🇩🇪 Sources to learn German for foreign doctors going to Germany

• Introduction

In another article, we showed how important it is to learn how to learn a language. Please ask yourself this question first before you start searching for sources to learn a language. Please invest at least a few minutes reading the following article:

🇩🇪 Tips on how to learn German for doctors & medical specialties

The following sources could help you a lot in getting a B2 certificate, which is one of the most important documents during your application for a German permanent medical license (steps here).

• Sources for learning German:

• Courses

You can of course register for a German course. We recommend doing that in Goethe Institute (what is this?) in your home country. They have almost always native Speakers of German as teachers. Moreover, they try to inform you about the German culture and life in Germany (this is very important for getting a job and getting well with German colleagues and co-workers). If a course is not available near you live, you can do that in another institute or online. Since the Corona pandemic, online classes are widely available. Please search for teachers who are native speakers, particularly in the advanced language levels.

• Buying a book

You can buy a book or download books from the internet. But the thing is, alone, it would not be an easy task to learn all from zero. A good idea might be is to find a German teacher on YouTube who explains German based on the content of a certain book.

• Follow YouTubers

There are many YouTubers who offer German lessons for free for all German language levels. Some of them use certain books. So, you can buy the book and start making notes. Writing while learning a language was shown through research to significantly improve learning.

💡 “Einmal geschrieben ist so gut wie zehnmal gelesen”

“To write once is as good as reading for 10 times” – German proverb

• News, Radio, TV, Podcasts, and Songs

Learning the language would make more fun like this. Moreover, you get to know more about the German culture. This is very important. If you understand German jokes, for example, then you would get along with the Germans better. At least, you will not be sitting in with a Group of Germans and everyone is laughing, but you are trying to fake a laugh because you did not understand the joke, although you understand the words! 🤣

Listen/watch the above in German in your free time. At the beginning, you can of course read the translation. The main thing is that you hear the German language being spoken. Simply listen to the language in your free time (Songs, Podcasts, Radio). Even if you do not understand anything at the beginning, this helps.

Our favorite source for news is “slowly spoken news”, which is a free service from the German governmental broadcaster “DW (Deutsche Welle)” (Link).

You can download radio Apps from the app store of your mobile phone and listen 24/7 to any German radio station (a good one is “Detuschland Funk” with relatively slowly spoken news).

Here is in detail how you can use songs to learn German:

https://facharztJETZT.de/songs

• Movies, series, and documentary movies

Nowadays, many young people watch Series and a lot of Movies. If this is a hobby of yours, do that in German and try watching German movies and Series. There are many free ones on YouTube (also famous ones). Here are the search results containing videos with a duration of more than 20 minutes arranged according to their number of views:

• “movies german”: Link

• “Film deutsch” (🇺🇸 movie German): Link.

Here are the search results for documentary films: Link.

At the beginning, you can activate the subtitles.

There are comedy films and some historic films on YouTube that allow you to understand the history of Germany in an interesting way.

These are movies we suggest:

• Videos with subtitles from the second German TV (ZDF)

There are millions of videos for free in their website. You can simply activate the subtitles for each one of them. Link.

• Join Facebook and Telegram groups for interactive learning

There are thousands of groups for this aim. Some groups have more than100.000 members. Simply search in Facebook for “Learn German” or “Deutsch lernen“.

You can join from now our Telegram group for learning German for the medical language exam: https://t.me/fspJETZT

Also, do not forget to join our groups of Facharzt JETZT (Links to all of these groups).

• Apps

There are hundreds of Apps that can walk you in your learning process starting from A1 level. Examples are in this link.

• Websites for learning German

We recommend the website of DW (Link), which provides a huge amount of free learning material based on your German level.

• For beginners, check these courses (A1 and A2 levels): Link.
• Advanced level (B1 and B2 levels): Link.

The following is s a great series for the A1 level from the DW website (do not forget to activate the subtitles). If you visit the DW website, you can find explanations and training material related to each episode.

• Join the different groups of our community “Facharzt JETZT!”

Through our groups, you will learn the medical German language and make connections with doctors working in Germany. With time, you can build friendships, and they can probably help you to get medical training, job interviews, and even the job itself. Through the discussions in the group, one could easily see that someone is eager to learn and how friendly/intelligent he is. We explained more details here:

https://facharztJETZT.de/connections-how

• Find a tandem language partner

A tandem partner is someone who wants to learn your native language, so you can help each other by each one teaching his/her native language. You can chat with each other, make video calls or meet in person. He will teach you for example German for 1 hour, then you will teach him your mother language for an hour.

• How to find tandem partners? For this aim, there are many websites (Link to Google search) and Apps (Link to Android play store).
• How to find tandem partners in real life? Search in Facebook groups for “expatriates groups” (🇺🇸 expatriate: someone who lives in a foreign country). Use the search keywords “Expatriates in NAME_OF_Country or CITY).
• Go to events of websites/apps for real live meetings and activities: like the website Meetup, Internations and a German one called “Gemeinsam erleben” (the last one being the one with many German members active inside of it)

• Make connections with doctors working in Germany

https://facharztJETZT.de/connections

• Make connections/friendships with native German speakers

This will help you the most. Socializing!

• Real-life meetings: Through meeting apps (explained in the point above)

• Voluntary work: You work voluntarily in international organizations in your home country. When in Germany, you can work in the Red Cross (I recommend it, you learn a lot of medicine too, particularly emergency medicine). Just google where you live in Germany for the Red Cross or other voluntary health organizations (example: Die Johanniter, Malteser, etc.)

You have many other options for voluntary work. Search in Google for “🇩🇪 Ehrenamtliche Arbeit in NAME_CITY”. There are organizations that help you in finding such positions. Sometimes, you get food or travel costs.

• Groups of Facharzt JETZT!

• Do medical training (eine Hospitation)

This is a period of training in a hospital. We explained what that is and how to get one in the following article:

https://facharztJETZT.de/hospitation

• Hiking events

They helped me the most because you walk with people for like 4 to 6 hours, and then you will have plenty of time to talk to anyone in the group. Moreover, you can make connections with native speakers. Of course, you enjoy the beautiful nature in Germany and do your health a great favor.

Hiking was an enjoyable part of my learning German and living in Germany. We wrote therefore an article about that:

https://facharztJETZT.de/hiking

• Online teachers

The website and app italki allows you to book lessons with teachers of many languages. Or a much cheaper method is to put an ad on Ebay and find students or native speakers teaching German as a hobby. Some of them cannot explain grammar very good but you can for example practice speaking with them or they can correct what you write.

• Important relevant articles

Want to learn more? Questions?
Join JETZT (🇺🇸 now) all of our groups & ask what you like
(On mobile phone: The links are at the end of this page/ On PC: On the right side)

Further readings:
• “Tips for Navigating the Language Requirements for Medical Residency in Germany”, German medical residency website, link.
• “Books for Learning German Language”, Your2ndHeart blog by Tejas Ghetia, link.
• “How can I learn German using Technology?”, Your2ndHeart blog by Tejas Ghetia, link.
• “German language courses – great and affordable“, Helena Mamić – Soprano website (Foreign doctor in Germany from Croatia), link.