r/lernen_German

I'm 22f .“I really like Switzerland, and maybe I might go there. My visa process is going on. I want to settle there. I want to go on a student visa, so I need a Swiss friend who can help me learn the language.”

I have lived in Germany for almost 10 years, but I still cannot speak German comfortably. My level is probably around B1/B2. I go to a normal school, but it is very hard for me to express my thoughts naturally.
The biggest problems for me are:
Akkusativ vs Dativ

Prepositions like “an”, “auf”, “in”, etc.

People always explain it like:
movement = Akkusativ

no movement = Dativ

And I also know the questions:
wohin?

wo?

wem?

wen?

But for me this logic still does not feel natural. I understand the rules, but I do not FEEL them.
Another difficult thing is that many prepositions also have abstract or social meanings, not only physical ones. For example, sometimes “auf”, “an”, or “in” are used in ways that are impossible for me to understand logically.
My native language does not really have grammar like this, so I cannot compare it to anything.
Can somebody explain these topics in a very logical/simple way, almost like explaining to a child? Maybe with some kind of “formula” or mental system that actually works in real life.
I would really appreciate help from people who also struggled with this before.

I realized my German problem was not really “more grammar” anymore, it was that I almost never had to answer out loud.

Reading and listening have improved a lot. I can follow slow-ish YouTube, do Anki, and understand chunks of Nicos Weg or Easy German. But if someone asks me something simple like “Was hast du am Wochenende gemacht?”, I freeze and start translating word by word.

I also live somewhere with basically no German speakers nearby, so the usual advice of “join a Stammtisch” or “find a casual conversation group” is not very realistic. Time zones make language exchange annoying too.

What helped was separating my routine by skill instead of pretending one app would solve everything. Anki is for vocab retention. DW/Nicos Weg and Easy German are input. Pimsleur or shadowing is for rhythm and pronunciation. If I have money that month, Preply is still better for nuance and accountability. I also added ISSEN for 10 minutes of German speaking practice when I have nobody to talk to, usually while making coffee or walking around the kitchen.

The biggest change was boring but useful: 10 to 15 minutes of out-loud recall every day helped more than adding another hour of passive input. Speaking is a different skill. You need fast retrieval, sentence assembly, and tolerance for sounding stupid.

My small hack is to repeat the same topic two days later. For example, first I talk badly about my weekend. Two days later I try the same topic again, but force myself to use 3 words from Anki and one connector like trotzdem or außerdem. It feels less random.

I know AI tools are everywhere now, even Digg is apparently coming back as an AI news aggregator, but for German, I’m mostly interested in whether a tool gets me speaking out loud, not the hype.

How are other people practicing speaking if you don’t have German speakers around you?