Mastering German Grammar - How to Make it Stick

“The Awful German Language” is what Mark Twain said of our beloved Sprache! He estimates that a person ought to be able to learn English in thirty hours, French in thirty days and German in thirty years. He is kidding. Kind of.

You will recognize the feeling he was talking about if you have studied German for a while. You have seen the case tables, you can recite der, die, das, den, dem, des. You know the verb goes to the end in a subordinate clause. And then you open your mouth and the endings scatter like startled pigeons. This article is about why that happens and what to do about it.

Quick answer

German grammar starts clicking at the moment you stop treating it as knowledge and start treating it as a skill. Pick up only one rule at a time and apply it to a few complete sample sentences you can say by heart. Practise it by creating the form (speaking or writing from memory), instead of rereading the table. Do it over a course of days and weeks as opposed to frantically cramming it into one single evening. Use it in a chat ASAP. Get corrected by someone if it sounds off. Rules give you direction. Your road, that you pave through constant effort. Just not too much.

Why doesn't German grammar stick?

Let us start with an observation. Students who are complaining that German grammar “will not stick” are in most cases in fact able to pass a test in German grammar. Ask them to fill in the gap: “Ich gebe ___ Mann das Buch.” and they will give you the answer “dem” after little more than a second's consideration. The knowledge is there: what is lacking is speed.

Conversations leave you without a second; you have to choose noun's gender, the case that verb takes, the ending to go with them and the position of the verb, all when still listening to the other person and considering for your own opinion. That is four choices that you consciously carry out in each noun phrase. No matter what, you just cannot keep that many balls in the air and engage.

So the problem is not that you don't know German grammar. It is that you know it in the wrong form.

What exactly are you up against?

But it is worthwhile being precise about who the enemy is because it is in many ways smaller than it looks.

Cases. German has noun cases, like Russian or Latin - not English. German nouns are in the nominative, accusative, dative or genitive case. This system of cases means that the sentences have case than positional meaning, hence words in German can be re-ordered without altering meaning like English often does. The definite article fills sixteen slots (four cases, four gender and plurality columns). However, there are only six distinct forms of the definite article: der, die, das, den, dem, des. Sixteen slots - scary. Six words - not so scary.

What gender to use when? Well, the news is that all nouns are either masculine, feminine or neuter (there are no its in the German world) and these are assigned in a wholly arbitrary fashion. (Only partially). All of the words ending in -ung, -heit, -keit, -schaft and -tion for starters are almost certainly feminine. Words ending in -chen and -lein are almost always neuter, hence Twain's surprise about the Mädchen, a twelve-year old maid. Learn a dozen rules like these and you could actually guess what gender should go with nouns that you might possibly have never seen.

Word order. Verb position in second; in a subordinate clause at end. Split separable verbs (anrufen -> Ich rufe dich morgen an). Three rules cover 90% of what trips people up.

None of this is infinite. The whole system is only two sides long sheets on paper. And there lies the trap: because it fits it should on paper be learned, on paper it should on paper be on paper.

Why does knowing a rule not mean you can use it?

The psychologists who study about the retention of facts and information among individuals when performing tasks have pointed-out different levels of recalling memories from the brain. Such levels and factors about memory retention have been elucidated as procedural memory and the declarative sort of memory. Declarative memory refers to the recollection of facts whereas procedural type of memory refer to the recollection relating to the skills obtained earlier such as riding a bicycle, typing and so on. A linguist named Robert De Keyser has spent years to prove the fact that language students go through a stage during they learn a novel language after a considerable period, following which, they master up the language with continued use and practice.

You will use a textbook, app or flashcard set to feed and learn grammar or rules for vocabulary -- that is what DeKeyser call your declarative knowledge -- the one you can put into spoken or written words. Your learning has not been futile. A rule that you are able to express into words is a rule you might notice; noticing comes from catching yourself on your own mistakes. Unfortunately, declarative knowledge that is not supplemented with procedural knowledge cannot do you much good alone - that just defeats the whole purpose of learning (just like reading a textbook about swimming will not teach you how to stay afloat!).

You have to do the thing. Many times. Slightly badly at first. Many times slightly bad. Do it.

How does memory actually keep grammar?

Two findings from memory research pointed the way.

First is the testing effect, retrieval practice. In a well-known study (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006) students learnt passages. Those who reread remembered far less after a week than the other group, those who had been tested. Despite the fact that rereading had seemed easier and productive whereas testing itself had seemed like working too much with memories instead of simply refreshing them (like we sometimes have this feeling about revision; that a certain type is more effective over others). This is so, because pulling something out makes it more powerful than by placing.

With grammar, that means: cover the table, produce the ending. Say the sentence, check it. Write the subordinate clause, look up where the place verb goes. The moment of struggle is not a sign the method is not working, it is the method.

Secondly, Ebbinghaus discovered a fact in the 1880s: in his experiments, in which he learnt a list of nonsense syllables off by heart, most of what he had learnt was forgotten by day 1. Then the rate of forgetting slowed. But that was not all. Ebbinghaus discovered that if he returned to the nonsense syllables before they disappeared from memory, subsequent forgetting would take far longer. That method is known as spaced repetition and is widely employed in language flashcard apps. It appears few people use spaced repetition in grammar. Many rush into learning the dative on Tuesday, expecting to remember it on Saturday.

What should I actually do?

Put the two findings together with what we know about skill learning and out pops a method.

1. Learn in sentences, not tables. For each rule, collect five to ten whole sentences you like and can imagine saying. “Ich helfe dem Kind.” “Mit dem Zug dauert es zwei Stunden.” A sentence carries the rule, the gender and a plausible context all at once. A table carries none of these.

2. Say them until they are boring. Say them in the bathroom, at the supermarket, when you are walking or cooking. The sensation of being bored means that your procedural memory is being developed. Repeat your sentences, out loud and from memory at odd moments. Boredom is the sound of procedural memory forming.

3. One battle at a time. Only choose one tense for the week (be specific with cases), such as positioning of weak verbs or the dative after certain verbs. Turn a blind eye on all of the rest. Attempting to master too many subjects at once, you will conquer nothing.

4. Space it. For 2 minutes, return to last week’s list before starting this week’s. For a minute, return to last month’s.

Numbers mean less than doing it as a routine!

5. Use it with a person. This is the one step people skip and this is the step that makes everyone else count. Take the structure of the week into a conversation and attempt to land it three times. At least once, you will get it wrong. And receiving a correction, from someone that goes out of their way to gently bring you up to date on your folly, is far more memorable than anything in a corrections book because it comes with face, occasion and a sting of embarrassment. Memory loves a story.

Should I stop studying rules, then?

How about 'no', 'No', 'No'? Children acquire German grammar without ever seeing a case table and some methods promise adults the same. But children get several thousand hours of patient input, endless correction and no alternative. You have a job. For an adult with limited hours, a clearly stated rule is a shortcut, not a crutch. It tells you what to listen for.

That is how it should be done. Spend 10 minutes looking at the rule and spend 50 minutes using the rule, most learners have the ratio backwards.

Where does conversation fit in?

Keep going through the argument. The grammar which sticks is the grammar that you can put together without thinking about it too much, grammar that you can produce fast. You can achieve this speed through repeat retrieval of words, when placed under real situations. A real situation is when you can talk openly to somebody without knowing what they are going to say, a subject to which you have not prepared but when the clock does not stop whilst you think.

Solo drills give retrieval and spacing. They do not give the listener. And it is the listener who forces speed and supplies corrections that make it possible and memorable.

This is where SpeakDuo comes in (built after an online experiment to test and recreate the phenomenon in the above story). In your online practice space with SpeakDuo, you are discussing real topics with fellow real people; the AI helps match and host you so you do not even have to chase or keep meeting plans with partners but the actual talking is being done between humans. You bring your one structure for the week, try to land it, fail, succeed and come back next week to find the ending waiting for you where you left it.

It will not teach you the dative. A book does that in an afternoon. What it does is give the dative somewhere to live.

A last word from Twain

Twain learned to speak German in the aftermath of all those complaints and gave a speech in it to the acclaim of an audience of Viennese dignitaries, the hated grammar stuck, because that is how it sticks, when you quit reading textbooks and start testing it on people.

This, also, you can do this week. Choose your rule. Find your sentences. They, now, say them to those people are who talk back.