The Importance of Basics

Admittedly, grammar is not the most exciting of subjects, and German grammar is no exception. It is, however, an important building block within any language learning process, and, again, German is no exception.

German grammar, at first sight, appears to be frightening and confusing, but once accepted as a necessary component of the language, it will turn out to be rather dry and complex, but by no means insurmountable. Taken in and acquired in manageable portions, knowledge of German grammar is an invaluable and essential tool in the process of learning German, and most students who attempt to take shortcuts via avoiding grammar studies find out that their approach has lost them time and that they need to turn back to basics.

In my experience of teaching German, I have encountered students who had spent considerable time training to learn the language in one context or another, but were yet not able to produce meaningful sentences or coherent texts simply because of not having taken on the challenge on spending a little time on a small section of grammar per day or per week, depending on the schedule of their studies.

However, once guided back to basics and coached through essential grammar, they found out that, once understood and memorized, German grammar rules apply again and again, with few exceptions, and raise the level of proficiency immediately.

The same applies to the regular learning of small portions of vocabulary - the best knowledge of grammar cannot be put to use if the speaker does not have command of vocabulary with which to fill the grammatical structures so carefully learnt.

Learning German can be and will be interesting and even a lot of fun, but to do it properly and to achieve a good standard, it is vitally important to accept the importance of grammar and vocabulary as the essential building blocks of the language, which, once acquired, quickly become second nature and pave the way to becoming a proficient speaker of the German language.