You can understand a German explanation and still struggle to use it. Give yourself a chance to recall the rule, apply it to a new sentence, check the result and return to it later. That gives you better evidence of progress than the feeling that an explanation makes sense.
You finish a grammar explanation. Everything makes sense. You could explain it to somebody else. Then the next exercise asks you to make a sentence, and the verb ends up somewhere it has no business being.
“But I know this.”
You may know the rule very well. Finding the words, choosing the right forms and putting them together is another job. German has a talent for asking you to do several jobs at once.
A video by JT Yu about AI and learning prompted this article. He discusses how a system decides what to remember, what to change and what deserves another look. For your German, the useful question is much closer to home: how do you find out what you can actually use?
I gave his learning-related claims a quick check against research I had previously read. They seem plausible to me in that light. That is a first assessment, rather than a verification of every claim about brains or future AI. The advice on recalling and varying examples draws on the human-learning studies linked in this article. The rest is my own teaching recommendation.
What does “I know the rule” mean?
Take this sentence:
Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil ich heute arbeite.
It means: “I am staying at home because I am working today.”
Look at arbeite. In this simple part beginning with weil, the verb comes at the end. You can see it. The explanation makes sense.
Now imagine writing the same kind of sentence about somebody else. You need to choose the words, change the verb and remember where it belongs. Later, in a conversation, you need to do that while also listening to another person.
These tasks ask more of you than following an example on a screen. A mistake in the harder task does not make your earlier understanding worthless. It tells you where the next bit of work is.
Close the explanation for a moment
There is a simple way to check your understanding: give it something to do.
After studying a pattern, close the explanation and try one small task. Write a sentence. Complete an exercise. Recall a word before revealing its translation. Then check your answer.
This is called retrieval practice: trying to bring something back from memory.
In a study of foreign-language vocabulary, Jeffrey Karpicke and Henry Roediger found that continuing to test already learned words improved recall a week later. Continuing to study those words without further testing did not provide the same benefit in that experiment.
That was a vocabulary experiment. It does not prove that a particular grammar exercise will make you fluent. It does give you a good reason to include recall in your study time.
You still need explanations when something is unclear. Once an explanation makes sense, try using it before deciding that you need to read it for the sixth time.
Change the example
You might learn the sentence about staying at home so well that you can repeat it perfectly. Good. Now find out whether you can use its pattern elsewhere.
Keep the structure and change something small:
Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil ich heute lerne.I am staying at home because I am studying today.
Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil sie heute arbeitet.I am staying at home because she is working today.
The first changes the activity to studying. The second changes who is working, so the verb changes too. The verb still belongs at the end.
Try a new version yourself, using words you already know. Keep the task small enough that you can tell what went wrong.
Research on applying knowledge to different examples points in the same direction. In four experiments using science concepts, learners who practised with different application questions performed better on new examples than learners who repeatedly answered the same question. Those tasks required applying a concept to a new situation, rather than simply rewording a question. Applying that idea to German is a teaching recommendation, rather than a result those experiments directly tested.
Give a correction another job
If you put the verb in the wrong place, look at the corrected sentence and work out what changed. Then hide it and try again.
Before checking, ask yourself: “How sure am I?” Afterwards, ask: “What made me choose that answer?”
You might have followed the pattern. You might have guessed. You might have remembered the example perfectly but lost the pattern as soon as the words changed. Those are useful differences to notice.
I recommend writing for this kind of practice. You can slow down, inspect your sentence and make a correction without somebody waiting for you to finish speaking. You are preparing language you can later use in a conversation.
Keep the correct model available. If you cannot work out why your answer is wrong, ask for an explanation. Repeating a mystery does not make it less mysterious.
Let yesterday's German meet today's German
When you move to a new topic, give earlier material another appearance. Use a familiar word in a new sentence. Return to an exercise that caught you out. Notice an old pattern in a story.
For a fuller look at remembering vocabulary, read why you forget new German words and how to remember them.
You do not need to turn every study session into an examination of everything you have ever learned. Choose one thing worth checking, use it and see what happens.
How the learn app already supports this
These ideas are already part of how my learn app works. Here are three places to use them:
- Vocabulary: try to recall the answer before choosing Reveal. The app schedules later reviews, so a word can return after your first successful attempt.
- Review: remembered mistakes from lesson quizzes and dictation can come back on a later visit. Getting something wrong gives you a specific task to return to.
- Writing and Oopsie Poopsie: supported categories of writing errors lead to follow-up practice. Oopsie Poopsie also uses different texts to check a previously missed pattern, so repeating the same corrected sentence is not the whole task.
When you next open the app, check what is waiting in Vocabulary or Review. Try the task before revealing or checking the answer. If the correction still does not make sense, ask for an explanation before repeating it.
Those features put recall, later practice and some variation within reach. The studies cited here did not test SmarterGerman, so they do not establish how effective the app is. The useful check for you is whether you can use a pattern again, especially when the example changes.
Where the courses fit in
This article deals with one learning problem. My A1-C1 German courses take you through the wider language, with explanations in English and practice across grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening, writing and speaking.
A blog post can help you understand one difficulty or try a different approach. The courses give those pieces a place in a progression, so you have a next step when the article ends.
For your next study session, choose one pattern from your current level. Try it without looking. Check it. Change one detail and try again.
Then ask a better question than “Did I understand the explanation?”
“What can I do with it now?”
Sources and inspiration
- JT Yu: AI Has Finally Hit the Brain's Hardest Problem. The starting point for this article. Its arguments about future AI are separate from the human-learning research discussed here.
- Karpicke and Roediger, 2008: The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning. Foreign-language vocabulary and delayed recall.
- Butler and colleagues, 2017: Retrieving and Applying Knowledge to Different Examples Promotes Transfer of Learning. Application of science concepts to new examples.
