This what you need to know, if you want to learn German vocabulary in a truly efficient way

When you want to avoid frequent mistakes when you learn German vocabulary and if you want to learn to know important tricks and learning aids, you'll find here everything you need.  

 
When you want to learn German or another foreign language; in the beginning, the learning of the vocabulary is the most important thing to do. Because with this you build your own personal so-called "mental lexicon", which you'll definitely need when you're serious about learning German.

But this you knew yourself for a long time, isn't it? But now arises the master question: 

HOW do you actually learn vocabulary? If you've understood how important it is to build your mental lexicon, then you should by all means have a very clear answer to this question, so here it is again: 

HOW do you learn German vocabulary?

I have many years of experience as a teacher of German, and trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Most students of German don't really think about THE WAY they should learn and therefore waste valuable potential. 

Or maybe you do the effort to regularly write down vocabulary somewhere, but you're actually to lazy to build a truly efficient system which enables you to expand your mental lexicon daily and continually. Let's therefore have a look at the different possibilities:

 

A mistake you should avoid at all cost 

I know from my own experience that many students of German time and again write the important words somewhere down, in order to learn them "later" :) 

In reality, soon enough they don't remember where they've actually written them down. Why? Because from the start they didn't feel like writing down these spontaneous notes once again in a systematic way. A fatal mistake! The consequences? 

• the chaos in your text files reflects as a chaos in your head 
• you're not able to communicate properly in German, because you can't think of the right words 
• you don't understand the native German speakers; you do remember to have written down this or that word somewhere, but how was it called again? How does one say that in German? 
• you feel entirely uncertain, because you don't know enough words by heart 
• because you feel uncertain, you're afraid of having a conversation in German 
• in consequence you practice even less, and feel more uncertain ... 

What I just described, is what we call in German a vicious circle! 

Other students are more disciplined; and decide for themselves to always keep things nicely in order, and immediately write down all the important words in a VOCABULARY-NOTEBOOK. They always carry it with them and thus even "learn" vocabulary on a regular base. Then suddenly they need a certain word, but nonetheless can't remember it. WHY actually? 

 

Disadvantages of the vocabulary-notebook

• you memorize the German vocabulary always in the same order and anticipate while you're learning 
• you think you learned a word, while in reality you only knew its place in your list of words.
• you're not able to systematize the vocab. Besides, it is very important that you have an overview over the words that you already know and the words you still need to practice. 

 

You surely know the solution to this yourself

You must definitely work with flash cards! I know, many people don't feel like writing their cards in a regular way, but hey!, after all you want to learn German, and though as quick as possible. And the learning of vocabulary is for this purpose the indispensable cornerstone. So, please make the effort and write down every word that you learn on a flash card. On the back you write down the translation in your mother tongue. 

The only problem with cards is often that it costs you a lot of work writing them and then afterwards, when you want to study them once more, some of the cards are lost. 

 

And this is the right way to write your cards

Learn German nouns

While learning nouns, you must definitely make sure that you ALWAYS include the article and the plural, when you write them down. You find this information in a dictionary for German as a foreign language. In such a dictionary, the article always precedes the noun. Behind the noun you find the ending of the genitive case and behind that, the ending of the plural. In German there are 6 different possibilities to form the plural, therefore you always have to learn the plural together with the noun. 

You find all the important information in the dictionary.

 

Your learning cards should look like this

 

 

Learn German verbs

For sure, you know already that in German there are regular (weak) and irregular (strong) verbs. Therefore it's not sufficient to only learn the infinitive of each verb. You have to learn at the same time also the past tense as well as the participles II (you need them to build the perfect tense). And on the back you write an example-sentence in the 2nd person singular. Here, you find a hint how to write example-sentences containing special learning aids:

You find all the important information in the dictionary for German as a foreign language: 

 And  this is how your leaning cards for verbs should look:

 

Learn German adjectives

Luckily, German adjectives are easier to learn than nouns and verbs, but here as well: there are regular (weak) and irregular (strong) adjectives. It's always boiling down to the form in which they are used. Therefore, as regards the strong adjectives, you always need to learn the Comparative and  the Superlative together with the adjective. 

And as always, you can find all the important information in the dictionary for German as a foreign language. 

 

And this is how your flash cards look,
when you're learning German adjectives. 

 

Ok, it's time for a few very important hints, which you definitely should know  in order to learn German vocabulary. 

Learning German vocabulary with cards is really the best method I know, and I highly recommend it. 

But you certainly know the feeling that it is nevertheless very difficult to memorize all this new information. 

Therefore I give you a few of my personal tricks, with which you're guaranteed to learn easier. You can combine all these aids with your card-system and in doing so you'll be able to learn German in a really unbeatable, fast and organized way. 

The American cognitive psychologist Richard Atkinson has tested a mnemotechnique, as early as in the 70ties, with which ALL THE EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS were able to learn vocabulary easier; namely the so-called "keyword-method". The method works in such way that you use your own mother tongue to learn the vocabulary of any language. 

In my e-book "Learn German grammar with mnemonics", I explain precisely and step by step how this super-technique as well as many other learning techniques for German grammar work. 

If you're looking for super-learning techniques in order to learn vocabulary, difficult verbs, the declension of adjectives and much more, then this e-book is exactly what you need. Click here, if you want to learn to know the super-learning  techniques for German grammar!

 

But probably you also would like to participate in my 5-day video seminar, which is completely free! Just click on the graphics, and there you go! 

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