There isn't a myth out there. There is a few people who claim that it worked, for most of, the people, it doesn't really work They start speaking maybe a little bit, but they also lose it again. I don't actually know where, where it comes from People sometimes think that's the way it has to be and then they think they can learn it Welcome to the Better German podcast. I'm Susi Blumel. I'm a German teacher and founder of Better German. In this podcast, I'll help you learn German in a simple and clear way. We'll cover useful words. We have clear sentence structures, you'll hear the pronunciation, and I'm going to go over real life topics, from our culture, and also I'm going to give you tips for learning German and to understand how the language actually works and when you're ready, I also have a free community and courses to support you even more. Welcome back. This is part two of our mini series on "How not to get discouraged when learning German," and in this episode we're going to look at the typical obstacles that can cause frustration. Enjoy. At the very end you get a bonus tip, so let's get into it. So, speaking of words, there is something, and that comes out of the study technology from L. Ron Hubbard. I can link it. If you have words that you do not understand then it can wreck anything you're learning pretty much, but of course also German. So if you're learning a foreign language that is very, very easy to run into, but in a matter of fact, it doesn't matter. It can happen on anything you learn because anything you learn is going to be explained to you in words, and if you don't understand one word, I'm telling you what's going to happen, If I'm telling you something and you just don't get it immediately after a word, there is like an empty space, an emptiness, and you don't know how long that emptiness lasts. It could be just a very short thing, but maybe you've seen that, you come to the end of a page and you just have no idea what you've just read. So up that page somewhere, you had a misunderstood word. That can happen easily when you learn a foreign language. So always make sure that you look up these words. There is a philosophy. I don't know if they have that so much in other countries too, but I've seen this several times in German speaking or mostly, in Austrian schools or heard from Austrian teachers, but also in other ones. There is a philosophy that is trying to train people to not mind having that. But it doesn't work. I'm telling you. I've seen it. I've worked with the children that were taught like that and I've sometimes had to mend literally, because they were very desperate and they came to me and they thought they couldn't learn. They can, of course everybody can learn, but you have to make sure that you don't misunderstand words. Now, a word that you misunderstand, it doesn't mean that you'd have no idea what it means. I mean, yes, that can happen. Those are the easier ones because you will have a tendency to try, to figure out what they mean, but the sneaky ones are those that you misunderstand or there is another meaning that you don't understand or don't know. Specifically hard, and that's one of the reasons why I leave out a lot of grammar words is, let's be honest, you learned your native language naturally and then you came to school and I don't know, a very big percentage of people that I know that I've taught, don't have a perfect command of grammar, theoretically in their own native language. They don't necessarily know all the terms that are used to describe grammar. Unfortunately, even if you look in a dictionary, there's a lot of words in there, that are used to describe the language, and if you don't understand what this word means, the whole concept doesn't make any sense. So that's one of the reasons why, I try not to use a lot of grammar terms because if I'm using grammar terms that they already don't know for their own language to explain a foreign language, they're not going to get anywhere. That happens, and that's not just about German. That happens in every language. So make sure that you get clarification of any words that you don't understand. The next thing is that you do not skip, steps too fast. That can happen super easily. How you notice it that you're going too fast, if suddenly things seem to be very difficult and you're like, "Ooh," confused and you think it's very difficult, then you've gone on too fast. This can happen very easily when you learn a language. For example, you're learning a list of new words and then you're looking them up, or you get them explained, or you have the translation and maybe you write it up and you go through it and maybe you even try saying it and then you try memorizing it. and, you don't actually practice it. You don't take the word and use it. Or probably even worse, is when you learn grammar. Or the way you do it in my courses you would learn a Sentence Pattern and you were like, "Ah, so if you want to say, I have a book you would say Ich habe ein Buch. Okay, I got it. Ah. But you would say Ich habe eine Vase." That's, "I have a vase." "And you would say eine because it's die Vase okay. Then you would say, ich habe eine Bild." Good and so you got the principle, and then you just move on. And as the next thing, we are adding something we say, "Ich habe eine schönes Buch." "I have a beautiful book" So we are putting something on the other one, and then you're getting confused. So the thing is you didn't practice the first step enough. So always make sure that whatever you do, you practice, you really get, and only after you can do it in your sleep, you go to the next thing. The other thing is, if it is too difficult, if you feel it has become difficult, then go back and go figure out, "ah, where was it easy?" And go back and practice that a little more and then continue. Good. Then there is another thing There isn't a myth out there. The myth is total immersion. It's called total immersion, and the idea is you're being thrown into an environment where nobody speaks anything but German, in this case, and then you magically will start speaking German. This can be, first of all, even though there is a few people who claim that it worked, for most of, the people, it doesn't really work. They start speaking maybe a little bit, but they also lose it again. I don't actually know where, where it comes from. I think it's the idea that, yeah, that's how we learned our own language. Yes, but I want to point out, it took us like, hmm, probably two years before we even ever said the first word. So I don't think that that's a, way for a fast language to be honest. Then it actually takes several years of totally immersion, like when a child is growing up, until you can have somehow deeper communication. So let's say, at least several years until you can really like say, "okay, good. Fine." So that is not really a functioning thing, and also we are just not kids anymore. We can use the fact that we have already learned a few things. So total immersion, I've never seen it work. I think it's a myth. I don't know how it would work, and the other part of it is that people sometimes think that's the way it has to be and then they think they can learn it because they have no chance of total immersion. So that's the other thing. Maybe something that is not 100% the same thing, but it's something that I've noticed. Of course you could get discouraged by not having a, teacher that works for you. That you get along with or that is just really competent, really knows it. I've seen one thing, I don't know if that's still the case, but there are some language schools that are really specializing mainly in having people that are native speakers. Yes, having a native speaker is extremely valuable, if you want to train pronunciation. So just having, just the fact that someone is a native speaker doesn't necessarily make them a good teacher. That's just all I'm going to say. I know that for a fact because even though I am a German teacher and that's my native language and I've been speaking it for more than 50 years now, honestly, I had to learn to become a German teacher. There's probably nothing I've ever had to work that hard on than becoming a German teacher, like a good German teacher that I would want to be learning from. I was a English teacher and a good English teacher and a successful English teacher, a long time before I had found, enough things that made me, figure them out and found that I needed so I could actually effectively teach German. So that's an aside. Then another thing that could make you frustrated or stop learning is set expectations correctly. I've already touched it a little bit. You have to understand that it takes a while to learn a language. I don't know. There's people that say, "Okay, I can teach you any language in seven weeks." I don't know how they're doing it. I mean, first of all, I can teach you a language or just a fact, speaking a language. You have to understand how much do you want? Yes, you can learn in a couple of weeks enough German, so you can come to German-speaking country and say a few words. That's, totally doable. If you want to actually master a language in a way that you can hold up a communication, about deeper things with a native-speaking person, that's a different thing. None of them are invalid. You just have to, set your expectations in a way that, is not going to frustrate you. You have to understand, as I said, there is an, episode that I recorded, it's a while ago. I was trying to figure out like, how long does it need to take German. I'm going to link it in the show notes. So you can actually have your expectations. I think I'm one of the faster teachers and I also believe totally, and that's the approach to take, you can start learning and you will see your progress, and you should. If you don't, then that's a, sign that you need to do something. Because you will never, you will not sit in a classroom for five years and then and never say anything and then suddenly speak. That doesn't work like that. But if you expect that you're going to work for an hour a week, and then after half a year you're going to be able to speak German, it's not going to work. I am very sorry to say that, it takes work to learn anything. Usually there is this saying, I heard that in order to get good at anything, it takes 10,000 hours. It definitely takes less than 10,000 hours to be able to do anything. Anything with German, you don't have to necessarily learn 10,000 hours before you can do anything with it. But I think it still gives a good idea of, expectations. So that's another thing. I'm not saying to not set any expectations. I'm not saying don't expect to ever learn German, otherwise you will be disappointed. That is weird. It's not true. Everybody can learn anything. Everybody can learn German if they, if they're willing to put the work in. I'm just saying you have to be willing to put the work. That's true for anything else. It's also true for learning German. By the way, if you are actually willing to put the work in, then my course Get Talking, which is, at the time of the recording, coming up soon-ish, soon, could be a thing for you. Because, I'm teaching you everything that you need to know to start speaking. Not to be perfect, but to start speaking. You can check it out. I'm going to link it. Good. Then the last thing I have here on how not to get discouraged, — make sure that you practice enough. We have touched this before and making sure that things are not getting too difficult, but I wanted to, do that as a separate thing. There is, by the way, also an episode of how much practice is, enough. It's also one of the first ones, because I've tried to cover most of these points very early on in the podcast because I think the best way of going through the podcast is actually from the beginning, and I'm trying to give you all the information that you need so you can actually learn it. So I was actually touching most of them at some point in an earlier episode. Anyway, so practicing is something that is highly, highly underrated, apparently. I guarantee you if you learn new words, let's say you learn a list of 20 new words, if you are trying and doing it under an hour, you are probably doing it wrong and you will at the end just waste the 20 minutes that you actually spend on because, you're not going to learn it. So in our classes, what we're doing, 20 - 25 words we're going through. I'll say them in German, you'll repeat them. We'll say them in English, we will repeat that too. We do repetition couple of times, then you have the pronunciation correct. Then we start the practicing. I mean, that already is also some practice because you actually say the word, but then we start practicing where you're making sentences, we're doing conversation exercises. Sometimes we play games, things like that. I've also put that in the, self-paced course. Then, you do a written exercise on that too, and you have the words down. So just to give you an idea, whatever you do, you learn new words, then you have to practice them. Also, if you learn grammar, that's okay. There is nothing wrong again if it's at the correct point. But the point is you have to practice it. You have to find many, many examples, and then when you finally figure it out and you're like, "Ah, that's how it works," then the practice really starts because then you practice it enough when you go to the next point, you are not still thinking about the last one. That's why it's so, important. It's not difficult actually, by the way. You just have to do it and you have to be willing to put the time in. Good. And then, maybe that's another thing, how not to get discouraged. That's something that helps— put in some things that are interesting. For example, watch videos with subtitles. As soon as you've learned a little bit, read books. When you come in my course, you have stories that are adapted to what you learned. So keep things interesting and that is also one of the things that you can do not to get discouraged. Alright, so that was this episode of the Better German podcast. I hope you liked it. I hope it's helping. If it does, please leave a five-star review, and also very happy to give me like a more detailed review. Leave it wherever you're listening to the podcast and tune into the next one. Bye-bye.