Learn German online Youtube with Johannes & Luzi

Video syntax lessons are great for those who find them effective for them!

Jonathan and Lucy are two German t teachers who live in Twain and decided to make an intelligent move and upload their lessons to YouTube. You can see an example of a video here:

And their other videos for learning German online are on this page.

You can buy their course and practice yourself with their materials. 

Despite the fact that there are many people who have published German lessons on YouTube, we recommend these because they do it very well. They speak clearly, they have the right rhythm, they have the right combination of English, and they are among the most popular series to learn German grammar online.

So how do you learn German with Jonathan and Luzzi?

Even though it is designed for beginners learning German, advanced learners will also find it useful. This is because it is clear and easy to understand how German grammar is structured and how it works.

German grammar can be complex at first. This is a great advantage to learning German grammar with the help of videos since it allows the learner to go back and learn the idea over and over again and, over time, assimilate the rules of grammar into the mind. It's a complex task, but possible for some people. The most significant advantage of recorded lesson plans is that those who want can repeat them repeatedly, as needed.

Is it worth learning the rules of German grammar in online meetings?

Those familiar with our "Shelva" method for learning new languages know that with us, there is no significant emphasis on grammar rules. The meetings with us are free conversational meetings, and people are not stopped and corrected on grammar rules, nor are they studied in an orderly manner. This is because our online conversation practice system is one way to learn German, but not the only way! Some people can absorb grammar rules and use them in conversations with us in practice; this is a good and highly desirable thing! We strongly encourage the participants in our course series to find external tools and learn grammar rules from them.

Wait, so why don't we learn grammar rules in an orderly way during German conversation practice sessions?

So some indeed ask, why don't you learn grammar rules orderly in the meetings? And the answer to that is complex. First, plenty of others do, and it's a complicated subject to learn grammar rules together in an online session. Our experience shows that it will always be an inexcusable failure for quite a few participants, while for others, it will be a complete waste of time.

Why is it such a big difference in German learners? 

The reason is that humans there is a vast range of human abilities to absorb syntax. While a certain percentage of the population will be able to understand it quickly and efficiently, there is a not negligible percentage at all who will not understand it even if they study it for years. A great many speakers of the language, any language, cannot point out the basic rules of grammar, even in their mother tongue.

Do advanced students, who have been studying for 2-3 years, have anything to learn from Yonatan and Luzzi's videos?

The answer is clear: yes.

Many times German learners have difficulty with grammar simply because it is too complex to learn both the meaning of the words and the correct grammar. The student's concentration usually goes to the purpose before the syntax, and this is not a coincidence. It is more important. But after you gain knowledge of the language, you can go back to these videos and see grammar rules from a different perspective. For many learners, the laws of German grammar suddenly seem less intimidating and sometimes even familiar from conversations in German.

Josh Friedman, Berlin 2022