My failüre with German and what you can learn from it

A lot of people want to learn German.
Most people fail at it.
I am going to tell you my story with German.
How I failed at it at first.
And how I succeeded later.
And in the end I'll give you an easy strategy you can follow step-by-step.
So that you can understand and speak German well as soon as possible.
It all started when I was a university student.
I was given the option to study German as a foreign language.
I've always like Germany and I was already pretty good at English.
It was definitely a much more interesting option than most other optional subjects.
So I started taking German classes.
The teacher was a native speaker from Frankfurt.
I must say, classes were more fun than what you usually get.
The teacher focused on making us speak.
With games and role play.
It is definitely more interesting than studying grammar.
And it also boosts your confidence, because you see you're able to speak quite a lot.
And I did learn quite a bit of German in those two years.
The problem is that you can't learn a language well just by talking to people.
Especially by having small talk with other people who are also beginners.
I didn't know it back then.
But I have seen proof of this over and over and over again since then.
People who want to become good at a language just by chatting to others.
Just doing that doesn't work, as I was about to discover.
You will only have a very surface level knowledge of the language that way.
Anyway, at the time my confidence was high.
I was able to speak German.
Not only in class but also with German students I went out with.
I had decided to move abroad after university.
Germany was a very attractive option.
Applied for a job there and moved to Southern Germany at the end of the summer.
I lost my job after just a month.
Not only had I no previous experience as a waiter, my German was also much worse than I thought.
I simply couldn't understand basic instructions.
I managed to stay in Germany for a while thanks to having saved money and the help of friends.
I bought a grammar book and studied hard to try to pass the B2 exam.
But I kept failing over and over again and my German didn't really improve much.
In the end, I couldn't get a job and had to come back home with my tail between my legs.
The second time I moved to Germany, a few years later, it was a completely different experience.
I moved to Berlin to work in the Economic and Commercial Department of the Spanish Embassy.
Obviously my German had improved considerably, otherwise I wouldn't have got such an opportunity.
So what changed?
Well, I figured out how to learn languages effectively.
After returning from Germany the first time, I was frustrated about my failed German adventure and I started consuming more and more content in German.
Not with the goal of learning the language, but because I wanted to continue feeling like I was part of the German world.
I also started using certain memorisation techniques that I had learned in a memory course when I was a student.
I had taken the course, learned the techniques and then forgot about it.
But finding the materials at home made me realise I had missed an opportunity with that.
And I started using the techniques every day to learn more vocabulary.
Eventually I signed up for a German B2 exam in my hometown and passed easily.
I then joined a C1 class and I quit after a few weeks.
Not because it was difficult (it wasn't), but because it felt like a waste of time.
The class was slow and boring and I had to waste time going all the way there and back.
I realised I could learn much more on my own with interesting content.
This was an important phase of my language learning journey.
This was the period of my life in which I started developing what would later become the Natural Language Learning system.
If you want to learn German, I recommend you ignore grammar books.
Start memorising vocabulary and reading and listening to the language daily.
Start memorising 10 words a day with associations.
Then try memorising 20 words a day.
Memorise 30 a day after a few weeks.
And so on.
Read and listen every day, even if you don't understand much at first.
It will keep getting easier every day.
Especially if you memorise more and more vocabulary.
At some point you'll understand 8 or 9 words out of 10.
And it will be really easy to continue learning and improving.
Simply by reading and listening to interesting content.