dear Germannn, thank you for your very useful blog! I'm going to Germany soon for about 6 months and I need to improve my german in two months, what do you recommend I do? I know the grammar about 40 percent, I know all the tenses and modalverben etc. also I have 2 years of lets say ear education because I was an addict of SuperRTL as a kid :) thank u!
Try to find out what your biggest problems are. What exactly is it that keeps you from understanding texts (at your language level or at the level you try to achieve)? What do you find confusing? Try to answer those questions to yourself and then work on these problems first before you start to concentrate on new grammar topics or vocabulary that might not be that important for you.
Think of sentences you’ll most likely need in everyday life. Do you know how to order something? Do you know how to ask for directions or basic information? I don’t know what exactly you are going to do in Germany, so I can’t give you any more detailed tips. But try to think of which words and which phrases are going to be important for you personally.
Work on your comprehension skills! Even “inactively”: listen to as much German as possible. Make sure there’s always some German music or talking playing in the background. It’ll help you to get used to the sound/rythm of the language and it’ll help you to make out single words and phrases. It’s great that you already have some “ear education”, but you should really keep it going.
And last but not least: work on your communication skills. I don’t know if it’s possible for you to speak to other people in German. If you don’t know anyone you can talk to and if you are not able to use Skype (or something similar) for any reason, try to talk to yourself at least. It might sound stupid, but it’ll help. Moreover, try to think in German. I think building sentences spontaneously is one of the trickiest parts when you start learning a language (even if you already are able to understand a lot).
Again, sorry about not being able to give you more precise tips. But it’s hard to say which grammar topics are important for you since you already seem to know the basics.
I hope this helped anyway. Good luck with everything!