Learn GERMAN in 2025! Beginner to Fluent (Step-by-Step Guide)

Another year, another goal... Is THIS finally the year you learn German? Or will it end up on your ‘Maybe Next Year’ list like you have been doing every year before?

Something always gets in the way... right?”

What if I told you that learning German doesn’t have to cost thousands… or even a single dollar?

What if the secret to success has been right in front of you this whole time?

I’ve walked this path myself… back when the internet was slow, AOL ruled the chats, and MySpace was where friendships lived—or died. I took the traditional path of classrooms, textbooks, speaking practice... and lots of trial and error. I struggled, I learned, and I discovered what works—and what doesn’t.”

Since 2009, I’ve helped hundreds of students unlock the German language. Some succeeded… others didn’t. But why?” and now I’ve combined those tips, and I will share them with you in this post.

Since 2011, I’ve also been creating YouTube videos about learning German. I’ve made a huge list of the best learning tools—updated regularly—and you can download it for free here.

Step 1: Goal Setting

If you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else. - Yogi Berra

This is true when learning German too. If you don’t know what your end goal is for learning German, you will never reach your goal. How would you even know, if you did?

One Goal to Rule Them All

Start with a pie-in-the-sky kind of goal. What would be the ultimate thing you want to be able to do with the German language? Do you want to go on vacation and converse with locals, order food and navigate the country with ease? Do you want to learn enough German to pass the TestDaF and study at a German university? Do you want to pass some other exam? Do you want to become fluent? What does that mean to you? If you were fluent, what would you do with the language?

January 1st of 2024 I uploaded a video that supposed I was learning German to take advantage of Germany’s amazing universities. In December of 2022 I uploaded a video that assumed I wanted to move to Germany in one year and never return to my home country. If those two are your goals, you might like those videos more than this one. 

For today’s exercise my goal will be to learn enough German to become fluent. With this newfound fluency I plan to apply to work for a German company. This might be in the USA and I won’t have to move or it could be a job that splits my time between the USA and Germany. There are lots of options for this kind of thing including opportunities at Bayer, Bosch, Audi, Volkswagen, Mercedes or any of the other German companies who employ almost a million Americans every year. Maybe I’ll even get into one of their apprenticeship programs, which are some of the best in the world.

In the end, I believe I will need to be at least at the B2 level in order to do this. I’ll prove it to myself and my future employer by taking the Telc exam. There are a variety of different Telc exams I could take, but either the “Telc Deutsch B2 für allgemeinsprachliches Deutsch” or the “Telc Deutsch B1-B2 Beruf” are probably my best options. The first one is just a general knowledge of the German language and the other one is for B1 or B2, but focuses on workplace themes.

SMART Goals

Anytime I make a goal I make sure it is a SMART goal. Not saying other goals are somehow stupid, but Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely Goals, SMART Goals. To fit this format, I will write my goal out as follows:

I will learn enough German to pass the B1-B2 Telc exam for occupations within the next year.

It is specific: pass this exact test. It is measurable: I can check my progress along the way with the practice tests and the ultimate test will be the exam itself. It is achievable. You can learn up to B2 in one year. It checks the relevant box, as I want to be able to work for a German company and I believe learning German will make me more marketable. And the “within the next year” part makes it have a time component.

I have a video explaining SMART Goals in depth here. When you download my FREE recommended resources document that I mentioned before, I’ll also send you my goal setting template, so you can make sure you set a SMART goal too.

Checkpoint Goals

In order to reach my smart goal of passing the B1-B2 Telc exam within the next year, I will need to make some smaller goals to check my progress as I move through the levels. Think of it as adding save points to the game of life.

This could be as simple as passing the A1-B1 exams (even if they are just the practice version of the exams) as I progress through the stages.

A cursory Google search says it will take 40-50 hours of study to reach A1, another 50-60 hours to reach A2, 80-90 to get to B1 and 95-120 hours to reach B2.

Assuming this is true, it will take me 265-320 hours of German study in order to reach B2. That would be an hour per day for most of a year. I want to make sure that I am going to reach my goal, however, so I am going to be an overachiever and do 90 minutes of study every day. What counts as studying, however, will vary based on some other factors I’ll get to in a bit.

Start with the Basics

Obviously I need to start with the basics, which I can learn for free with the A1 and A2 course videos on my YouTube channel. This will introduce me to the basics of German sentence structure and grammar as well as a ton of vocabulary necessary at the A1 and A2 levels.

Don't Just Watch

When watching the videos, I’ll take notes. For the grammar lessons, I’ll write my own examples to test my knowledge.

For the listening comprehension lessons, I’ll watch each one 3 times. 1st without any background knowledge. Just watch and see how much I understand. Then make a list of vocabulary I didn't know, look up the words and watch the video again with the vocabulary list nearby for reference. Then I’ll watch it a third time (maybe with my eyes closed, so I really test my listening comprehension skills).

Lesson Format

At the beginning of each learning session, I’ll start by reviewing the lesson I learned the day before. Then start the next lesson. At the end of the learning session, I’ll see if I can connect the previous lesson to the current lesson so I can see how the pieces of the puzzle work together.

Meaning, if in one lesson I learned about conjugation of verbs and making sure that the subject and verb match and in the next lesson I learn about basic questions and answers, I should be able to make my own questions using the conjugation rules.

Better Input Leads to Greater Output

If I spend an hour a day doing this, I will advance your skills pretty quickly. After that it is about immersing myself with as much of the language as possible. The more I read, listen and see the language, the better my ear for the language will become. This will in turn make my output that much better.

Of course, I could also do the A1 and A2 courses built into the Deutschlerner Club, if I wanted to spend a few bucks a month to get extra materials, worksheets and so on, but that is completely optional. You can learn using my YouTube videos for free, but it is easier to organize yourself with the Deutschlerner Club subscription.

One Source Isn't Enough

Just watching my videos would be incredibly boring, however. Also, I have said many times on my YouTube channel that you can’t just watch passively and expect to learn a language. That’s not how any of this works.

Nicos Weg

I’m going to need to supplement with some other materials. I’ll start with Nicos Weg. This is a video series that was put together by Deutsche Welle. It follows a young man from Spain named Nico. He originally went to Germany to visit his aunt. Then he goes on a bunch of adventures and learns the German language and falls in love.

This series starts at A1 and goes all the way through B1. Along with the video series, there are a ton of online lessons that are completely free. These will help practice what I learned in the lessons from Herr Antrim and expand the knowledge beyond what I get from his lessons.

I’ll probably only do this once or twice a week or just do 15-20 minutes in each learning session on Nicos Weg before moving on to the next lesson from Herr Antrim.

Learn German by Reading

In addition to all of that, I am a huge fan of learning by reading. For this goal, I am going to pick up every book that Angelika Bohn has written. I’m going to start with Nachbar Nr. 5, which is aimed at the A1 level. Then I will read Der Silberne Kugelschreiber, which is aimed between the A1 and A2 levels.

Then Immer Wieder Sascha for A1 and A2, Nie Wieder Merle for A2, Herr Quintus und die Geheime Liste for A2, Falsche Adresse for A2 and B1, Für S. for B1, Foto ohne Namen for B1 and B2, and Café Leo for B2.

*Links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking one of those links, Herr Antrim makes a small commission. This does not cost you extra, but it does help support Herr Antrim's work. 

One of the coolest things about Angelika Bohn’s books is that she has online materials that you can access for free just by going to her website. There are exercises that you can use to check your understanding of the chapters and expand your German lessons.

Her books also put vocabulary words you need to learn in bold letters. I would also recommend underlining any words you don’t understand the first time through. Then you can make a list of those words, look them up and work on learning them.

How to Read to Learn

When reading, I have a whole video that breaks down how to read German books in order to get the most out of them, but I’ll give you a short rundown now.

1. Choose a start and stop point.

Read that passage of the book without stopping for anything. Don’t look up words you don’t know. Don’t even highlight the words you don’t know. Just read. If you don’t understand everything, that is ok. You can simply read through and do your best to understand through context.

2. Read it again

This time, stop at every word you don’t know and write it down. Don’t look them up while you are reading, just write them down, so you can look them up when you are done with your second pass through.

3. Look up those words.

Write down the German and English next to each other. Keep them in the order that they appear in the text. Then you can read a third time with the vocabulary list next to you, so you can use it as a reference as you read through the text.

4. Read it a third time

After that you can either wait a day and try again the next day or you can put the vocabulary you wrote down into a flashcard app, study the words in your next learning session and then try to read the passage again a day later.

Just make sure that your last reading does not include your vocabulary list, as the point is to show your improvement.

5. Never read a passage fewer than 3 times.

If you want, you can read a chapter each week. Do one reading each day and add a day in for vocabulary study. This will allow you to spread out the learning process, which helps you to store the information in your long-term memory instead of just the short-term.

I listed 9 books by Angelika Bohn earlier ranging from A1 through B2. This means you could do about a book each month and be right on track. You might be able to do the earlier books a bit quicker, but the later books might take you a bit longer.

All together, you should be able to finish all 9 books by the end of the year, which is right in line with your goal.

Free German Learning Books

If you don’t want to read books by Anglika Bohn, you could use other books, or if you are trying to avoid spending money on anything, you can read some simple children’s books online for FREE via The German Project.

I stumbled upon their website a while back and have been very impressed. They speak slowly enough for beginners and you can follow along with the stories via the text provided.

They also have another project called The Fable Cottage, which tells fables. Some of those stories, however, are behind a paywall, but the pricing isn’t terrible. 

Once you get to B1 or so, you can start using Der Weg. They have a ton of articles about Germany all in German. They provide an audio file for each article, so you can hear the words said out loud. The only issue I have is that they don’t speak at “beginner speed”, which makes it difficult for the untrained ears.

If you like news, you can listen and read the news in simplified German on Nachrichten Leicht. It is exactly what you would think with a name like “News Simple”. They simplify the news and read about it slowly for beginners.

If you are no longer a beginner and you want to learn about the news Deutsche Welle has a great news site. They don’t simplify the language, however, so you should probably wait to get into those things.

Speaking Practice

So far I have reading and listening covered by Herr Antrim’s videos, Nicos Weg, the books by Angelika Bohn and the other reading websites, but there are still some things that need to be practiced. Speaking and writing. So what can I do?

For speaking, most options are going to require some sort of payment. There are a few options, however, for things that don’t cost money.

Listen & Repeat

First, imitating lessons that you have learned is one of the easiest ways to work on your conversation skills in German. Watch an episode of Nicos Weg and pause after every sentence. Try to say what the characters in the series say.

Do this with videos from Easy German’s YouTube channel. Or anything else you are watching in German. Watch, listen, repeat.

This will greatly improve your pronunciation, as you can compare what you are saying to the person in the video.

Partner Practice

You can use services like Tandem, which offer a place to connect with language learners who are learning your language and speak the one you want to learn.

The idea is that you speak with them 50% of the time in your native language and the other 50% in the language you are trying to learn. It is a great way to get to know a real German person while also learning German.

Deutsch Gym

There is also Deutsch Gym, which is a paid Discord server that I reviewed a few years ago. They offer almost daily conversations at various levels. The price isn’t outrageous and the conversations that I had when I did the review of their service were pretty awesome.

Stammtisch

Another free option would be to search for a Stammtisch or Sprachcafé in your area. I know there are several Stammtische that meet in St. Louis and the surrounding area where I live. There are online versions as well. You can find some of them on Meetup.com.

Writing Practice

I made a full video about how to practice writing without a teacher, which basically outlined my ChatGPT methodology for writing, checking your writing, fixing your writing and improving your writing.

The general idea is this:

You start by brain dumping onto a piece of paper.

Write as much as you can on the topic of the day. You might choose a restaurant conversation. Write a conversation in German that takes place in a restaurant. See how much you can get on the page in 5-10 minutes. Don’t stop writing, if you can avoid it. Just keep writing until your time is up.

Type what you wrote into a word processor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

When it underlines something, check to see why it is underlined. Is it a grammar error? Is it a spelling error? Fix these and proofread your own writing to the best of your ability.

Now take that improved writing and paste it into ChatGPT.

Tell it to check your writing for grammar, spelling and syntax errors. Make sure you ask it to explain any changes it makes. This will not only tell you what you did wrong, but how to fix it in the future.

Rewrite your text again and then paste it back into ChatGPT.

This time just tell it to make it sound better, more professional, more at the (insert one level above your current level). Make sure you ask it why it made the changes it did and what those changes were, so you can improve based on that.

If you use this methodology, you might not need any other practice for writing.

What Vocabulary to Study When Learning German

There is one more thing I recommend figuring out. Which words should you learn at each level? The Goethe Institut has a list of words to learn for each level from A1-B1.

After that there are no lists, as it wouldn’t make much sense. Past B2 just start memorizing the dictionary starting with A. (joking, don’t really do that)

Vocabeo

I also found this super helpful website called Vocabeo, which lists the most commonly used 5700+ words in German. You can sort them by level, frequency, alphabetical, word class, and a whole lot more. It is a super cool website for anyone who is super nerdy like me.

If you start by sorting them by popularity and eliminate the articles and little words that you can’t really just memorize outright, type them into linguee.de and see what kinds of example sentences show up for them.

Write these vocabulary words and example sentences on flashcards or onto digital flashcards. Then use this to study the words based on how frequently they are used in German. 

Click here to learn why I don't like digital flashcards and what you should be putting on your flashcards.

Anything Else?

You should eventually work in movies, podcasts and other media. I recommend waiting until you are at the A2 or B1 level before you try movies or podcasts, unless they are for German learners or children.

The methodology should be the same, however. Watch everything three times or more. View first without stopping to figure stuff out just to see how much you get. Then watch again and note any words you don’t know. Look up those words and then come back for the third viewing.

Again, you should spread your viewing out over several days so you aren’t just watching the same thing over and over again. If you are watching a full movie, I recommend watching 15-30 minutes of it at a time and going through this process over several days.

If you want to download my list of recommended resources for German learners click here and fill out the request form. I’ll send it right over.

If you want to check out my Deutschlerner Club so you can supercharge your German learning process, click here.