Are you studying the German language? What are your steps in your learning process? What do you think are the best programs to learn German?
Features of a good German program
If you’ve ever tried learning a language, it’s likely that you’ve encountered the stereotypically dull method where you memorize vocabulary through lists of orderly but mainly useless terms. You leave a course or class knowing expressions like “The woman eats an apple” or “What color is the boy’s shirt?”
Unfortunately, you won’t use such statements very often in everyday life. You can start speaking right away if you enroll in a course or program that teaches vocabulary in a useful way.
This strategy usually results in you talking about yourself. You get knowledge about things like your origins, interests, likes, and dislikes. This will give you the chance to practice your German by actually using it with real people and is much more practical than the word lists listed above.
It teaches German grammar well
German grammar does present some distinctive grammatical obstacles, although not as challenging for fluent English speakers as the grammar in languages like Japanese or Arabic. It will take some getting used to the altered clause order, grammatical genders, and grammatical cases.
Here are a couple of the common pain areas in German grammar:
Word order and clauses
German often uses the same rigorous subject-verb-object (SVO) word order as English. In contrast to English, you can rearrange some sentence components without affecting the overall meaning of the statement (to see what I mean you can watch the video below).
Grammatical gender
If you’ve studied a Romance language like French or Spanish, you should be familiar with the fact that every noun in German has a specific grammatical gender that isn’t always related to the gender of the real person or thing you’re talking about.
In German, there are three different grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The type of article and accompanying adjectives depends on the word’s gender.
How a good program handles German grammar
While a good course should give you useful information you can use in everyday circumstances, it should also spend the required time and make an effort to ensure that you grasp the grammar. You can understand what happens “behind the scenes” of phrases and sentences if you have a strong command of grammar.
German grammar will start to feel more natural as you become more at ease with it, and you’ll be able to form proper sentences without much difficulty. If all a course teaches you is vocabulary or pre-made sentences, you’ll be able to talk right away, but your language skills will eventually plateau.
You will eventually have to deal with grammar. It aids in your language learning on all levels. At Live Fluent, we frequently discuss how to acquire a language’s four components—reading, writing, speaking, and listening—all at once.
As a complete novice, you might concentrate more on one or two characteristics than the others, but all four should be included in your weekly German study diet. This is significant since all five aspects are interconnected.
If you read, write, speak, and hear a German word, you’re more likely to learn it rapidly. By viewing the language as a cohesive whole rather than as a collection of fragments, you can better understand it.
A good learning program will help you blend reading, writing, speaking, and listening into your German practice.
Our picks for the top German learning programs
Rocket German
Rocket German is one of the best programs for learning German. In order to achieve this, it offers two different sorts of lessons: audio lessons and language/culture lessons.
The focus of the audio classes is dialogues that have been recorded. The dialogues typically teach the language in “chunks” or phrases rather than individual words and provide English explanations (this is perfect for learning conversational German).
By doing so, you can mix and combine the sentences to begin speaking right away or utilize them as stock words. Grammar is the main topic of discussion in language and culture lessons. Every lesson starts with an example sentence and dissects it grammatically.
German101
German101 is one of the best programs on the list. The teachers do a superb job of keeping the lessons interesting by basing them on a German discussion between native speakers. Lessons are constructed around conceivable real-world situations, such as browsing the grocery store, placing a meal order, or simply catching up with an old acquaintance.
This keeps the vocabulary in line with what an elementary or middle school pupil needs to know in order to begin speaking the language. Although less structured than Rocket German, it is nevertheless a useful tool for learning German and is also considerably less expensive.
Transcripts, a built-in flashcard system, and many other helpful features are available on the website.
Duolingo
One of the first programs we typically suggest for learning a new language is Duolingo. Use of it is enjoyable, efficient, and free. The software is designed with a game-like structure and mostly teaches grammar using definitions and sample sentences.
While using the app, users must speak, read, write, and listen. One of the most well-known language learning apps available is without a doubt Duolingo.
Its popularity and success pretty much speak for themselves. Since the app is free to use, go check it out if you haven’t already.
What is the best program to learn German?
This concludes our list of the top German learning resources. The fact that each of these courses offers a free trial is a fantastic feature. You may easily take one of them for a test drive to determine whether it’s the correct one for you or if it sparks your curiosity.
Every learner of German has unique learning objectives, preferences, and requirements. When it comes to language classes, there is no one size fits all solution. Keep using the one that serves you best!
