The Problem

According to the test, I’m at B2-level in German, but my ability to understand spoken German is far below that level. I struggle to follow conversations between native speakers on the street here in Berlin. I think I am closer to A2 in listening comprehension.

My brain “knows” at least a few thousand words by now, in fact I can read German books as long as I can look up words I don’t recognize here and there. But converting this conscious brain knowledge into fluent, unconsciously-flowing speech has been elusive.

Does this sound like a familiar story? What to do to fix this? I want to speak and understand German!

Immersion in media to learn the spoken language

I’ve spent lots of time watching YouTube channels (in English) that explain how to upgrade your language skills, and everyone talks about “Comprehensible Input.” Last week, I found the Matt vs Japan YouTube channel where he describes how he learned perfectly fluent Japanese by immersing himself in Japanese-language media for hours a day over the course of months and years. Based on his results, it seems compelling. He goes around a Japanese grocery and people can’t believe he learned it from watching TV. A LOT of TV. Hours per day.

Thus this is not a Learn Japanese in 10 minutes or even In 3 Months kind of strategy. It requires tons of effort, ideally daily, over the course of months or years. Rather than a two-day scuba lesson in Mexico, think of it as more similar to a weight loss program – it takes consistent effort over a long period of time.

But according to him and to others like him, this doesn’t feel like drudgery or work: it feels like watching TV! In a new fun language that you want to learn, and (eventually) you’re watching stuff that you want to watch anyway. Making it fun takes all of the dreariness out of it.

This sounds great, right? I want to learn German by watching TV, too! Yeah!!!

The method: X steps to understanding German (or any language)

As far as I can tell, these are the basics of how it works:

  1. You need to know the sounds and writing system of your language. For German, there are several short videos on recognizing and pronouncing the handful of sounds that we don’t have in English. I’m already past this point but you will need this before you can dive in.

  2. Let go of your anxiety about not understanding everything. You are going to spend a lot of time watching TV, YouTube, cartoons, whatever – in a language that you don’t understand yet. Even so, you must pay close attention while you watch, and try to tease out the sounds of the language, notice any words you catch, and eventually you will catch more and more. This is exhausting at first but you will get past it. Trust the method.

  3. Listening to gibberish doesn’t help much; it needs to be at least somewhat comprehensible, so you need to start at your level or maximum “i+1” – meaning something just above your level – to stretch your brain a bit. If it’s too hard, you give up. For me that meant anime cartoons dubbed into German; basically childrens or teen shows that have consistent narratives and characters, simple storylines, and speech restricted to a smaller domain. School, fantasy, robots, whatever. Toddler/baby shows are way too boring for adults, so you should jump to the stuff for older kids, targeted age 7-12 or so is ideal. True adult shows are going to be too hard at first. You’ll get there in a few months.

  4. Watch each show at least twice: once with subtitles completely off. You will understand the gist from the pictures and the body language. Then watch again with subtitles on; you’ll see what a lot of those missed words were. You can pause at each subtitle line to give yourself time to pick it apart. I would usually then watch a third time (or more) to say “a-ha, there’s that word again!”. It’s important to do as much of this as possible with ALL subtitles OFF. You are training your ears.

  5. Use Anki or a similar SRS flashcard app to create and practice vocab cards, or full sentence cards with just one word you don’t know. I like Anki because it lets you store text, images, audio clips, anything you want. This method focuses on understanding (listening), not production (talking), which means you only need to make cards in one direction. The front of the card has the target language word, text, audio, whatever – and the back has the meaning, either written or with pictures. Try to avoid putting English on your cards if you can; for nouns a picture is often good enough. Eventually this will get easier as you learn more words. I found Anki works best when you create the cards yourself, instead of using pre-made decks.

  6. Study your Anki cards every morning when you wake up. This is how you build up to your first 1000 or so words. Once you’ve got the most common words learned, your comprehension of the first few shows is going to skyrocket.

  7. If you can convert/extract the audio mp3 of the show you just watched, you can also put it on your phone or music player and listen to it passively over and over, obsessively until you understand more and more. :-)

  8. Watch multiple entire series episode by episode to focus your comprehension on this one narrow domain first. Then find another similar show. The more similar they are, the better! Especially at first, e.g. the first few months, you want to get really good at this tiny “safe zone” of one domain. Once you have solid understanding, you can branch out to more challenging things like “slice of life” TV shows (Friends, etc) that are about daily situations. “Solid” understanding doesn’t mean you should understand 100%; just “pretty good” is good enough at this point. Your brain will know when it’s time to up the challenge. You should always strive for “i+1” so that you keep learning.

  9. Notice I didn’t say anything about grammar yet? Don’t freak out about grammar. Learning grammar rules help you pass grammar tests; they don’t help you understand fast-flowing speech. You will slowly piece together all those weird rules subconsciously. This is how kids do it!

  10. Yeah sure, but since we’re adults, it’s okay and even beneficial to get the gist of grammar from an introductory guide. Don’t sweat the details! Having a basic understanding of how sentences are formed will jumpstart your comprehension. Pay attention to how you figure out what the subject and verb are, and how the basic past and present tenses are formed. That’s enough to get started! Seriously the rest will just tongue-tie you. Let your brain work it out.

  11. Once you’re very comfortable in your safe domain, branch out. You must graduate from dubbed content to native content – produced by natives, for natives – or you will not reach the level you need to have conversations with natives in regular life. Don’t rush this step, but sooner or later you need to tackle real vTubers and TV shows intended for the native audience.

  12. Your speaking will improve naturally as your unconscious brain absorbs all of this great input and converts it into understanding of how the language inherently works. At this stage, focus on understanding the language instead of trying to deliberately improve your speaking. This part was hard for me to swallow, because I feel like practicing the language and making mistakes is part of the game; but the method is pretty clear on this point. Your ability to output/speak will just naturally improve if you give your brain enough input. I didn’t mention reading or writing, either: at the early stages it’s best NOT to read much because your innate English will absolutely interfere with your pronunciation of German words. Save the novels for later. So say the experts, anyway.

These steps are not in hermetically-sealed boxes. You can be in multiple phases at the same time for different types of content at varying levels of comfort. This is merely an outline of how the overall approach fits together.

My own plan for speaking German

I am one week in. I have definitely learned some new words and expressions already, but it’s too soon to see if this really helps me parse spoken German in a more natural way. I’ll try to report back with monthly progress.

First Anime: Bloom Into You

My first anime is called “Bloom Into You” and it’s a very earnest “innocent schoolgirls discovering love and friendship” story with LGBT themes. It’s way more earnest and wholesome than my usual sci-fi robot monster fare, but the text is super clear and the subtitles are 100% accurate.

  • I don’t think I could survive on this type of content for very long, so my next series absolutely MUST be more personally interesting to me: if it’s not fun, it feels like work.

  • I’ve copied the MP3s onto a tiny $20 MP3 player I picked up from Amazon, and I listen to the episodes over and over before bed, while on the train, etc.

A smattering of things I learned this week

  • Ehepaar und Ehemann
  • Jemandem einen Korb geben
  • ausgerechnet
  • geschickt reingelegt zu sein