Many people ask me for advice on how to quickly improve their German. Here are my top 5 tips on how to improve your German language skills:
#1 Learn to conjugate regular, irregular verbs in the German present tense, how other tenses like the perfekt tense, the Präteritum/imperfect tense in German, and future tense are formed, apply this simple rule on when separable verbs split in German, and study reflexive verbs by looking at logical patterns that apply to them before you commit them to memory.
#2 Focus on German syntax, i.e. where to place words in a German sentence, to avoid some of the most common mistakes foreigners make in the German language. Some tricky subordinate clause conjunctions that you need to get to grips with are als and wenn, um...zu and damit, nachdem and bevor. There are also two special kinds of subordinate clauses- relative clauses and infinitive clauses.
#3 Spend enough time learning and practicing the four cases in German and their function in a sentence, and try to memorise the most important gender rules in German.
#4 With a solid understanding of the cases, you should then turn to pronouns, prepositions and adjective endings to learn how they influence the usage of the cases. On our blog, you will posts that help you get a better understanding of the difference between mir and mich, prepositions with the accusative case, as well as dative only and genitive only prepositions.
#5 increase your vocabulary by using flash cards/index cards.
On our blog, you will find posts on many topics in German grammar that will help you to progress more quickly in German- from adjective endings in German, the four German cases, pronouns, prepositions to German syntax. We also teach you helpful German words and phrases for your next trip to Germany, list the ten most useful German verbs to get your German off the ground, give you tips on how to avoid the 5 most common grammatical mistakes in German, tell you how to translate English word busy into German, review of the language apps Duolingo, Memrise, Babbel, and Busuu, explain the difference between language levels A1, A2, B1, B2 etc., list the best online resources to learn German, give you an estimate of how long it takes to learn German,
and we compare the most popular online dictionaries Linguee, dict.cc, dict.leo and Collins. So check out our blog and let us know what you think.
Find out more about our German lessons, small German classes, and new online German courses here.
