Applications for my new Laser Listening Week are now open. The five-day guided experience runs from Monday 20 to Friday 24 July. If you’ve ever felt that spoken German starts to slip away from you just when a conversation becomes interesting, this may be exactly what you need.
One of the most common frustrations as an upper beginner or lower intermediate German learner goes like this:
“I can understand quite a lot when I read. I can even follow some spoken German. But when people start talking naturally, I lose the thread.”
Perhaps you recognise the pattern.
You follow the beginning of a conversation but then one phrase goes past too quickly. You miss a small detail or a word doesn’t quite register. While you’re still trying to work out what you missed, the conversation has already moved on.
By the time it’s your turn to speak, you’ve lost the thread and you’re losing your confidence.
At this stage, the usual advice – just listen to more German – isn’t always enough.
Of course, listening widely is hugely valuable. But it also helps to get a clearer grip on where your understanding is breaking down.
That’s why I developed what the Laser Listening Method, my take on good old dictation (listen-transcribe-compare).
Instead of jumping from one piece of content to the next, in Laser Listening Week you spend time with one short, realistic piece of spoken German, using the Laser Listening Method.
You listen several times. You write down what you think you hear. You compare your version with the transcript and translation. You notice where your ear misled you, where grammar affected your understanding, and which useful phrases you failed to recognise quickly enough.
It’s a surprisingly revealing process.
One former student, Grahame B., admitted:
“I thought the dictation would be a doddle. It was much more difficult.”
Another, Julian F., wrote:
“I was certainly disconcerted at first to be asked to do a dictation exercise, as I had not done that since schooldays, but I am now thoroughly convinced of the value of that on this course. There was, as promised, some occasional hilarity when I saw the transcript the next day!”
That’s exactly the point.
Instead of finishing a listening exercise with the vague feeling that I didn’t really understand that, you begin to see why.
Perhaps you consistently miss case endings or perhaps German word order catches you out. Perhaps certain sounds merge together when native speakers talk at conversational speed. Or perhaps you lose confidence after one uncertain phrase and can’t quite tune back in to the flow.
Once you can see those patterns, you can start to work on them.
Later in the process, we look at useful words, phrases and grammar that come directly from the dialogue. Rather than memorising isolated vocabulary or abstract grammar rules, you begin collecting natural chunks of German that you can recognise when listening and use more confidently yourself: my Fluency Phrases approach.
As another student, Grahame G., put it:
“It was amazing the number of times I found new phrases that would then turn up in a podcast. Without the push and prompt it would have sailed over my head. It’s the reinforcement.”
Introducing Laser Listening Week
To give more learners a chance to give Laser Listening a go, I’m running Laser Listening Week, a new five-day guided online programme. It runs from Monday 20 to Friday 24 July 2026.
Together we’ll work deeply with one carefully chosen dialogue extract from my Weekly German Workouts programme. Each day builds on the last, taking you from first listening, through transcript comparison and phrase noticing, to grammar in context and a final review.
The week also includes two live Zoom sessions where I’ll explain the method, answer questions and help you understand the listening bottlenecks that many learners experience at around A2–B1 level.
Laser Listening Week is designed for learners who can already understand some written and spoken German but want to become more confident following real conversations. It isn’t about speaking practice for its own sake. Instead, we focus on strengthening the listening side of conversation, because listening well frees up your energy for speaking!
If that sounds like just the challenge you’re facing, I’d be delighted if you joined us.
You can read the full details of Laser Listening Week, including how the week works, who it’s for and how to join, on the sales page here.
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