours for German. It is related to English but quite a bit harder.
3. 1100 class hours when significantly different than English, such as, Russian, Czech, Hindi, Irish, etc. Some harder languages, such as Hungarian, cat take quite a bit longer to learn.
4. 2200 class hours for very hard Languages: Japanese, Mandarin, etc.

It is nice to be proficient but what I really wanted to know is how long it would take to get to the B1 level in German.

Deutsche Welle suggested that German A1 is reached at about 75 hours, and B1 is reached in about 300–400 class hours. For comparison, according to lliance Française, French B1 is reached in about 360–400 class hours. A1 is reached at about 60–100 hours.

Searching Google a little longer, I found out that class hours are the time you spend in the class, and most students also require a very large amount of home study and practice in addition to the class hours.

I came to realise that these hours do not measure how long it takes to learn a language. They only measure how many hours the school would like to sell you to reach a certain level.

As classes did not work for me, my target was 0 class hours.

Most classes, books or audio lectures teach you words, expressions and situations that you might never need in your own life. Why would you learn the name of 200 different food items when you only need five in the shop? Or why would you learn from the class book that tells the story of a businessman or a tourist whose life is likely to be absolutely different than your own? It is useless. There is little point in wasting time with learning to discuss situations that you will not need in your everyday life.

For Every Method There is a Faster Method

For example, class learning is so much slower than private tutoring. It is like comparing a smooth flight to a boring bus ride.

Learning from a book is slower than using a modern interactive application version of the same book where no time is wasted searching for definitions, audio materials or solutions to tasks.

Learning from word lists is slower than learning word cards. Using word study apps on your smartphone is even faster, but I will address that later.

In the very near future, computers will be able to adapt to exactly the way you study. They will tailor the study materials to your personal needs, practice with you exactly what you need to practice, and repeat things in the very moment when you are about to forget them. Some applications described in this article have come closer to this purpose, but even the best-of-breed applications like Duolingo, Memrise, Anki, etc. are still light years away from what computers would be capable of today.

How Much Self-Study will I Need?

At this stage, I had three options from which to choose:

1. Learn just enough to pass the B1 exam. I found a video of a girl passing the B1 exam in only 14 days.
2. Learn to be fluent in my own areas of interest. In other words, why learn 3,500 words when I only need around a thousand? The earlier-mentioned book “Fluent in 3 months,” describes remarkable tactics and strategies to shortcut the learning time of both words and grammar.
3. Study up to a strong B1 level. I thought that if Deutsche Welle students could learn German in 400 hours plus home study hours, then even with my poor speed, I would be able to do it in 1,000 hours.

While option 1 and 2 was tempting, I decided to go for a wider and deeper knowledge (option 3). This would enable me to improve my language faster in order to get to the C1 (proficient) level.

Learning 3,500 words from scratch is not as difficult as it sounds. Thousands of German words are actually very close to their English equivalent. These are called cognates. I do not recommend anyone go out and study the list of these words, but the list of cognates is available on Wikipedia and other webpages. It is comforting to know that the study time will be a lot shorter than you might have initially thought!

At this stage, I had a decision to make. Am I ready to set aside 1,000 hours for this last and final attempt to study German? For me the answer was “yes!”.

I always enjoyed reaching my goals. There is something satisfying in knowing that I achieved something significant.

At this stage, I did not think of the 1,000-hour estimate as a negative or a positive thing. It simply meant the distance I needed to go in order to reach my goal. Like an archer needs to determine the distance to accurately estimate the effort required to hit his target, I also had my aim set firmly on my goal:

1. 3,500 words to not only memorise but also to learn to use in a sentence. The Goethe Institute publishes a freely available list of words with sample sentences for the B1 Certificate here. For reference, an average native German uses 12,000–15,000 active words.
2. 100 pages of grammar. The grammar topics are listed here.
3. 1,0o0 hours of study.

A1 Beginner Level Tools

As a beginner, I only needed to use a few tools.

I tried over a hundred other phone apps along the way but I found these three to be the best to get myself or my friends on the right path.

Breaking Through the “Not Enough Time” Barrier

The first problem I had was time.

My smartphone provided the perfect solution. It was always with me and always available to use.

Even when I only had one minute to spare, for example, while waiting in the queue at the cashier, I could use Duolingo to practice a few sentences or Memrise to learn one or two new words.

The greatest breakthrough happened when I realised that I do not have to give up 1,000 hours of TV watching. Both of these apps are perfectly usable while watching a movie! Of course, with less concentration on study, it is not as efficient, but I was perfectly happy to discover that learning words and practising grammar takes no time away from one of my favourite pastimes.

Memrise: the Fast Way to Study Words

Computers can keep track of every single word you studied, when you have last seen them, how many times you have seen them and how well did you know them.

They can repeat the words for you at exactly the right time for you to memorise it most efficiently.

Memrise is such an application. It is available for the smartphone and on the Internet. It will not only keep track of your memory, it will also give you pronunciation, practise with you the spelling and also give you visual help (called “mnemonics”) to memorise the word blinking fast.

Here is one example of menomics:

Mist is a lovely name for a perfume, isn’t it? It is a famous perfume. They tried to market it also in Germany only to discover that sales were not going really well. Why? Mist in German means manure or dung. I bet after this story you will remember what mist means in German!

Your target at this stage is to learn 1,000 very frequently used German words. There are plenty of word lists from which to choose in Memrise. As a beginner, it is absolutely vital that you choose the right one:

1. A list that contains frequently used words.
2. A list that also contains pronunciation with audio.
3. A list in which you also need to write down the words to practice.
4. Preferably find a list with examples and visual aids, mnemonics for better study.

This word list one was one of the best when I was writing this article:

Why 1,000 words? If you plan to study from a book, knowing approximately 1,000 words is really a must to understand the sample sentences.

By the way, you should not waste your time learning from a book how to pronounce “ei” vs. “ie” in German. After you learnt about 1,000 words, it will really come to you naturally with ease. You will also be able to spell German words correctly after hearing them clearly spoken.

A word of warning. Memrise is an addictive application. After a while you might find it hard to stop learning. A surprising thing might happen: you might find that it is fun to learn new words!

Duolingo: the Fun Way To Study

I will keep this part short: try Duolingo. One of the very best methods to study a language that is available today. It covers every key grammar topics of the German language with quite a few practice lessons. Similar to Memrise, it keeps track of what you need to revise and learn next.

Duolingo is one of the most addictive language learning apps available today. It is fun and also efficient. The added bonus for me was that I could use it to learn while watching TV at the same time.

There is also a test in Duolingo that you can take from time to time to monitor your progress. Here are my results:

I got 100% result right after I also received my B1 Certification from the Goethe Institute.

Private Teachers

As much as I love applications, they are no replacement for a good grammar book or a private tutor.

Duolingo does cover the B1 grammar of the Goethe certificate, but it will not teach you to speak with a real life person.

I was learning for a long time without any teacher using the applications and the books provided here. As my example indicates, it is possible to learn that way, but to learn to speak, I needed a person with which to interact.

Especially as a beginner, it is very important that someone helps you through your first tentative steps in the language. Here are some excellent websites to find a tutor or a learning buddy:

• italki.com
• www.mylanguageexchange.com
• www.tandempartners.org

The italki.com is very popular in language learning communities. Here you can find not only teachers, but also see their prices, availability and also agree on a suitable time for a lesson.

I also found some very talented and even famous teachers simply by typing search words like these into Google: “Skype,” “Online,” “German,” “teacher,” “tutor”. This is also the least expensive method by far to find a professional teacher who can give you classes using Skype or other online phone applications.

Learning the Grammar

The most efficient way to learn grammar is to actually learn it.

As I mentioned earlier Duolingo does cover the B1 grammar really well with practice materials, but German is not an easy language.

Unfortunately, there is no application today that replaces a good grammar book or a private tutor who explains the grammar rules of the German language to you. This A1 book pictured here and its A2 version are suitable for beginners to learn, even without the support of a German teacher.

After you have studied your first 1,000 words, you will be ready to learn from other books cited in this article and move on to the next level.

A2 Elementary Level Tools

I would not start at this level before you master a bit of grammar. (Half way through Duolingo is enough.)

Duolingo and iTalki were still my best friends, but it was time to start to use some new tools.

I found Google Translate and good dictionaries like Collins or Langenscheidt quite handy to use from time to time.

Many people rated Teach Yourself as one of the best self-learning books available. And now there is an interactive version of it! It is definitely a more efficient and enjoyable way to learn than from a dusty paper book with a CD.

I do hope we will have many other similar interactive books in the future. For example, Busuu, Babbel are also a step in the right direction. These apps provide further reading materials for a deeper immersion into the language in case you need it.

After my first 1,000 words, I found that my ability to learn new words improved immensely. The human brain has an amazing ability to reorganise itself and adapt to the need to learn 50, 100 or even more words a day.

I started to spice up my study with other word-card applications. Unfortunately, I also found out the hard way, that most of them are a waste of time to download. I had to admit to myself that I wasted valuable time trying to use other apps in vain.

After an exhaustive search, I found the following two to stand out in quality from the crowd: Renkara cards and Heuber Deutsch Box. These are not as smart as Memrise. These are only dumb card flipping applications, but I needed a way to make my learning more interesting.

I usually suggest Memrise to a beginner because it is like a real teacher. It controls all aspect of your progress, prompts you to advance, and even gets you to practice spelling. These are very important aspect when you are just starting out.

As Memrise is an addictive application, some of my friends did not want to switch to any other application. However, I did find abetter one that uses the very same study principles but provides you far more control to study. It is called Anki. Three word lists I would recommend: a word list of the B1 exam with sample sentences, 1,000 most frequent words and 4,000 most frequent words with audio and sample sentences.

Memrise forces you to go through a set of exercises with each new word. It is useful for beginners, but for an advanced student, it can be an annoying and slow process.

Anki also provides you with various statistics of your study, such as the hours spent studying. For example, it tracks how many mistakes you make during different hours of the day, and you can time your study to the most efficient part of the day.

Learning While Driving

As I drive a lot and like to take long walks, I also looked for some excellent voice recorded materials:

1. “Primsleur method” materials. It was not exactly the best choice for me as it caused me to fall asleep. Yes, it can be that boring… However, I know it will help many others. It is one of the best-in-class methodologies to learn purely from listening materials.
2. Michel Thomas materials. I found these the best for me. He was a language teaching genius. You can find a videos of him teaching on YouTube. Unfortunately, his voice recordings are not as efficient as learning from him in person, so I suggested a few other tools you might find effective.
3. Some might remember that I also recommended germanpod101.com earlier. As this is not efficient and a bit on the expensive side, I no longer recommend it.

Primsleur and Michel Thomas can be fully studied just by listening without ever consulting any written materials or doing exercises.

All the You Need to Learn the Grammar

If I could only recommend one grammar book, it would be Einfach Grammatik. It explains the grammar in easy terms and contains plenty of exercises to make it more interesting.

For the B1 level, it is more than enough to easily pass the grammar tests.

When I got stuck or slowed down with Duolingo, this book put me back on the track. I would even go so far to say that these modern grammatical books with exercises, sound recordings, examples, etc. are a more efficient way to study than Duolingo. However, as this book is fully written in German, it is not recommended for the beginner.

Below are some similarly good grammar books all available from Amazon. Note: I only started to practice from these after my exam to deepen my grammar knowledge in order to move toward my next target: the C1 level.

Preparing for the B1 Exam

The core skills of learning a language are reading, listening, speaking and writing. One also needs auxiliary skills like pronunciation, and the most important skill that is required in all of this is memorization.

I included here on the diagram some good solid practice tools if someone still needs to practice after the numerous other tools I provided in this article.

Memorization

According to science, exercise, good sleep and food improve memory.

When I have a choice between learning for three hours or learning for two hours with a half an hour exercise, I would go for the latter. First of all, it is not easy to concentrate for long, and more and more studies prove that exercising during learning greatly improves memory.

I also found that a good night’s sleep improves both my memory and my ability to concentrate. It really does make a tremendous difference while practising with Anki, Memrise and Duolingo.

Writing Skills

I found that I needed to improve my writing skills in order to pass the exam. I used the following website for this: lingq.com. For a small fee (or for free), I could get a very good level of correction to my writings within hours. I am sure that I would not have passed my exam without writing essays and getting corrections to them on this website.

Reading Skills

• Lingq.com also has online reading materials with a translation tool that is a breeze to use.
• Search for books on Amazon or on the Internet with these keywords: “Bilingual books” and “Zweisprachige bücher.”
• One book that is known by all is The Little Prince. It is freely downloadable from the Internet, both in English and German, as well as many other languages.

Speaking Skill

I have already written about finding a private tutor or a learning buddy earlier in this article.

I also used Couchsurfing with success. You can find people here travelling in your area who are looking for a couch to crash for the night. I met with a few German native speakers who were more than happy to speak with me in German in exchange for sleeping on my couch, and for a glass of hot coffee or milk that I offered them. I could not imagine an easier way to improve my German than in the comfort of my own home. I must admit though that some patience is required here. Not everyone is interested to speak with the host, and especially not in their native language while travelling in an English-speaking country.

Listening Skills

FluentU and also Yabbla has a large selection of short videos with subtitles in English and German. They are organised according to difficulty level.

Having Fun

Children learn to speak effortlessly while they are having fun and enjoying themselves. There is no reason why we could not also have some fun during learning.

On the screenshot of my phone, you can see some games I tried and enjoyed. There are all kind of games from Crosswords, Hangmen to a sophisticated adventure game of the Goethe Institute.

Moving Beyond B1

One of the first things I learnt from the polyglot community was that I should not waste my time trying to find a perfect book or course. Instead, I should find one that is good enough and then learn and do all the exercises in it. When I got stuck, slowed down or lost interest, I simply just moved onto the next tool that I needed at that point in my progress.

This year I moved to German-speaking area so I no longer use these application very often. I have dozens of German channels on my TV, access to local newspapers, and can talk to natives whenever I feel like it. However, for those who have no such possibilities, I have included below a list that I found earlier helpful to my own progress:

• “Das Erste” free TV application. I Started first with children programs, then I tried to watch “Tatort”, the famous detective series. This one is still hard for me but excellent stuff nevertheless.
• Der Spiegel, Der Spiegel for Children Interactive App, Focus Magazin. Try also to search using the words ““Deutsche Zeitungen” to find something you like.
• 2,800 Bücher Free app.
• Quotes and Poems apps in German containing thousands of works from German writers.
• German Radios Online
• Facebook pages to follow to get a shot of German every time I open Facebook: DW Deutsche Welle, Ich Liebe Deutsch, Deutsch- lernen und noch mehr, etc.
• YouTube channels to follow: Easy German, German Films with English Subtitles, etc.
• Deutsche Welle has some interesting tools for language learners, such as the Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten complete with a dictionary of words used in the news.

The Only Thing That Matters

In closing, I would like to demonstrate one important point using Duolingo’s community feature.

I grayed out the names, but you can see here the only difference between success and failure. Over 20 of my Facebook friends and I all started more or less at the same time using Duolingo. During the first weeks, I was often left behind by one or the other. Some of my friends were going really fast, but look at this recent chart taken about a year later. Week after week, months after months, I kept collecting points and doing exercises. I have a full time job, so, on some days, I could only spare five to ten minutes for my Duolingo progress.

Can you see what happened to the others? They made the biggest mistake that a language learner can commit: they stopped. Only one person was still practicing during the month I took this screenshot approximately a year later. [Update: a few of my friends have continued their study. It is never too late to continue.]