5 Top Tips to Help You

Speak German More Easily

 Erfolg hat drei Buchstaben: t u n !1
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be successful at speaking German, you need to speak, and trying to speak without any form or
specific goal makes it more difficult. It’s important to give yourself a specific task or framework for
speaking, otherwise you might flounder.

After all, can you imagine trying to cook a new meal without knowing what the ingredients are?
Surely not!

Would you ever set out on a road trip without looking at a map first? Probably not. (Although that
could result in some fun adventures!)

These tips serve as a road map for you. How to get from A – where you are now to B – speaking
German more easily. Try each of them out and see how they work for you. And see what you
discover along the way!

Tip #1: Read everything in your book aloud.

When you’re learning German with a textbook specifically for learning German as a Foreign
Language, you’ll be learning in a step-by-step manner with a core set of vocabulary so you are
continually adding to your knowledge in a process that makes sense. Each section or chapter is like a
portion of German.

So when you have worked through each section, read everything aloud to yourself. It gives you the
opportunity to practice:

 a text which is 100% correct

 what you’ve just learned in your lesson or course
 everything you are working on in your homework
 without having to figure anything out

Not only does this help reinforce what you’ve been learning, it helps you to literally see what’s on the
page in front of you. What the grammar concepts are, how the grammar functions, and how it’s used
correctly in your textbook.

1
lit. Success has three letters: do!
 Tip #2: Use these podcasts.

Die Deutsche Welle ist einfach unschlagbar. The „Deutsche Welle“ (DW) is the German news source
that produces the world’s news in 30 different languages and they have free German learning
resources.

One of these is the podcast Alltagsdeutsch or “everyday German.” It’s aimed at C1/C2 level learners
and includes the mp3/iTunes podcast, a transcript (they call it a “manuscript”) and exercises.

Another podcast for earlier levels of learning is the Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten, the slowly
spoken newscast. DW produces these podcasts from Monday to Saturday each week and in addition
to the audio, you also get a full transcript of the text so you can read along. This is aimed at B2/C1
learners, and although that may be a big challenge for a lot of folks, since you already know what the
events of the day are, it will be easier for you to pick up on the items as you listen.

How to use these podcasts for speaking:

A lot of people make the same mistake when they learn German: they constantly add new podcasts
to their listening routine. And they do nothing but listen to them. Once. This isn’t going to help
anyone learn German because there’s no work being done with the material.

Here’s how you can use the podcasts for speaking:

1. Listen to the podcast to get the general idea of the topic/the day’s events.
2. Listen to the podcast again, following along with the transcript.
3. Repeat step #2, repeating any sections or words that are unclear. Look up tough words
and phrases.
4. When you’re comfortable, restart the podcast and read the text aloud with the speaker.
Try only the first section and repeat. Try the next section and repeat. Do this, section by
section, as you go through the podcast.
5. Restart the podcast and read the entire text aloud as you listen to the entire podcast.

When you are done with all of this, your brain will be chock-full of German and you’ll probably be
fairly tired. Congratulations! That means you’ve worked hard. Be sure to take a break.

And then…repeat. Repeat this process the next day and the next and see how your understanding of
this podcast and its text change. What does it feel like to speak the text like a Nachrichtenmoderator?
What grammar constructions have you come across that you recognize?

If you like, give yourself percentages of how much you understand as you repeat this process on five
different days. At what point do you notice the biggest change? On day one, when you repeat
everything five times? Or perhaps on day four, when you’ve had twenty repetitions? Note that for
future podcast listening/speaking work.

Tip #3: Have a conversation…with yourself!

This works really well when you want more speaking practice and you have limited time because you
can split the work up into mini-sessions.

First, you need a two-person dialogue you’ve written in class or one from your book. Be sure it has
been checked/corrected so you’re practicing correct grammar, etc.

Second, you need a recording device, whether it’s your smart phone, free audio software like
Audacity, or a pocket-size voice recorder.

Third, you need to simply sit down and record one of the people in the dialogue, choose person A or
person B. Be sure to leave a few seconds in between each line.

Fourth, you play the recording and speak the dialogue as if it were a real conversation. Repeat.

For a lovely twist on this, you can then record the dialogue as the other person and switch it up on a
daily basis as you practice through the week. If you’re sick of this dialogue by the end of the week,
you’ve learned it well. Gut gemacht!

Tip #4: Learn your favorite movie quotes

by heart in German

There is perhaps nothing more fun than learning your favorite movie quotes in German. If it’s your
favorite movie quote already, you’re bound to know it well and you can learn something in German
which immediately means something to you. The more meaning German has to you, the better you
will learn it.

Do you know which movies these are from?

„Der Typ sah irgendwie schräg aus.“

„Beim zweiten Stern rechts und dann gerade aus.“
„Naja, ich will nicht arrogant klingen oder so, aber ich bin
der beste Botaniker auf diesem Planeten.“
The first one is from the Coen Brothers’ movie “Fargo,” and is the quote from Mr. Mohra when he
says the guy was “kinda funny-lookin’.”

The second quote is from “Peter Pan.” “Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.”

The third one is from “The Martian,” from character Mark Watney: “I don’t want to come off as
arrogant here, but I’m the greatest botanist on this planet.”

What’s your favorite movie quote? Google the name of the movie with the German word Zitate
(quotes) and voila! You’ve got it.

Once you’ve learned it and sat with it a while, ask yourself if it’s what you expected. Does it feel
different in German? Does it give you a new perspective on the same meaning? (This was true for
me when I saw Fargo in German; since I’m from the upper Midwest “funny-lookin’” is a totally normal
expression for me, I know exactly what they mean. But schräg?! Das ist ja ganz was anderes!

Tip #5: Talk to your cat/dog/dust bunnies in German.

This may sound like the weirdest tip, but it is one of the most helpful techniques if you think you are
too shy to speak in German.

Your cat/dog/dust bunnies aren’t going to judge you for making a mistake or sounding like you have
a thick accent in German. So start out with a few phrases and repeat them over the course of a week
and see how your opinion on your own speaking changes. Here are a few phrases you can say to
Muffin (or Rex):

Hast du Hunger? – Are you hungry?

Wir gehen jetzt schlafen. – We’re going to sleep now!
Was machst du? – What are you doing?

If you want to use German command forms for training your dog, you can simply google that. And
for a cat, you can easily discover German-engineered cat trees on the internet, too. Here’s my
personal favorite.

Really, though, this tip gets at the fact of the matter: all you need to do to speak German more easily
is to speak. So whether it’s to the dust bunnies, the dog, or your non-German-speaking spouse or
roommate, it all circles back to Goethe:

Erfolg hat drei Buchstaben: t u n !

~Johann Wolfang von Goethe
 Bonus Tip!
Tip #6: Find a “Tandempartner.”

This is a concept that isn’t too well known outside of Europe yet. A tandem partner is someone with
whom you exchange casual conversation in two different languages.

Let’s presume your native language is Portuguese and you want to learn German; then you find a
tandem partner who wants to learn Portuguese. You get together regularly and the first time you
speak only Portuguese, the next time German, the third time Portuguese, and you go back in forth in
this manner and help one another along.

Here are a few resources to get you started on your search for a tandem partner:

Tandempartners.org is a free service for folks living in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark,
Liechtenstein, the UK, and parts of the US. There is an option for online if you want to try that.

MyLanguageExchange.com is a web portal that includes lots of Germans willing to teach you some
German in exchange for learning another language—everything from English to Japanese!

Scrabbin.com also offers a language exchange and is, according to their site, 100% free.

I most certainly hope you’ve enjoyed these tips and the three others coming your way. For more
German learning, find me on Pinterest!

If you’d like to read more, try:

What are the best books for learning German?

Wiederholen Sie, bitte! 5 ways to re-use your German and learn more in the process.

Sprachbar von Deutsche Welle

Any recommendations in this document are just that, and not advertisements. There are no affiliate links in this
document. Should you choose to search for a tandem partner, please practice safe web practices when exchanging
information. If you have a learning technique that you think would be helpful for others, please email me here. Viel Spaß!