''Too Good to be True'' Successes by 3 of my best students!

Throughout my time teaching German, I was blessed to meet students who are not just from various cultures and their own native languages but also of various German levels, job/study backgrounds, and behaviors, whether it's their own behavior or the behavior that they show when learning and practicing the German language.

On average, becoming fluent in German (say, at the B2 level) takes about a year with consistent practice, and with stronger daily commitment, it's possible to reach that level earlier, within 6 months! However, it's easier said than done 😄, and that depends on each individual's learning quality and behavior when it comes to practicing the language.

Let me put it more easily: Becoming better in the German language is no different than becoming better at any other skill. You need time every day no matter how busy you are, and you need efficient practice. TIME x PRACTICE = EXCELLENT.

For the podcast version of this blog, you can play out this recording here :)

That being said, here are some of the students that I have encountered who achieved great heights in terms of learning AND mastering the language:

1. Ewelina (Poland): No clue of the language, thrown straight into the ocean during conversation practices, and she speaks fluently to her cousins in German!

   
   

   She brought very little knowledge of the German language to the beginning of the lesson, almost to the level of A1, and right in the beginning I asked her to prepare a beginner's conversation text for the next lesson. And in the next lesson, she bombed very badly, almost to the point where I had to stop halfway and inform her on things that she needed to improve, such as her word selections, the pronunciation of words, and a couple of beginner-friendly points she needed to consider. And as I was telling her all this, she looked somewhat quiet and uncomfortable, and it almost looked like she was gonna rage-quit on the lesson... But phew! She didn't do that 😓; instead, she listened very closely to every criticism I was telling her, and after the lesson, she really took the effort to redo the preparation of conversation text. And guess what? In the next lesson, she really aced it! It almost felt like she was at the B1 level. After a couple of lessons in a year, she was conversing very fluently up to the B1-B2 level, and the best part of this was that I didn't teach her a single grammar lesson at all! I may have provided tips to check out a couple of grammar issues on her own, but teaching her German grammar was never the case.

   
   

   Bottom line, knowing the German language and speaking the language fluently like a native (or Umgangssprache, as a matter of fact) are 2 completely different things.

   
   

2. Angela (Spain): Weak German level, only speaks Spanish, doesn't speak English, 3 months left to prepare for interview, but she got a German-speaking job in Austria!

   
   

   When she first came to my lesson, this time I felt like I wanted to give up on teaching her! Other way around, right? Previously she never had any professional job experiences, and she was requested by the company she applied to to develop her German language to a conversational level (B2) if she needed to get the job. Although I do speak Spanish and have experience with job interviews in German, her request felt like a tall order at that time. However, she was really in a tight spot, whereby she was not able to find a local tutor in Austria, especially those who spoke Spanish fluently and those that wanted to speak. As such, I really did take a gamble in helping her to teach the German language. And to be honest, I didn't really think she would make it...

   
   

   Yet, despite the odds, she kept putting in efforts daily, taking intensive 4-5 lessons per week, improving on her errors in conversing in the German language, and always staying determined to find a chance to improve her German language, whether by learning new words, doing more speaking exercises, or always asking for tips to hold better conversations in German. And goddamn, she got the job alright!

   
   

   This chapter of my journey in teaching German shows that there's more to it than just learning the German language "effectively''. You need to be mentally prepared, or better yet, accept the fact that learning the German language (or learning new skills for that matter) needs to have an adequate level of positive interest and very little negative perception of the language itself.

   
   

3. Jin (Philippines): Never been to Germany before, never talked to a native German speaker up until her C1 exam, and she passed with flying colors!

When I first met her in Preply, she was somewhat an excellent speaker when she was at the A2 level. And coming from the Philippines, she was interested in pursuing a bachelor's degree in the engineering field in Germany in order to pursue better opportunities for quality education and later career development that are not very available in the Philippines. Despite the difficulties in the early stage in terms of structuring sentences, probably due to lacking sufficient vocabulary, she was very persistent in practicing the language every day, with regular lessons arranged with me twice per week. And in every lesson, she always takes an interest in correcting her mistakes and is open to receiving new criticism on her mistakes conversing in German. Eventually, with daily consistent efforts together with consistent lessons, she passed the B1 exam within 3 months and later the B2 in 2 months. And guess what, she even passed the C1 exam with C1-level flying colors (17/20). What's insane here is that she didn't pass this test in Germany, but in Malaysia! Even more insane, she never practiced with a German native speaker before passing the C1 exam!

You can be pursuing a quality German course in Germany with a native speaker, paying top dollar to improve your German language for years; nevertheless, there's one thing that's always going to decide the difference between someone who excelled and someone who didn't in developing German (or any other foreign language). It's not hard work, it's not quality lessons, it's DAILY CONSISTENCY OF LEARNING LANGUAGE!