How to think in German – the quickest way to do it right

Switch to the German version of the article here: Wie man lernt auf Deutsch zu denken, um fließend sprechen zu können

Thinking in German is the fastest way to speak German fluently.

And if you search on Google, you will find a whole lot of ways to do that.

So, the question is, which is the quickest way to make you start thinking in German?

How to start thinking in German the quickest way

The quickest way to think in German is a method called TPRS because it lets you learn German through listening to native German and speaking back.

This lets your brain develop the rhythm, word order and musicality of German as a result.

Let’s break it down again:

• Listen to native Germans
• Speak back
• Then develop the rhythm, word order and musicality of the language naturally

There’s a proven method that teaches you to think in German 6X faster. Click to learn more.

Now the points I mentioned above might seem overly simplified or even vague to some point.

And you may be wondering, what about all the podcasts, movies and news I was told I should watch?

We’ll come to that in a minute.

As for now, let me explain what I mean and give you some examples.

How you should listen to German if you want to think in German

When I said that you should listen to German, there is something I didn’t explain.

And this will be the difference between starting to think in German in a few months and achieving the same in many years.

That is the fact that you need to listen to German which you understand!

If you listen to random German with no translation, you are almost the same as someone taking German grammar lessons, and you will end up thinking that German is hard to learn.

And this brings us to the issue about movies and podcasts.

Why watching German movies and podcasts won’t help you much if you want to think in German

If you watch a German movie, you may hear a few words, but the rest will just go over your head.

This is because of two reasons:

1. Native Germans speak very fast among themselves
2. Movie scripts are not written for beginners but for fluent speakers

The TPRS solves this in that you first get a text which you can read and then listen along to the recorded narration.

But what differentiates it from all other learning methods?

The fact that you get to speak on the question and answer part, and this is what gives you the three requirements to start thinking in German:

• Language rhythm
• Word order
• Musicality of the language

These 3 are what given people their accents, and learning German through a method that exposes you to these helps you learn naturally just like you learned your first language.

Now the TPRS method stands out because it also gives you an opportunity to shadow German and as a result your tongue is trained to carve and pronounce words just like natives do.

This helps because if you are just watching a movie and you hear a word like Bäume, you may not know how it’s written, and on the other hand if you are only reading and you come across it, you may not know how it’s pronounced if you’re not familiar with German umlauts.

The TPRS therefore enables you to start thinking in German 6x faster because you read, listen and speak at the same time to German that you understand.

Advance to other methods to keep thinking in German

When you heard me discourage you from watching movies in German and reading German publications like the Süddeutsche Zeitung you thought I meant that these methods were not helpful.

But why would so many people advice you to do these things if they were not helpful?

Well, they are very helpful.

The difference is that the content you will find on these is meant for people fluent in German and you will take really long to start thinking in German if you use them.

In that regard, therefore, the TPRS method is the bridge that takes you from beginner to a level where you are now ready to consume such content without struggling.

Now when you reach that level, don’t keep using the stories provided by the TPRS but move on to reading books, listening to music and even watching movie series in German.

By this time you will have developed the musicality, word order and structure of the German language and you will have started thinking in German way faster than if you started with other methods.

You can try the TPRS for free and start thinking in German 6x faster.