A1

Der Frühlingsputz ist ein Muss.

Spring cleaning is a 'must.'

It's not always a lot of fun, however it could be more interesting if you learn the German words for what you do.

Here are 7 words and phrases (including 6 verbs!) to help you learn German as you do your Frühlingsputz.

You can download the vocabulary card and print it out.

You could even use it as a checklist for your Spring cleaning.

Warum nicht?

If you like to do parts of your Spring cleaning over a couple of weekends, you cou…

Christian Holidays are often public holidays in Germany, so these are good words to know whether you're non-religious, atheist, agnostic, or religious.

The schedule carries over into school and school breaks, too. One of my clients is currently on Osterferien, Easter Holidays, and doesn't have school this week or next.

This week is Karwoche, or Holy Week, and in a non-pandemic year there would be much singing of the Bach Passions: the Matthäus-Passion (St. Matthew Passion), the Johannes-Passio…

Almost all of the people who sign up for private German lessons have already run into German verbs and their conjugations.

When we get to the Perfekt (the present perfect or spoken past tense), it's always interesting to hear what they think of it so far.

Here are a few of the top questions people have asked me about learning the Perfekt:

1. Are these regular or irregular verbs?

2. What's the difference between them?

3. What's the pattern for these verbs? And for these verbs? And f…

When you first learn German - or first start learning German - you say everything in the present tense. You learn only a little bit of the past tense, mainly the two verbs here, and then later you learn the Perfekt, or the spoken past tense (Ich bin gefahren. Wir haben ein Buch gelesen.).

This is the order you would ideally learn everything in:

Present tense --> these two verbs --> a bunch of the Perfekt

If you learn the past tense in any other order than that, it is out of order.

No excepti…

Here is a short exercise for you to practice two separable verbs in German: einatmen and ausatmen.

You may have noticed these two verbs in a blog post earlier this month, and to help you learn them even better, you'll use them in this exercise.

This may be the most relaxing German separable verbs exercise you'll find on the interwebs.

Here are the instructions in German. Scroll down to the flower to read the instructions in English.

Hier ist ein kurzes Audio für Sie.

Zuerst hören Sie «Ich…

Today you get to learn separable verbs (trennbare Verben) just like one of my German clients!

This is a technique I've used with dozens of German learners and it makes separable verbs a kinaesthetic exercise--and that in two different ways.

You'll need print out or write out some cards, and to have one supply to have ready when you start the video.

Los geht's!

Step 1: Print out or make these cards of trennbare Verben

Download this PDF of 4x6 cards and print them.

If you can't print them, …

Separable verbs are not hard to understand, however learning to use them takes practice and time.

For the purposes of this first section, we'll use two separable verbs in the present tense – so we'll use them to talk about now.

Right now.

A separable verb (in German: ein trennbares Verb, plural: trennbare Verben) is a verb that requires you to do three things :

1. remove the prefix from the verb

2. conjugate what's left

3. tack the prefix on to the end of the sentence.

That's…

Wenn man nicht reisen kann, egal ob man zu wenig Geld hat oder es eine Pandemie gibt, kann man immer das Internet benutzen, um eine virtuelle Reise zu machen.

Es kostet nichts und man kann die gleiche Reise immer wieder machen.

Diese Woche gibt es eine Videoreise nach Bayern. Sie können verschiedene Seen sehen, eine Wiese, verschiedene Städte und vieles mehr.

Kommen Sie für 4 Minuten, 30 Sekunden mit nach Bayern. 

When the time isn't right to travel, no matter if it's because money is tigh…

If you've seen the combinations A1, B2 or C1 on your German books but you don't know or understand what they mean, this post is for you!

There are six total combinations of letters and numbers: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. These are simply guidelines for figuring out where you are in the German learning process.

The name for this straightforward scale is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages or the CEFR.

Why the CEFR is so helpful

This scale is so clear, so helpful for Germa…

Ask any new German learner and they will say German has a million parts and a gazillion words and then you can add the words together to makes new words and...

Stop!

There are only six parts to learning German.

No one part is more important than the other, either, as they are all part of the same machine, if you will.

Think of it like a car.

Does a car function well if part of it is missing or broken? Not usually!

A couple of weeks ago my car battery died (I'll spare you the details becaus…