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Better German Podcast with Susi

Susanne Schilk-Blümel
Since 09/2023 51 episodes

51 7 Ways to Practice German Even If You Don’t Live in Germany or Austria

2025-11-27 38 min

Description & Show Notes

If you’re ready to finally speak with confidence — not just “know things” — this course is built for you. Clear explanations, practical exercises, and the kind of guidance that actually gets you talking. Pre-sale is live now, and it’s the perfect moment to jump in before doors fully open.
 
In Episode 51 of the Better German Podcast, host Susi Blumel walks you through the 7 ways of practicing German even when you are not a native speaker yourself. She busts the myth that only native speakers can teach you well.  and why it’s absolutely not required for becoming a confident German speaker. Instead, you’ll hear what actually matters when you’re learning: clarity, structure, practice, and saying things out loud until they stick. Simple, practical, and freeing!

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Summary
🔥 Pre-Sale Now Open: Get Talking — German for Beginners and Restarters
  • Early access is available only for podcast listeners and newsletter subscribers—email podcast@bettergerman.info to join the interest list. 
This episode gives you 7 clear and easy ways to practice German every day, no matter your level. Susi explains how to use simple sentences, repeat words out loud, listen actively, and work with short examples so your brain gets used to the language. She also talks about common mistakes learners make and how to avoid them, including thinking you always need a native speaker. By the end, you will know exactly how to practice in a way that helps you speak more, remember more, and feel more confident.

Key Topics 🔎
  • Why so many learners struggle to find people to practice with — and what to do about it.
  • The truth about practicing with native speakers (and when you don't need one).
  • 7 practical ways to practice German daily — even if you're learning alone.
  • How repeating simple sentences out loud boosts your speaking confidence.
  • Using audio, video, and dictionaries to get clear, reliable pronunciation.
  • Why a study partner at your level can speed up your learning.
  • Where to find conversation partners online, including in the Better German Community .
  • Using movies, series, and subtitles to train your ear for German.
  • Local meetups, cultural centers, and language cafés you can join near you.
  • A first look at the Get Talking — German for Beginners and Restarters course.
  • What’s coming next: a deep dive into strong (irregular) German verbs.
  • Early access is available only for podcast listeners and newsletter subscribers—email podcast@bettergerman.info to join the interest list. 
  • For questions, topic requests, or course interest, also email podcast@bettergerman.info
 Other Resources📚
  • You might find these PDFs helpful:
▫️ Episode 14 → Download PDF: Guide to German Movies
▫️ Episode 45 → Download PDF: Verbs Practice Guide
▫️ Episodes 46 and 50 → Download PDF: Practice sentences with German clothes vocabulary

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Transcript

You do not need, necessarily, a native speaker to practice, particularly if you are at the very beginning. However, it is very important to get to listen to native speakers, and learn how to say a word. The very, very first thing, is whenever you can, try to get the pronunciation ideally from a native speaker. Welcome to the Better German podcast. I am Susi Blümel, a German teacher and founder of Better German. This podcast helps to learn German in a simple and clear way. With useful words, clear sentence structures, pronunciation, and real life topics from daily life and culture. You'll also get tips for learning German and understanding how the language actually works. And when you're ready, we have a free community and courses to support you even more. Hello! Welcome to the next episode of the Better German podcast. Today what we're going to do is I'm going to cover a few ideas on how to practice German. So basically what a few of you have communicated to me, to me is that you feel, and this was particularly people that do not live in Germany or Austria, but I'm going to cover things for both groups. But anyway, what was communicated is that they had trouble actually practicing German, like finding people to speak German. So the first thing I want to cover is that, someone recently, told me he was, he needed to find native German speaking people, and it was almost impossible, and basically he thought that that was the reason why he couldn't continue learning German. And I wanted to say something about that. I've made this observation, and by the way, this is not true about just learning German, it's the same thing with English. There is a very, very, very big importance, given to the idea that you can only learn a foreign language by, talking to or being taught by native speakers. There is many institutes that even kind of like look for people that have, the languages and native language, and not necessarily anything else other than that. For example, that would mean like, that I would place the highest, necessity when I was looking for German, teachers to teach German for me, that I would value the fact that they're native speakers over any other people skills, teaching skills or anything. And, in my observation, my personal observation, teaching both English and German as a foreign language, I'm telling you, I don't think that just the fact that somebody speaks a native language or a language natively does not make him a good teacher, and I know that for a fact. I'm originally trained an English teacher. So my native language is German. Maybe if you've been following me, you know that. Sorry, I'm sorry. But I'm getting, I'm coming to a point here about this native speaker thing and it has something to do with practicing. The point is, I grew up speaking German. I learned English as a second language. I literally started tutoring people in English when I was like 11 years old. I helped another student of mine, for example, that was my first student actually. Her name was Claudia. She was a colleague of mine, she was a fellow student and she had problems in English. I was a good student in English, and, we were during the school year, I think it was our second grade in what we call "Gymnasium" in Austria. So that would be the sixth grade in total. And we were about 11 years old, as I said, and she had troubles and she was almost failing the class. So in June she had an exam and in that exam, like an oral exam that would decide whether she was going to fail the class or not, we learned, I learned with her. I helped her and, she passed. So that was my first teaching experience. By the way, that story I have never told anybody. So the point here is I learned English as a second language, and that's how I kind of thought, I had the idea on how to teach it to someone else. Many, many, many years later, I actually found the way how I'm teaching English as a second language now, so I did my English teacher education in St. Louis in a place called, Spanish Lake. It's applied Scholastics International, and I did my teacher training there. The system was amazing. It was like not so much grammar and we were using a lot of building vocabulary, practicing from the first lesson, building sentences. It was amazing. Even though I was obviously fluent at that time I was also on a translations project, so yes, I was like really thrilled. I was so thrilled that I did my teacher English education and I started teaching English after that. I made it my job. I hadn't particularly planned that at that point in time. I came there because it was a great opportunity and I wanted to help and I was on a translations project. And then I came back and I started teaching English but I went back to Austria and there were a lot of people that didn't speak, I mean, there are a lot of people in Austria that don't speak German as a native language or don't speak German. And they asked me if I couldn't teach them I actually started teaching right at that time, but honestly, deep down, I didn't really like it so much because I didn't have the same level of simplicity and I hadn't figured out how to teach German on the same level of simplicity at that time. And I'm telling you, it is hard because when you learn German as a kid, it's different than when you teach German and when you learn it as a native speaker. That is a fact. I mean, you are not going to go back and seriously try to learn German, or any language, exactly the same way you learned your native language. Because when you learn your native language, it took you years. It took you years until you even started speaking. So you'll spend a lot of time and I don't think it makes sense to try to learn another language exactly, like 100% in the same way. But I also think it doesn't work to do it the way it is very often done now in schools, meaning that you only learn it based on grammar and so on. So that's not what I'm saying. However, the point I wanted to make is just the fact that somebody is a native speaker does not necessarily, mean that he knows how to explain his language. This is probably a too long introduction to tell you, that you do not need, necessarily, a native speaker to practice, particularly if you are at the very beginning. However, it is very important to listen to native speakers, and learn how to say a word That is something is helpful. So let's go through how can you practice without necessarily needing a native speaker? We're going to include that thing too, however. Good. The very, very first thing, is whenever you can, try to get the pronunciation ideally from a native speaker. So for example, when you learn in any of my courses, you will learn the pronunciation because you will either hear me, depending on what type, or what tier or what lesson you are, but you will hear me say the words. Then, and that is the very first part, and you can do that, is you need to repeat it. So if you can't, at this point in time and in this age, I would say even when you learn by yourself, get a YouTube video or even get an, dictionary that has a a spoken pronunciation. Or even get AI like ChatGPT when they pronounce something in German, that is a good pronunciation. So get a pronunciation and then, and that is a very important part of practicing, repeat it. Repeat it until you can say it. Good. Then there's another that's next part, that you still can do alone is when you learn new words, make sentences, or when you learn sentences, say them out loud and say everything that you learn. Make as many sentences as you can, and definitely more than you think you need to do. It's not one, and do not stop because it is hard. That's the reason to continue. You need to continue until it is easier. Good. So that's one thing. Whatever you learn, just say it out loud. This is something that I cover in detail in a course. I'm just getting ready. I'm just putting together, a course that is going to start, delivery is going to start in February 26th. Depending on, when you hear that I'm starting this course, not all the time, so I'm starting in it at the specific times of the year. So the next time it is starting is in February 26th. In that course it's called "Get Talking: German for Beginners and Restarters" we have very detailed lessons and even practice lessons to actually like practice. How you do that, how do you learn new words and what is the practice that you need to do that you can do so you can actually use these words. Good. So another thing, that's probably the best thing is you can do it and should do it, —that's number 2 by the way— in combination with number 1 is find a study partner. So what do I mean with a study partner? A study partner would be somebody who is ideally on the same level as you working through the same materials. Whatever you do is you practice it with each other and you think sometimes people may think that, that doesn't work. I'm telling you that is the best thing you do, because you will learn when you speak, but you will also learn when you listen. Ideally, this is happening at least sometimes with support from a teacher, or with feedback. That would be even better. So that's, the second part, you find a partner, and I'm telling you this is, one of the best ways because you will be responsible for each other and you have the same success as you have as a teacher. I'm telling you, I've never learned as much German and how and about the German language than I did after I started teaching German. So I'm telling you, when you work together with a partner and you practice in a way that you really make sure that he understands it. When he makes a sentence, so for example, you learn the word "der Tisch," "the table," and you make sentences, so you would say something like, "Mein Tisch ist weiß." "My table is white." And then your partner is like, "Okay." He's like really thinking about this, he's like, "Yeah, this sentence is correct." You're very beginner, so that's why this is still a challenge. And then maybe you say the next sentence and you say, "Meine Tisch ist groß." And then your partner will say, "Meine?" And then you'll go, "Oh no. Yes, of course! Mein Tisch ist groß." "My table is big," and not "meine". This is the correct way because your partner will have just gone through the same materials and he will have to think and look, is that correct what you're saying? And he will learn just as much as you and the other way round when you switch places. So, practice with a partner. By the way, I think I mentioned that, in my course, I am making sure that is one of the things. When I did my research of what students need in order to learn is like, that is the number one thing that actually came up. They didn't know with who to practice. They didn't even go into how, because they didn't have anybody. So I heard it and definitely, this is going to be an important part of my program. We will have, specific lessons. we'll have specific sessions, I would want to say where are, designed to pair you up with a good practicing partner We will also make sure that you know how to practice. Good. Next way, number 3, of what you can do to practice, and again, this works no matter which country you're in, you can find a tandem partner. So there's groups dedicated to find them. What is a tandem? A tandem typically is, so you speak, let's say English and that's your native language and you'll find somebody whose native language you want to learn. This podcast is about learning German so let's assume, that you will find somebody who speaks German. So, you offer, "Okay, I'll exchange my English knowledge for your German knowledge." I suggest this not to you necessarily when you are completely new, but when you are relatively advanced, that is a very good way, if you find a partner that you get along with well, to continue learning. So you will both speak in with each other in both languages, and you will exchange your language, knowledge. So there is tandem partners, sometimes there's tandem groups and these groups are usually dedicated to pairing up people You can just look into Facebook and go language tandem, tandem, tandem partners, tandem language, and you will find groups there. Then of course generally there could be German language groups and sometimes if you post in them, you can find, a partner, like for example, the practicing thing that we covered in our number one, how you could find someone if you're not in a course that has dedicated sessions or has this built into the curriculum, you could go and find yourself a partner there. Also, if you join the Better German community, that is going to be the Better German podcast community, I'm renaming it, but at this time it's still called the Better German community. If you go in there, you have the possibility to post a message and you can say, "Hey, I would like a practice partner." You can say how far, if you're at the beginning, if you're advanced. Sometimes it's a little, it could be tough to find a practice partner, but it's definitely worth it. And, in the better German community, I would like you to take that opportunity to post things like that there and react to other people. You can even talk within the community to other people. You can like practice right there and you can of course write. That's another thing. Actually We are like number 4, these were learning groups and communities, and now there is a subpoint that I want to make within that, and you can chat. You can chat with someone in German. I don't suggest to just have Google Translate. Try to do it yourself. Don't worry about mistakes. By the way, whenever you practice, don't worry about mistakes, but clear up anything you don't understand. So if your partner says something you don't get, ask. If you can't figure it out, look in a dictionary. But don't worry about mistakes you make. If he understands you and you understand each other, perfect, don't worry. That's not the, the place to worry about mistakes like that. Good. Then another thing of practicing and that is sometimes overlooked is, to watch German movies or TV shows or series and put it on subtitles. Actually, there is a whole episode podcast episode I made about this. This is the episode 14. I'm going to link it in the show show notes, but you can always find every episode, by going to bettergerman.info/14. And I've made a whole episode about this and there is, a movie guide. If you have any problem accessing the movie guides, then write to me at podcast@bettergerman.info because at the time of the recording, the movie guide has a technical problem on our homepage and I had to temporarily disable it. However, it exists and if you write to me at podcast@bettergerman.info, if you need any infos about it, if you write to me like, what's your level and what's your language, then I'm going to send you suggestions very specifically for you. But I mean, this is if the movie guide does not work because at the moment of the recording, I'm having technical problems here. But first you can try because probably they should be handled, by the time you listen. You go to bettergerman.info/movies, we will link it. However, if for some unforeseeable, situation this doesn't work, then you can write to podcast@bettergerman.info and you include, like, "Okay, I'm interested in the movie guide. Apparently it doesn't work at this point in time. My native language is Italian," for example. If that is your native language, "and my level is," and maybe you can write, you're interested in, I don't know, "I don't care, I hate spy movies, I love sci-fi movies" or whatever. If you include that, then we're going to send you, a suggestion of a couple of movies or TV shows that you can watch. I don't necessarily suggest that to you if you are a complete beginner, If you're a complete beginner, it is probably a little hard. I definitely suggest to watch the German movie with the subtitle in your native language. Sometimes people get concerned. They're like, "Yeah, but then I'm only reading." That's fine. Don't worry. If you keep doing that after some time, you're going to pick up. However, if you prefer, sometimes I've had students who watched every movie three times. They first watched it dubbed if that is available. For example, I've had an English student studying English as a second language, and it's the same thing. I make all my students once they're a little bit on an intermediate level, watch movies with subtitles. So in that case, she was, watching English movies with German subtitles. So she would actually first watch it dubbed in the native language and then she watched it in original with, subtitles, and then she watched it in, in original with the subtitles in the original language. So for you, you can play around, you can watch the German movie if it is coming dubbed to English first if you prefer, and so you know what's going on. And then you watch the German movie with English subtitles and if you really feel you need to, you then watch the German movie with German subtitles. But do not begin with that. Very often my students are convinced that they will only learn if they put German subtitles. And I'm telling you this, I do not suggest to this to you until you are like learning for C one level or something like that, and you're really super fluent and perfect. Believe me, you will learn. You will learn. I know it for a fact. I've watched a whole, TV show that had a lot of Spanish parts and I didn't speak Spanish, and at the end of the TV show I understood Spanish pretty well. So it works believe me. Good. Another thing you can do, So we're now at point 6. So you can join if you have that, a local meetup. There is actually even an app called Meetup and you could put German in there, but There is, there could be German cultural centers. There's good institute and so on. You can just check it out if there is any local one that you can watch and visit. So that's another thing you could do. I want to add one, and that is number 7. That is, particularly, it could even exist abroad, but this one is particularly for people that live in German speaking areas. Actually, I don't know if that is the same thing also in Germany, but in Austria, in Vienna, there is a lot of conversation places, so there is usually regular conversation classes and they're free at many, many libraries in Vienna. So in the, " Büchereien Wien, Büchereien" like, " Buch" one "Buch" is a book. " Bücher" Is the plural and " Bücherei" is a library. We have two words for library in German. One is " Bücherei" and the other one is "Bibliothek" So "Bücherei" is kind of like a library that you go to to. borrow books for fun, really. I mean, of course you can also research and so on, but it is kind of like open to the general public, to everybody and most people that will go there, will go there to just find books to read, and very often they offer German conversation classes for free every week, and then I'm including it in the same thing. There's German Stammtisch. You can Google that. German " Stammtisch" It's called S-T-A-M-M-T-I-S-C-H. That is a thing. That's a term. I would say the Austrian version of a pup, and the Stammtisch is kind of like the regular table that's the table where the regulars sit. Also Stammtisch is often called, sort of a meeting that happens regularly in, sort of a pop guest house in Austria or cafe, Very often there is conversation Stammtisch or German Stammtisch or German cafe maybe it's called and, people meet there and it's like people with different native backgrounds and they practice German because I'm telling you, many of my students, at least half of my students do not live in German speaking areas. And I am talking to students from both, that live in German speaking areas and that don't, and you may think that because you are not in a German speaking area, it's super hard. But I'm telling you also, students that actually live in Austria sometimes have the problem that they don't have someone readily available to practice the language with them because they live here with their family, that very often speaks the same language as they do, and then they probably came here working for an international company and then they're working in the international company and they go home and they have their family, and so they also don't have automatically anybody to speak with. So the situation applies to both of you. You have to, that's maybe the number one thing or the number zero, you have to realize that you have to arrange something for speaking. It's not necessarily or usually going to happen automatically, and it's for sure not happening automatically for you if you're listening to this podcast episode because if you were forced to speak German already for years, regularly, you probably would already speak German. So, if you have any problem, with that, I understand, I'm with you, you're not alone. Just go through those points and pick one and start with it. if you really want to learn German, then I really suggest to you to take a course. And of course, I think the best course is my course. That's why I put it together. And, I already said it's called "Get, Talking: German for Beginners and Restarters. In the moment, at the time of the Issuing of this or of the appearance of this episode, actually, this episode will appear, I believe, on American Thanksgiving. So you may be not listening to it at that time. I don't know, depending on where you are and how, what you're busy with. But, in that week until Cyber Monday, so until the Monday after Thanksgiving, there is a very private presale I am offering. So this course I've mentioned called "Get Talking: German for Beginners and Restarters," it is a very cool course. I've been putting my lifeblood in it. It contains basically the gist of almost 20 years of teaching German and, doing a lot of research in the last few years in how to deliver, what should be in it, what do you need, how is the best way of presenting it, and so on. And, it is an online course. It's self-paced, but I'm combining because I think online courses that are self-paced have a big advantage. the big advantage is you can attend it whenever you can fit it in. I'm also making the individual lessons not too long, and most of them you can even interrupt so you can work it into even a very busy schedule. But if you're completely by yourself and online, very often you will lack accountability and you will lack having someone to practice with. So in order for that not to happen, this course takes care of you in that respect. So you still have a community and you will find, you will be able to find practice partners and we, schedule sessions where you will find, probably I'm putting most of you together in groups of three or maybe even four. So whenever you want to practice, there is someone available. Anyway, so we are going to do that. You will have your own part, you will have your own accountability, but you will still be able to progress in your own speed and you are going to get what you need so you can really start speaking. So it is 20 units and each unit has between 8 and 15 lessons. And the course is going to be yours for lifetime, but the community support is for 6 months, so you can get through the course in that time. Even if you can't, that's totally fine. It's the material is there for you. The regular price for the course is going to be €597, but, In the moment around, like Friday, as I said, I'm doing a secret sort of secret. I'm not promoting it widely everywhere. So it's a pre-sale and it's 50% off, so it's €297 instead of €597, and, That's the only time I'm ever going to, sell this course for that price. You cannot join the course all the time. You can either join it now, it's exactly 10 places for that price, or you can join it when it actually starts. The delivery is starting, like the course is open in the beginning of February, on the 9th of February to be precise and, I'm only starting the course, this particular course, I'm only starting it twice a year. So anyway, that's what I wanted to tell you. And it's all about the practice. So if you need to learn German or if you want to learn German, you can't practice enough. I hope that these points will help you. Ideally, you incorporate them all. These are not all the ways how you can practice. These are just some of them, but I think these are the most important ones. I hope you're going to tune in again next week. So next week, we are going to cover, we are going to continue with our verbs, A few episodes ago, we started with regular verbs. In English regular verbs are verbs like "walk." "Walk, walked." Okay. So in German, verbs are a little bit more, fancy, I guess. They like to do more changes. So, the next time we're going to learn a new category of verbs. They're also called " starke Verben" " strong verbs." Verbs, sorry, One example would be "schlafen" that's "to sleep" and, they're a little different than the regular ones. They're very interesting and they don't have to be hard, and we're going to go through that next week. So tune in next week, again. If you have any questions at all as always, then you can write to me at podcast@bettergerman.info, or you can leave a comment where you are and, actually what I need to tell you, this is something, kind of like important, if you want to actually make progress, I totally suggest to you to take a course and if you want to make use of the presale, and use the 50% price, then just write me an email. You can write to me at susi@bettergerman.info and tell me, and I'm going to send you a link. As this is a pre-sale, there is no nicely made up sales pages and everything yet. So this is a pre-sale that I'm offering to you as you know me already. Good! Now I'm really at the end. If you like this episode then, or actually if you like the podcast, leave me a five-star review. That would mean the world to me and absolutely share it and tell other people about it and talk to you the next time.

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