Native and fun German teacher with over a decade of experience and his own method of making you advance fast at any level!

Find out more about Adrian

• 1) Do you speak this language fluently because of your origins or because a teacher inspired you to learn?

  I was born and raised in Nuremberg, Germany, the city where Lebkucken (gingerbread) comes from. I therefore speak Franconian German (a variation of Bavarian), but mainly use standard German or "Hochdeutsch" when I'm teaching.

• 2) Can you name a living, historical or fictional character that you think is the emblematic representative of the language's culture?

  I'm pretty sure most Germans will name Goethe or Schiller, or maybe a composer such as Beethoven or Schubert, or maybe even a scientist like Einstein or a football player like Beckenbauer or Oliver Kahn. I, however, think that in today's climate, one of the best representatives of our country and ideals is Angela Merkel. Despite not being the chancellor anymore, she continues to live in the collective consciousness of this generation and is usually one of the first people you think of when you think of Germany.

• 3) Is there a typical word, phrase, tradition or behavior in the language that you particularly like?

  I love the word "Kabelsalat", literally "cable salat" to describe the mess of a few cables (phone chargers for example) all cluttered together in a chaotic way. There seems to be a word for everything in German, even though sometimes those words can sound rather ridiculous like the word for glove (Handschuh - hand shoe) or racoon ("Waschbär" - a washed bear). It's somehow as if we had left the job to come up with words for things to children and they went all out!

• 4) Why does speaking this language matter to you?

  In the German speaking realm, Germany is known as the country of "poets and thinkers". My family is actually Spanish and I do speak Spanish fluently as well. However, although I love the sound of Spanish, I do prefer to think in German. It just feels more precise in some way. I love teaching German as it usually helps in the shift of perception that most people have of the German language. German can sound very soft and gentle too, but this is not how it's been portrayed in most films, unfortunately.

• 5) What is the main difficulty in learning this language and what can help the process of learning?

  The hardest thing to get right is the gender of a noun and subsequently their article: der, die das. However, it's usually not the end of the world getting this wrong as most Germans are aware that for most nouns the gender is quite arbitrary and are therefore forgiving. What's more important to get right is the sentence structure and conjugation. That will require a bit of practice, but is also definitely doable. Even the cases are not so hard, once explained properly. As in German you really only need to know two cases to get by: Akkusativ und Dativ. Much less than in most slavic languages where you have to know up to 7 cases. I remember a fellow teacher once saying: Russian is like German but on steroids. So yeah, it could always be worse :)

• 6) Provide a valuable anecdote related to your language learning or your days at school.

  A student of mine contacted me because he was moving from London to Berlin and needed to get fluent in German in less than three months. That's quite a challenge I replied. He said he was determined and would work hard for it. We had three lessons a week and in between, he spent most of his free time, doing his homework for German and learning new words. We managed to progress at an abnormal speed and by the end of the three months he arrived in Berlin with a B1 level which is quite an achievement and I'm sure that now he's perfectly fluent in the language. That shows that hard work, consistency and dedication always pay off.

• 7) How has travel or a specific trip helped you to increase your skill and knowledge of the language?

  Travelling broadens your horizon. It helps you see that people do things differently than you're used to at home and that's okay too. And despite those differences, you also learn through travelling and meeting a variety of people that we're all pretty much the same. We all have wants and desires and the need to express those. That's where language comes in. It also opens many doors knowing a few words or phrases in the language of the country you are visiting. It shows that you care and that you're making an effort. And it feels good to understand something in another language without using Google Translate all the time.

• 8) What makes you a Superprof in language?

  I've been teaching German and Spanish for almost a decade now. And in that time I also studied other languages. I feel that the more languages you learn, the quicker you see the patterns between them and the easier it gets to learn a new language. I'm now pretty good at spotting mistakes and also the underlying issues with them, understanding why a student made a specific mistake and trying to solve that issue rather than just repeating myself over and over again and getting mad at the student for not understanding it. If they don't understand something, then I haven't explained it clearly enough and that's on me, not on them. What's on the student is the responsibility to work on the language even in between our lessons. I sadly can't revise the vocabulary for them. I really would if I could, but that's on you guys :) But if you follow my instructions, work hard and are consistent, you will definitely be able to see some fast progress!