What I Want to do with this Homepage
I want to help as many German learners as possible to make progress and improve their learning experience, motivate them to (continue) to learn and if necessary get them progressing again.
Teaching Real German
In my observation, there is often a gap between the sometimes very formal German classes in schools and the German that someone needs, who actually lives in a German speaking country. When you learn German (or other languages in my experience) the focus is often on a quite formal language, on reading literature and complex grammar. In real life this does not help so much. Therefore I use a practical approach to teach real German as people use it and cover speaking, listening, reading and writing in the way it is used in day-to-day life.
Austrian German and Culture
I also want to pass on understanding of the the Austrian way of speaking German as well as the Austrian culture, particularly for the more advanced students.
Not just Promo
I am a teacher and I teach online classes – in groups or individually. So, of course I am happy about new students. However, the plan for this homepage is not to just be a promotional action to get more students.
I hope to produce a lot of content that is so cool and helpful that there will be more and more readers and for some of them I will have the perfect class.
Free Resources
In addition to creating articles, there will be other free resources, like downloadable guides, mini courses or videos. You will find links to them either here or in articles about the same or a similar subject.
What will I find here
I believe in plans, but I do not want to be the slave of a super-rigid “content-plan“, as mostly I produce content when a student (or reader) of mine has a question or I need some written material to teach something. So often I don’t plan content that I make and will still put it here. Therefore I do not plan with exact release dates.
However, here is a rough plan of the content that I will put here in the next few months:
Troubles with Learning German and how to Solve them
* Article: Why you haven’t learned German yet
* Freebie: List of most important words and terms when learning German – including easy to understand explanations
* Article: Do we really need grammar to learn a language?
* The meanings of words and how to learn them when learning a foreign language
Grammar
* Freebie: Guide to learning „der, die, das“ and a list of the most important nouns to learn.
* Overview of cases in German
Using Reading to Learn German
* Freebie: List of books learn German (from beginner to advanced), including where to find them, different sources, free resources, etc.
* Article: How to use books to help you learn German
* Article: Using Scribd to learn German
* Article: How you can use Amazon Kindle to learn German
* Freebie: Learn German with Stories (this is a series of books)
* Short Stories and articles in German with Glossary (very practical – you can read and get translation by hovering over the word)
Spoken German and using Films and Podcasts
* 10 differences between written and spoken German
* Freebie: List of suggested films/TV series, etc. to learn German (with notes about subtitles, etc.)
* Article: Guide to use films in learning German
* Article: audio-resources to learn German (podcasts, audio books)
OK – I have so much more planned, this is just to give you an idea what you will find! If you are interested to keep in touch, absolutely sign up for my newsletter.
I would love to hear from you! What has been your biggest problem in learning German? What has been the most useful thing/action you did in learning German?
