Shadowing Practice: How to Learn German FAST When You Don't Have Time - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I'm going to show you how to learn German when you really don't have time using seven simple cheat codes.
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See, I've been learning and teaching languages for over 25 years.
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I've written dozens of books, including ones in German, and I've noticed that people who succeed with learning German, they're not smarter, they're not more talented, and they definitely don't have more free time.
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They just get a few really important things right from the very beginning.
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So in this video, I'm going to give you seven cheat codes that make learning German feel easier almost immediately.
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You'll learn what to focus on, what to ignore, and how to start speaking, even if you've only got a few minutes a day.
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So let's start with the easiest win there is, and you're probably going to think I'm joking because it certainly doesn't look like it's easy, but look, have you ever seen anything written in German?
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Maybe on social media, in subtitles, a poster, a page in a book?
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What you see at first glance is a lot of long words and funny letters, and are those capital letters in the middle of a sentence?
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What is that anyway?
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A typo?
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How do you even read this?
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Well, the funny thing is almost everything that's making this look difficult is actually trying to help you.
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Those capital letters, they're not random, they're actually doing you a big favor because German highlights the most important words on the page.
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That's right.
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So when you look at a sentence, read the capitals first, because in German, every noun starts with a capital letter, every person, every place, every thing.
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And that means
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And here is
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the Polizeilederjacke of 1989.
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It's not hurting that they look a lot like English.
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This one means the wind, and the other means police leather jacket.
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So before you've even worked out the grammar, you've already got a pretty good idea of what's going on, something to do with the wind, and a leather jacket.
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Now you've just got to figure out what's actually happening.
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For that, you will need the other six cheat codes.
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Before we get there, if reading German that easily gives you a little buzz, well, hold onto that feeling,
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because that buzz is the whole idea behind how we teach languages here at Story Learning.
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We don't bury you with grammar rules from the beginning.
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We hand you a little story that's full of words
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that you can already half guess so that you're reading real German from page one, not page 100.
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And if you want to feel that win for yourself, experience what that's like, I've written a free short story for you
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that comes with audio so you can read and listen along
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and actually show you exactly how to do this step by step
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so that you can prove to yourself that learning German won't be as hard as you think.
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To get this free story, You can scan the QR code on the screen with your phone, or you can look for the link in the description.
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Then see how much you can understand using all the seven cheat codes in this video.
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Now, if you were just wondering how on earth you were supposed to recognize police leather jackets when it's all one word, well, don't worry, because that's the next cheat.
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See, in German, a leather jacket is one word, just like a gazillion other things are, and it can get even longer if it's a particular kind of jacket.
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So naturally, people think learning German means memorizing thousands and thousands of gigantic words.
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But luckily, that's actually the last thing you should be worrying about, because German isn't inventing a brand new word each time,
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it's just snapping a few ordinary words together like Lego.
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German loves doing this.
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The trick is to reverse engineer the word.
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So if you can't understand this long word, unclick it, break the Lego.
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Okay, vintage leather jacket.
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Well, now I get it, which means those famously enormous German words are not really enormous at all.
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There's lots of little words hiding inside a bigger one that German happens to stick together.
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Also the biggest clue to the meaning is going to be the last part.
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So even if you're not sure what the first part of the word is, you still know it's a jacket and that's kind of enough a lot of the time to guess what the word is.
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So just think, last part wins.
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What's brilliant about this is that you can often guess words that you've never seen before.
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Let's say you're reading a a new little scene like this one.
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First you spot all the nouns and some are easy because they look like English.
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German has tons of these by the way they're called cognates
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and once you start breaking up the longer words it's actually pretty fun guessing what's going on.
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But reading German is one thing.
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How could you actually say those words out loud?
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Because German pronunciation can be tricky and
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so naturally this is where beginners get a bit nervous because you look at a word like this and you think, great I've got no idea what sound that is supposed to make.
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Ackeree?
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Is that the same as bakery?
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Is that how you say it?
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Well no, that EI at the end is a typical German spelling trick that catches people out.
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EI versus IE.
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They look almost identical but they sound completely different and a lot of words look like this.
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So here's the cheat, when you get to the the EI, IE part, just ignore the first letter.
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Say the second one.
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If you see IE, the second letter is E, right?
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So just say E as in Wien.
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And if you see EI, the second letter is, yeah, you guessed it, I as in Wein.
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All you need to remember is that mein is mein and fein is, well, fein.
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Once your throat is dry from repeating that, you can wet your whistle with a glass of Weißwein.
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You can tell her sie trinkt bier hier in Wien.
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That is, she drinks beer here in Vienna.
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That's it, one little trick and you'll get one of the most confusing parts of German right almost every time.
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Great, now that you're feeling more comfortable, you might be ready to hang out with some Germans, but that can feel a bit intimidating.
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What are you actually going to say?
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Well, the quickest way to get speaking real German quickly is to learn a handful of ready-made chunks.
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Now, chunks are little starter phrases where you memorize the first part
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and then simply change the ending to say dozens of other things.
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For example, here's a really useful chunk that means I feel like or I'm in the mood for.
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I feel like pizza, I feel like beer, I feel like dancing, I feel like going home.
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You just learn that set phrase, I feel like, and you swap out the last word or two to say whatever it is that you fancy doing.
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And it's the ultimate social shortcut really, and that word that looks like lust, it means desire.
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You can't forget that.
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Ich habe Lust einkaufen zu gehen.
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I feel like going shopping.
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Ich habe Lust auf Pizza.
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I'm up for pizza.
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Here's another one.
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I'm looking forward to, or I can't wait for.
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I can't wait for the weekend.
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I can't wait to go hiking.
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You can even come up with a few fun ones yourself, like this little phrase, I'm scared of something.
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Learn that little chunk and you can say, well, I'm scared of spiders, I'm scared of flying, I'm scared of the dark, I'm scared of watching Ollie's YouTube videos.
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You're not building anything from scratch here, you're taking a small chunk of German, using it exactly as it is, and just adding your own detail at the end.
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Learn five or six like this, and suddenly you can really say things, not perfectly, but enough to get words out of your mouth.
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Even once you know all this stuff, there is one particular thing that can feel quite stressful from the very start.
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How to say the.
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See, German does something that English speakers find completely baffling.
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Every noun, every thing, comes with one of three little words and those words are der, die and das.
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You might remember that from school.
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They all basically mean the in English but German uses a different one for different nouns.
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So the artist, the gallery and the girl might each need a completely different version of the.
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And the last thing you want is to haul out a long grammar list to check every time.
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Stop worrying.
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Don't fight the die der das.
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Here is a brilliant little workaround that will help you out immediately.
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Whenever you've got the choice, talk about more than one thing instead of just one.
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It immediately cancels out the problem.
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Say you're at a train station in Berlin looking for the ticket machines.
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Well, instead of asking, where's the ticket machine?
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Ask, where are the ticket machines? not machine,
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machines, plural, because every plural noun in German gets the same definite article, die, always.
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It doesn't matter if you're talking about cats, clocks, or apple trees, they all get the exact same version of the.
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So next time you're walking around Germany, instead of worrying whether a pretzel or a pilsner is der, die, or das, just say the pretzels,
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the pilsners, and nine times out of ten you will be right, no guessing required.
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It's a silly little trick, but it's amazing how these little things give you confidence when it comes to But wait, that's not the only sneaky way around genders.
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Here's another fun one.
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You know how in English we say words like a doggy instead of dog?
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At least my 11 year old does.
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Well in German you can add Schen to the end of a noun.
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You're talking about a small version of it like a doggy and guess what?
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Every single Schen noun is automatically das.
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So if you can't remember the gender of Hund, which is dog, just think little dog.
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Das little dog every time.
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Pretty handy.
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But even with all these new skills, how are you going to handle a German person talking to you at seven million miles an hour?
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Because often when you hear native speakers it feels like someone's throwing the whole box of Lego down the stairs.
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Just this wall of sound.
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But here's the thing, German often hides one of the most important pieces of a sentence until the very end.
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The action.
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The verb.
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And without the verb you don't know what's happening.
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The trick is don't panic halfway through through the sentence.
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Let it finish.
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And while you're waiting for the ending, listen for the big words that come along, the nouns, people, places, things.
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Gummiband is...
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...noch irgendwo.
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Okay, I heard rubber band somewhere.
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Ich hab noch eins.
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Irgendwo.
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Ich glaub in einer Tasche.
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Hier?
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Nein.
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Ja, ich glaub in meiner Jackentasche, eine andere Jacke.
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Right, he said pockets and the other jacket pocket.
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Well, that's already enough for me to start to build a picture.
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Now, make a guess.
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I think he's looking for a rubber band that might be in his other jacket pocket.
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And don't worry if you're wrong, your brain absolutely loves making predictions like this.
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Then the sentence reaches the end, the verb arrives, and suddenly the whole picture clicks into place.
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It takes practice, but that's how good listeners work.
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They're not trying to catch every single word.
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They're always building a picture from the clues.
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This is how German works.
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It's like you're walking around a shop, putting things in your shopping basket, and it's only right at the end that you find out how much they all cost.
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You've got to bring them there anyway, right?
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Does this metaphor work?
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I don't know.
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Anyway, for now, you've got tons of little shortcuts to help you, but there's one final cheat that makes all the others stick.
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You've got to make this all personal.
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See, when you're in a hurry to get actually speaking German in front of real people
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and having a good time while you're at it, there's not much point wasting time practicing all the dog phrases if you only like cats,
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or how to ask for the right train if you never take trains and you only take taxis, or private helicopters or something.
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You're just overloading your memory with useless stuff, and next thing you know, you're out with friends, and then someone says, oh, go on then, say something in German.
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Can you say something in German?
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Can you say something in German about your dream of Wembley?
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Say something in German.
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Yep, and your mind just goes completely blank.
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Being there, I hate that.
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So forget all of that stuff.
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Your brain won't remember because it literally doesn't care.
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So instead, learn to say stuff you actually talk about in your own life.
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Your job, your family, your favorite rock bands, what you like to do on weekends, who your football team is.
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As for your cats, could you tell those Germans about the one who keeps getting stuck up a tree?
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Now, that's the German you'll actually use and because it matters to you, you'll remember it with half the effort.
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You can even bring in those little chunks now that we talked about earlier.
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I'm looking forward to the Guns N' Roses concert.
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Ich freue mich schon auf das Konzert.
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Ich freue mich auf.
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If it comes up in your everyday life, it belongs in your German and it's worth learning.
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Even the most obscure things are worth learning if they're personal to you.
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So start there and you'll never be stuck wondering what to say again.
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And by the way, if you've been learning German for a while and you're looking for something fun, a breath of fresh air to breathe into your learning, you might like to check out the Story Learning app.
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Because here we give you short stories that are written personalized for you.
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So we take your reading level and the stories magically adapt to your reading level as you go.
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So if they're too hard, we make the stories too easy.
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If the stories are too long, we make them shorter.
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We only write stories in the genres that you like
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but also when you save words from the story those words will reappear in future stories
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so that you're always kind of learning naturally the words that you want to learn.
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Lots of people are really enjoying the app there's a link in the description if you'd like to check out more.
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There's just one thing left to do now
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and that's figure out how you're going to make German a part of your everyday life
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because all the cheat codes in the world won't help you
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if you don't actually use them
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so my next video I'm going to show you a dead simple system for learning any language even
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if you've only got 15 minutes a day.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Learn German FAST When You Don't Have Time”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: German, word, learning. This video has 198 sentences and 2564 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:11. The speaker talks fast, about 195 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| jacket noun | /ˈd͡ʒæk.ɪt/ | A piece of clothing worn on the upper body outside a shirt or blouse, often waist length to thigh length. |
| noun noun | /naʊn/ | A word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as person, animal, place, word, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea… |
| cheat verb | /ˈt͡ʃiːt/ | To violate rules in order to gain, or attempt to gain, advantage from a situation. |
| chunk noun | /t͡ʃʌŋk/ | A part of something that has been separated; a generally squat, thick, irregular piece of something, e.g. wood or stone. |
| scare verb | /skɛɚ/ | To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way. |
| phrase noun | /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ | A short written or spoken expression. |
| verb noun | /vɝb/ | A word that indicates an action, event, or state of being. |
| grammar noun | /ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/ | A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general. |
| doggy noun | /ˈdɔ.ɡi/ | A dog, especially a small one. |
| fein noun | Alternate spelling of feen. Popularized by Travis Scott | |
| memorize verb | /ˈmɛm.əˌɹaɪ̯z/ | To fully learn so as to have entirely available to the memory; to learn by heart, commit to memory. |
| pilsner noun | /ˈpɪlznə/ | A pale, light lager beer. |
| pretzel noun | /ˈpɹɛt.səl/ | A toasted bread or cracker usually in the shape of a loose knot. |
| shortcut noun | /ˈʃɔːtkʌt/ | A path between two points that is faster than the commonly used paths. |
| wean verb | /ˈwiːn/ | To cease giving breast milk to an offspring; to accustom and reconcile (a child or young animal) to a want or deprivation of mother's milk; to take from the… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| look forward to verb | To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to. |
| walk around verb | To walk with no planned destination; to meander. |
| break up verb | To break or separate into pieces. |
| come along verb | To accompany. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How do you even read this?
- How could you actually say those words out loud?
- Is that how you say it?
- What are you actually going to say?
- I'm looking forward to, or I can't wait for.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been learning · you've been learning |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've written · you've even worked · you've never seen |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who succeed · Hund, which is · one who keeps |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be stuck · are written |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 88 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, throat /ˈθɹoʊt/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shortcut /ˈʃɔːtkʌt/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/
- Long words — get the stress right: intimidate /ɪnˈtɪmɪdeɪt/, personalize /ˈpɜː.sə.nə.laɪz/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, helicopter /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like jacket, noun, cheat.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.