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I relate to this immensely. I'm taking german classes currently and the professor is driving me insane.
She uses an immersion only method where she speaks German at us and we do exercises from a book.
I am slowly getting an understanding of the past imperfect and various grammatical rules but only barely. There has been no real instruction on how these rules work so when I encounter a new verb or noun it's a total guess everytime.
From my understanding speaking with some Germans, this is the preffered method for teaching English to school children. Which I must admit does seem to work well the English proficiency of the average person is quite high, even amongst those too afraid to speak it their comprehension is high.
The issue is I do not want to be learning German for the next 8 years as a German student would learn English in school. Also my brain is fundamentally different than a child's. If they were to explain the rules and grammatical concepts it would be much much easier to understand.
A blended approach where the rules for new grammatical concepts are first explained followed with the immersion based exercises we've been doing would be ideal.
Just relying on classes is slow no matter what method they use. You need to study at home as well and something different from what you learn in class so don’t use the textbook from class. I think the best way to learn a language is to focus on vocabulary first. Like learn the 2000 most frequently used words first through rote memorization. Then grammer comes more naturally since you can get a lot of things from context. Also native speakers don’t know the grammar rules by heart, to them forming a correct sentence just comes naturally. Sure it’s good to know the grammar rules and concepts, but to make it come naturally requires a ton of reading and listening and eventually speaking and writing and that requires a large vocabulary.
The most used method for vocabulary is flash cards. Many people use a program called Anki and a German flash card deck has already been made by the community.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/9489615
Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I actually teach German, and especially for students who have a good language sense for English (so if “I singed a song” immediately sticks out to you), tenses are mostly (with some obvious exceptions, like present progressive and preterite/perfect) pretty similar.
She’s probably trying to get your brain to recognize an irregular verb so you don’t have to learn each verb anew, but that’s a problem you’re less likely to have as an English speaker (for example, you’d say “Morgen singe ich, gestern sang ich, heute habe ich noch nicht gesungen,” which is pretty intuitive after English).
Fwiw, you do retain it longer if she sets it up so you can draw your own conclusions, but you also learn more slowly. And if you’re highly motivated, you’ll probably remember it well enough either way.
The whole class speaks English at a B2 level since that's what is required for International students at the university. I do feel like that could be capitalized on given the similarities.
Honestly I truly feel like I paid someone to read the Kurs DaF A1 book to me. Rarely there are other exercises or explanations.
Comparing other language course I've had I liked my high school French teacher's approach. She primed us with explanations of the new concepts and grammatical rules. Then she followed up with immersion and exercises.
My Spanish courses in college and high school were just memorization based. I technically reached a higher level of course in Spanish, but remember next to nothing. My comprehension of French is much better.
Truthfully I need to dedicate more time to my German, but my other studies being all English take up my time. I'm here for a master's degree. The language is an additional skill I would like.
And if you care for learner's perspectives, give quizzes. I don't know how to explain it, but when we took our first test I felt a lot of concepts click into place because I had to perform if that makes sense. It's like my brain felt the pressure and acted. It made me wish we had regular quizzes on the content in between tests.
That’s rough. I’m currently teaching at a school where they basically hired me to do that, but they’re not upset that I’m not. The teachers at the school are mainly university students in language related fields, but they mostly don’t have any experience or training in didactics (my autocorrect twigged on that-is it still pedagogy when you’re teaching adults?), so that’s an okay way to get people doing an alright job.
I’m almost done with my masters thesis in German instruction, so I’m not an expert teacher or anything, but I know how to construct an assignment and what didactic principles should guide a lesson plan. And just teaching to the book makes me feel pointless/like I’m cheating.
If you want a pretty good guide to grammar based on comparison with English, then try English Grammar for Students of German
That’s very good advice, thank you. One of my students currently is in his mid 50s and he’s got a lot of experience learning things (not just his age, he’s had a lot of huge life changes that required him to do totally new things), and it’s so incredibly helpful. I gave them a quiz when I started teaching them (their last teacher went on leave partway through) and everyone (good naturedly) groaned a little, but he was 100% down for it and got the class to settle.
It helped show me their gaps, and I was able to anonymize them and have them peer correct, which was even more helpful