German Language Courses

This page considers what good German language courses should include, to help you decide in advance whether a course you're looking at is worthy of your time and money.

The Basics: Even the most basic German language course must, of course, include the foundations of German grammar, a fundamental vocabulary, common greetings, and guidance on making conversation. How to use question words and how to use numbers are also necessary skills. With the German language, the student needs to learn about stative and motive prepositions, cases, gender, and separable and non-separable prefixes.

Phonology: A student must be taught to make the right sounds. German is as much a frame of mind as it is a language, and that frame of mind is established and maintained best when the student hears himself or herself creating German. The German /r/ is an acquired skill that must be learned properly from the start. The same is true with the umlauted vowels.

Songs and Poems: Not only do they add interest to the class, but German songs and poems stick easily in the memory and provide ready references for difficult grammar points. The student need only remember a phrase from a song to get the right definite article or noun ending.

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