About Me & TPRS | Selfstudy | Live Courses
All about Me
& my methods
It’s important to know with whom and what you’re dealing with. Therefore I gathered all the information on me and my methods on one single page.
Who is behind comprehensible GERMANi?
Kathrin Hudelmayer
I’m Kathrin, a native German who still lives in Germany but adores to travel. I have lived in the US before and am hoping to be able to live abroad at some point again.
Another thing I love is education. I love to watch people – especially kids – grow and learn. This brought me first to studying childhood education and then to teaching German.
I started to speak English to me kids “just for fun”, but over time they started to understand so much and even communicated themselves.
I realized that not only does learning a new language opens up a new world but it’s also so natural to us. I envy people who grow up speaking multiple languages, because it can never compare to learning it in school. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t learn a language naturally later in life.
So I made it my goal to provided a platform for everybody who wants to learn German naturally.
And because I myself am not a fan of grammar or vocabulary lists, I kind of banned them from all the things I’m doing. I want to immerse you in a german enviroment, as if you were a child living here and building your knowledge little by little.
What's TPRS and comprehensible Input?
Natural language learning explained...
What's TPRS?
TPRS is short for Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling. This means you become fluent by listening, telling and reading stories in the language that you want to learn.
Asking questions about the story and repeating facts in multiple ways helps you to understand not memorize the language.
What's comprehensible input?
Comprehensible input it all kind of input (it might be stories, but also songs, TV shows and everything around you) that can be understood, eventhough you’re not fluent in the language yet and don’t understand every word.
Great ways to make something comprehensible are pictures, gestures and of course mimic and context.
How do I teach?
The idea behind it
Humans have always tried to copy what nature has perfected. And that's what I'm doing as well. Looking at infants who are starting to speak, a big part of their day is listening to "perfect language" and then trying to imitate it. And you have probably noticed before that their passive vocabulary is way bigger than the amount of words they use themselves. So the idea behind natural language learning is to provides you with input, that you understand and that slowly builds up your ability to produce the language aswell.
The methods I use
I'm creating a comprehensible world around you, where you can immerse yourself in German. I'm combining all those wonderful methods of linguists and language teachers like TPR, TPRS, CI, ALG etc. with actions that we naturally use to teach our kids their native language. So you will find stories, songs, rhymes, games, pictures, just all kind of comprehensible input in my lessons. And I think the variety makes it even better.
TPRS lesson
Games
TPRS story
CI video
Picture talk
Songs
I'm letting my students speak...
Kathrin is a passionate professional educator and a very kind person. She is interested to help you achieve your language goals. I definitely recommend her services.
Student of my Zoom lessons
I find your videos very helpful, I practically have no idea about anything of german […] and your videos will be a good resource to learn it.
Student on my Youtube Channel
Your videos are just so great I cannot put into words how you have helped me learning your amazing language, thanks!
Student on my Youtube Channel
I highly recommend taking lessons with her. She makes you feel comfortable and confident to practice without worrying about making mistakes and that’s reason enough but you will also learn a lot and have a great time.
Student in my Intermediate Beginner Live Course
I took German A1 classes from Kathrin. She is very good at defining a road-map which is personalized for her student. I was really enjoying her classes in which I felt as if I was learning German as a kid. She was very kind and supportive as well. I would recommend Kathrin to whom wants to learn German in an enjoyable way.