As a tutor I don’t work with a stiff program, but I rather adapt it to the student in order to give her/him the best possible learning experience. On the other hand, I perfectly understand the curiosity of those who are interested in learning German and would like to get an idea of what it could look like.
Here you have a generic and hypothetical plan of the first two months, which I originally created as a guideline for Smartdeutsch and which we still use when teaching groups.
1. Week
Theory: German pronunciation: vowels, consonants, diphthongs
Practice: Listening to german language “as it were music”, paying attention to sounds and imitating them. Learning easy tongue breakers and singing simple songs.
2. Week
Theory: The sentence structure
Practice: Puzzle – assemble and disassemble German sentences. Learn how to orientate yourself in a German text, even if you don’t know the words.
3. Week
Theory: The cases: their meanings and their use.
Practice: The wheel of cases – learn the declination of the articles once and for all!
4. Week
Theory: Verbs (1. part): present, infinitive, participles of regular verbs
Practice: Reading and listening – Together let’s find some German material that you like and learn how to practice with it.
5. Week
Theory: Prepositions
Practice: By reading, recognize the prepositions and mark the case they require.
6. Week
Theory: Pronouns (personal, possessive, relative)
Practice: Catch the pronoun! They are numerous, Germans use them intensively, and they change depending on the case… but you can learn ’em all in a week.
7. Week
Theory: Verbs (2. part): modals, irregulars, future tense and passive form
Practice: The verbal dice – roll the dice and master the German verbs.
8. Week
Theory: Attributes (adjectives and adverbs)
Practice: The game of towels and skirts – let’s learn adjective declination once and for all.
