learn german

I’ve finished my intensive German course and sat my Deutsch Zertifikat :-) There’s such a difference between my level now and when I first moved to Germany. I have the general system of the language in my head now, but I’m still lacking a lot of words. So the next step is to learn more vocab and get more into the finer details.

A couple of days ago I had a random conversation with a woman while I was in the train. She only speaks German, but I was with my husband at the time who could help us to communicate. We met up with her again recently and had a coffee and dinner together. It was really great for my German. I just tried to say things even though I didn’t know how it was going to come out or how I would end my sentences, and I found that I could say a lot more than I thought I could. It’s really boosted my confidence and my motivation :)

So far this has been going better. I’m now in the habit of regularly doing some German every day and actually with the feeling of wanting to and less like I have to force myself. Just got to keep it up.

I’m not progressing with this as fast as I could be. I’m just not spending enough time regularly on my German. So I’m going to have to organise the time and be strict with myself with sticking to it. The first thing I will do in the morning before I start work is at least half an hour of German, or one exercise out of my grammar book. That shouldn’t be too difficult, and it will guarantee that I continue moving forward. By the way, for anyone interested in teaching themselves, someone gave me a really fantastic grammar book. It’s very thorough and well organised. If you go through every exercise in order and look up every word and learn it (tedious and mechanical though it is), you’ll get a really good grounding in German grammar. It’s called “A Practice Grammar of German” (new edition) by Hilke Dreyer and Richard Schmitt and published by Max Hueber Verlag.