Traditional Language Institution (a.ka. Scammars) vs AI-based Structural Learning, Who Wins?
- 17 hours ago
- 7 min read
"Hi teacher, I have learned up until A2.1, could you help me continue to further to A2.2 and onwards?"
"Halo Lehrer, what book do you recommend me to learn?"
"Hello, can you teach me only A1 in 3 months ?"
These are the questions typically asked by students who put the trust on the traditional routes or even the traditional style of learning German. If you asked me these questions 20 years ago, where internet was not a big deal enough internationally and that AI is almost a fantasy to think back, I would have more than happy to say "YES, I'm more than happy to help!😀"
But it's 2026, where a lot of things are just getting much faster, and still sticking to the "ancient" way of learning German at this point sounds like you prefer to get stuck in time, ha?
I mean I even had a student who came up with such questions:
Student:"I have learned intensive German course up to B1.2, and I know all the grammars and topics under up until B1.2, can we start with B2.1"
Me:"Okay, that's great, so can tell me from the A2 grammar, what's the difference between strong, irregular verbs and weak, regular verbs in German?"
Student:"I don't understand, what you mean?"
Me:"I mean let's say the word 'kochen', how do I say it in present perfect?"
Student:"It's haben gekochen, right?"
Me:"Hmmmm, and how about for the word 'gehen'"?
Student:"Haben gegehen?"
Me:
This thing really happened to me with a conversation I had with a student who did intensive German course from a language institute for 8 weeks straight for 4 hours per day, and this is the result ladies and gentlemen!😣😣
So, what's happening here? Why are there people still believing in the traditional way of learning German? With books, teachers in classroom with 10+ students and no practice after the lesson? I mean not to say this has never helped anyone to achieve the high German fluency, definitely there are people achieving this level, but the question is how many? Is it 100%, 90%, 75%? I mean, even it were to be at high rate of achievements, how much time and money have you spent to achieve that level? Yeah, REALLLLLYYYYY A LOOOTTTT!!!
With this blog my AI-based German learning structure will be compared with the traditional institutional learning from Goethe.
FYI, this is the structure of A1+A2 course with AI that I'm currently carrying out for students who are currently learning German with me, finsihing this in mere 3 months time:
Lesson pace
A1 to A2:
Institutional learning (from Goethe): 80 lessons for 45min each, and covering all 4 sub-levels it's 320 lessons with total number of 14,400 min (240h)
With AI-Based course: min. 36 lessons with average 40-48 lessons in total, covering 6 modules that follows still the Goethe's and even Telc's standard and topics. Each lesson are carried out at 50+min per hour. And total lesson time will be: 1,800min (30h)
B1:
Institutional learning (from Goethe): 80 lessons for 45min each, and covering all 3 sub-levels it's 240 lessons with total number of 10,800 min (180h)
With AI-Based course: min. 48 with average 60 lessons in total with 50+min for each lesson, covering 6 modules that even includes some of the grammars from B2, to wrap-up all loose ends with foundational grammars
B2:
Institutional learning (from Goethe): 80 lessons for 45min each, and covering 2 sub-levels it's 160 lessons with total number of 7,200 min (120h)
With AI-Based course: average of 24 lessons for 50+min for each lesson, covering 16-20 conversational practices, with the rest of the lessons focusing only on few of the grammars left, since after B1 all your foundational grammar are super solid!
Levels | *Institutional learning (from Goethe) | AI-Based course |
A1 | 80 lessons x 2 sub-levels x 45 min = 7,200 min | maximum 48 lessons x mimum 50 min = 1,800 min |
A2 | 80 lessons x 2 sub-levels x 45 min = 7,200 min | |
B1 | 80 lessons x 3 sub-levels x 45 min = 10,800 min | 60 lessons x 50 min = 3,000 min |
B2 | 80 lessons x 2 sub-levels x 45 min = 7,200 min | 24 lessons x 50 min = 1,200 min |
A1-B2 | 32, 400 min (540 hours) | 6, 000 min (100 hours) |
*From Goethe's own page on the lesson hours, with the course in Malaysia being cheaper than in Germany : Goethe Institute Malaysia
Lesson Prices
Levels | *Institutional learning (from Goethe) | AI-Based course |
A1 | 160 lessons --> $ 940 | 48 lessons --> $20 x 48 = $960 |
A2 | 160 lessons --> $ 940 | |
B1 | 240 lessons --> $ 1,410 | 60 lessons --> $20 x 60 = $1200 |
B2 | 160 lessons --> $ 940 | 24 lessons --> $20 x 24 = $480 |
A1-B2 | $ 4,230 | $ 3,000 |
*From Goethe's own page on the lesson hours, with the course in Malaysia being cheaper than in Germany : Goethe Institute Malaysia
Self-learning speed
Institutional learning: You'll need to follow their speed, with regular lessons arranged fixated and no rescheduling being made possible, and if you were to just skip one, you'll probably take notes from someone else, and even then it doesn't guarantee the fact that you actually understood it.
AI-Based courses: You have the flexibility to reschedule the lessons as you manage your own time to learn German on your own, with the emphasis of this course dedicated more for people who prefer self-learning. Of course with more emphasis for self-effort this speed here is definitely higher than when you learn with the instute, covering one slow component in a sub-level somehow!
Group learning vs one-to-one
Institutional learning: Better advantage here of course because you are learning together with other students with you, but unless you are not spending time with other students outside of lesson hours to improve German, you're at a high disadvantage here! You got no one to practice what you learned!
With the traditional class setting, if there are say 10 students here, you'll only get 10% of the focus here, and that depends on how proactive you are. And on top of that the biggest disadvantage is the fact that the teacher couldn't assess what you have learned by the end of the lesson here.
AI-Based courses: Now it's just one-on-one with your tutor, and outside the lesson hours you get to practice with AI! 100% is onto you and the tutor is able to curate the lesson based off your tempo here too, unlike the traditional ones where you need to follow their tempo or else you are screwed big time😕😕😕
And yeah, with AI tools aside from ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok can really help accelerate your learning speed, as it also curates your learning experience based off your level.🫵
Books vs AI, really?
Institutional learning: 100% with books, like it's a subject, everything they'll ask you in the exam gonna be somehow from the book. Sure, the core grammars and topics is there, but language always gonna have various more vocabs and even grammars outside of the simple textbook, esp. those of the slang words and day-to-day expressions that are used on daily conversations.
AI-Based courses: A book contains finite knowledge & resources, however AI contains infinite amounts of knowledge & resources. And with the lesson structure here that's curated based off AI here, it covers up literally everything there is to have you achieve the goal that was set the Goethe's standard itself, something that even Goethe students cannot achieve with it's own standard.
#1 Grammars: Nom./Akk./Dat./Gen.
Institutional Learning: You learn each one of the cases under each sub-level, ultimately leading you to confusion once you are trying to piece the puzzle here. Firstly with the Nominative you'll learned it under A1.1, then you'll learn Accusative under A1.2, and then you'll learn Dative un A2.1, and finally you'll learn Genitive under B2.1, all of them taught separately one-by-one. Sure, it helps you to understand one-by-one, but for one it's unnecessarily stretching out your time when they are all are literally essential components, the basic building blocks of a sentence, which should be taught all in one go!🚗🚗
AI-Based course: You learn all 4 cases in one go under the Part 2 of A1+A2 beginner's course which would help you to get the whole picture much clearer right from the gacko as a beginner within 2-3 months time of learning German! And it takes within 5 lessons only!
#2 Grammars: The prepositions
Institutional Learning: You learn by cases basis: Accusative first, then Dative and finally the Wechselprepositions before showing you with Genitiv-cookies to make things even more complicated. And boy oh boy if there are no words for it on how many students are super unclear about this, even the high-achieving students from the language institutes getting confused with these prepositions😐😐😐.......
Speaking from my experience here dealing with students who finished and/or passed B1 exams learning German from the traditional language institutes.
It may look good on surface level, as you are trying to pick-up new words like prepositions on case-by-case basis, but end of the day one prepositions carries various meaning under various context and it's just hard to keep track in this style of all the prepositions you have learned!
AI-Based course: You learn by functional basis, dividing it into 4 types of prepositions under the rule of Te'ka-mo-lo: temporal & lokolen under A1+A2 and later kausal & modal under B1.
I have explained much in depth about the difference way of learning German prepositions which gives much better clarity on how and why the learning prepositions via it's function triumphs over the cases-based learning:
Theoretical/Practical rate
Institutional Learning: With this one you are just learning with the emphasis on what you'll finish LEARN and you'll finish LEARNING in the next lesson, but whether you know how to use them or not, super high change it's not.
Trust me, have me various students who knows stuff from A1 and A2, and coming halfway in B1 but when asked about simple grammars they just stumble upon it, and later explaining on the reason why, they'll say that they have learned and they are familiar with it after explaining, how?
AI-Based course: With every lesson you have finished, you'll soon be able to not only understand much thoroughly the whole concept behind the grammar and sentence formation, but you'll be splendid enough to apply what you have learned successfully within 2-3 lessons of what we have learned here.
SUMMARY
So, what do you think?
Some of you may seem to have agreed to what I have said...
And some of you may find this gibberisch, sticking to the traditional high payment and long duration of German courses, but I hope this table sums up pretty much in one short which is the better options:
Trational Institutional | Comparisons | AI-Based |
540 hours | Lesson Pace | 100 hours |
$ 4,230 | Lesson Prices | $ 3,000 |
Slow to none | Self-learning speed | Fast |
Less speaking & listening practice | Group learning vs one-to-one | Very high speaking & listening practice |
Books | Lesson Materials | apps, websites, AI |
One-by-one under each sub-level | Nom./Akk./Dat./Gen. | All in on go |
Akk~Dat~Wechsel~Gentiv | Prepositions | Temporal~kausal~modal~lokalen (Te~ka~mo~lo) |
More theoretical | Theoretical/Practical rate | More practical |
Still don't believe it, why don't you give a try here with a trial lesson with me here👇:
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