Would you like to get to know me better and find out how I learned German fast?
That’s exactly the right place to be!
My name is Alex.
- Working in Product Management in a large corporation in Austria
- Passionate professional German teacher
- I’m a proud dad of two daughters, who are both in school
- I’ve been living since 2010 in Germany
- And I’m the creator of germansuperfast.com
I’m a regular guy, just like you,who has made a passion of helping others succeed in a German speaking country.
Bottomline of what I do is
- I teach
- I create courses
- I serve
people like you, who want to speak German so they succeed in their work and life in a German speaking country.
How I learned German fast when I was 20 years old
I was about 20 years old and I was madly in love with this girl who was also a colleague with me in the university.
She could speak very well German, she and her parents have lived in Germany for a couple of years, and she used to go to school there.
One day, sitting on a bench in this park, in Bucharest, I was telling her how frustrated I was after several attempts to learn German in the past.
How can I learn German in a fast and easy way? I asked her.
We agreed that the best way for me to learn German was to go to the courses of one of the famous German institutes and start there from zero.
The next day she brought me about 7-8 books for learning German. Maybe they will also help, she said.
I put them aside and a few days later I went to this German language training center to ask which course would be most appropriate for me.
My goal was to obtain a certificate, the equivalent for C1 today (basically medium to advanced), that would allow me to study abroad one day, in Germany or Austria.
So I asked the secretary how long it would take to obtain this certificate.
She asked back if I learned German in school before.
I said no.
In this case, she said, you would need about 10 years of courses to reach this level.
What? 10 years? I swear, I will never ever forget that day.
So I went home and I made a commitment to myself that I would obtain this certificate in less than 2 years.
It had to be a way to get this certificate faster.
How I learned German fast by myself
I took out the books I borrowed from my girlfriend and I started to learn. A few hours per day. Every day.
No exception.
How I learned German fast? How much time did I invest in this project?
I went through every lesson, I was doing all the exercises, over and over again, I was searching in the dictionary for every word, I started to read my first novel, “Sansibar oder der letzte Grund”, just a few weeks after I started to learn German.
I was watching only German television, I was speaking aloud, I tried to break down the logic of the sentences, the phrases, of the composed words.
I borrowed German magazines, such as “Spiegel”, and I was trying to read through.
I did everything possible. Exactly like in a survival situation.
I tought myself how to learn German.
And I succedeed.
I’m still wondering what gave me this energy, the motivation to learn German so fast …
Many years after I understood what it was: I remember I was visioning all the time what opportunities speaking German would bring into my life.
I was seeing myself in Germany, I was seeing myself talking to people in German.
And of course I wanted to make my girlfriend proud of me.
Six months later I went back to this German institute and I could directly attend a B2 course.
I was so happy with my accomplishment!
Another 6 months have passed and I was admitted to the preparatory course for the certificate I needed to study in Germany.
Finally, in the next summer I passed the exam and I obtained the C1 certificate.
Was it hard work? Yes, it was.
Was it worth it? 100 percent!!!
What methods I used when I learned German fast:
If you want to find out more about the methods I used to learn German fast, you can read this article on by blog:
How to learn German fast: Learn from my own experience!
Speaking German has opened for me new possibilities
And influenced my life completely.
- I studied in Germany for two semesters
- Then I got my first job thanks to speaking German
- For the next job, German was again the second reason why I got hired, after my experience
A few years later, my girlfriend, who borrowed me those books for learning German became my wife.
10 years later and after our first daughter was born, my wife told me that the German company she was working for, offered her a job in South Germany.
No problem, I said. Let’s go. We’ll figure it out. I’ll find a job.
And this was no problem indeed. After a few months in Germany I could choose between several job offers.
Beside experience and qualifications, the big plus was that I was speaking German.
So you see, the reason for learning German was not learning German itself.
It was for all the things that speaking German allowed me to do.
This is what speaking German has made possible
Now I realize that the big question for me was not how I learned German fast but why I learned German that fast.
What has speaking German enabled me to do since I’ve been living in Germany and working in Austria?
First and foremost is the quality of life.
I’ve been having a fantastic life in a superb little town in South of Germany, surrounded by nature and very close to the Alps.
We even have two pets, a big dog and a black cat, that are like family members.
So my kids, my wife and I spend a lot of time outside, in nature, biking, skiing, swimming, playing tennis or meeting friends, German, Austrian or international families, who share the same interests as we are.
It’s so nice to be able to speak at the same level with native speakers, to be able to organize and to visit parties, to have relationships with the people around you, without being stressed out that they cannot understand you and you don’t understand them.
When we are not home we travel all over the world.
Our favourite destinations are France, USA, Italy and nordic countries, especially Sweden and Finland.
How my dream of becoming German teacher has come true
So week after week, month after month I was getting better and better, and foreign colleagues and friends living in Germany or Austria, started to ask me how could I speak so well German, how come that I know so many words, and expressions, and how come that I am so confident in any situation…
They started to ask for my advice.
And I was sharing my advice.
I started to tell them about my simple strategy and to encourage them to start speaking German. Right away.
One of the first people who listened to my advice was a friend and colleague of mine, Saurabh.
He comes from India.
He kept postponing the moment to start learning German for different reasons. No time, no available course, no mood, and so on.
One day I told him: Look, Saurabh, today, 28th of August, you go to the bookstore and you buy a book for learning German.
Any book…
You read through, you make some notes, you learn some words and you start to speak.
I shared with him my simple formula to master different situations and German and he immediately started to make progress.
He started to speak and he’s been improving his German since then.
As more and more people were asking for my advice regarding learning German, one crazy thought came to my mind:
I would like to help as many people as possible to speak German fast, but in order to do that I first have to learn the methods for teaching German.
My feeling was that I needed a solid theoretical background in the most modern teaching methods.
And I also wanted to make sure that my special method, my 5 step formula, is also backed-up by professional teaching methods and research.
From absolute beginner to certified German teacher! Crazy!
This dream has been chasing me for many years, that’s why one day, after almost nine years in Germany, I decided to apply to a postgraduate study programme of the German Goethe Institute and University of Jena in Germany to finally become a teacher for German as a foreign language.
Although the next one and a half years, the whole duration of this course, were very hard for me, because I was working full time in my product management job in Austria, what it came after was very rewarding.
Since I began my studies for becoming a German teacher until today I’ve been teaching many students only and offline, in face to face classes.
The results are amazing:
My students get better and better everyday.
Their confidence has been growing with each lesson, we no longer use English for explanations.
But most important for them is what speaking German facilitated for them.
And this is how GermanSuperfast was born!
This is what you can do next:
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