1. Spread your study time over the course of the week. 

Plan out your schedule so that you have some study time for German every day. If your schedule is too tight for this, you should at least be able to get to German three times a week. One hour a day of study time spread out over the week will be much more effective than a single five-hour session on the weekend. This is logical because your attention span and short-term memory will not be taxed as heavily by studying in shorter but more frequent sessions.

 2. Do not cram for exams. 

Cramming is one of the worst possible study methods. Instead of cramming, study German at frequent intervals. Get to your new material as soon as you can. This will give your brain some time for the new material to sink in. Studying 45 minutes at two different times in one day can be more effective than studying for one 90 minute session. And studying 90 minutes each day over a period of a week is far more effective than spending the whole day (or night) trying to learn German. Cramming clutters your mind with an overload of information and prevents you from utilizing the unconscious abilities of your brain to sort, sift and organize new information. Instead of cramming, spend time every day contemplating the material. Cramming results in the rapid loss of newly learned information. Because the information in a foreign language is cumulative, you need to retain as much of it as possible. Cramming ends up being a waste of time. Your time will be much better spent learning the material at a slow and steady pace because you will spend far less time in the long run re-learning old information.

 3. Re-write your class notes. 

Often times, the material covered during a class session seems to make perfect sense, but later when trying to retrieve that information, you find parts of it that are no longer comprehensible. You should re-write your notes as soon after class as you can. This will help you formulate the new material in a manner that lets you best absorb it. You will also discover immediately what you do not understand. Write down questions about the new material and bring up these questions in the very next session. If you go too long without re-writing your notes, you run the risk of letting important concepts escape without you processing them. Re-writing counts as study time and has the added benefit that your notes will be better organized than if you do not re-write the material. Be sure to leave blank spaces in your notes when re-writing so that you can later add clarifying remarks to what you have written down.

 4. Memorize the material on handouts. 

Much of the material used on tests is taken directly from handouts distributed in class. If you know the information thoroughly that shows up on handouts, you are bound to perform well on tests. Caution: the test material is usually an altered form of what appears on the handouts, so be able to manipulate the information. In addition to memorizing vocabulary items, develop a thorough understanding of the grammatical concepts as well.

 5. Get away from the books and keep learning the language. 

Students often think about German only when they have their books in front of them. It is extremely useful to contemplate the material you have learned in an environment away from your study desk. Example: If you have just learned the conjugation of a difficult verb, you can practice saying the conjugations to that verb while walking to your car or vacuuming the house. Thinking about the language at “off times” gets you into the habit of de-compartmentalizing your study time. Of course, you need to spend regularly scheduled time at your desk with your study materials, but if you think about German away from your desk without your books open, you will be successful using the language in a wider variety of environments. Remember too, you can take spare moments that occur throughout the day and make that time productive by thinking about what you have recently learned in German.

 6. Be patient with your own progress. 

Learning a foreign language takes time. Unfortunately, you can not consciously speed up the information processing that occurs in your brain. Memorizing ten new vocabulary items may see simple, but after three days, you might have already forgotten half of them. Allow for these inevitable lapses, the mind needs lots of time to absorb new information.

 7. Use your mouth. 

Recite new vocabulary items and full sentences out loud. There is very strong evidence indicating that you will remember new information if you pronounce new information out loud (not in a whisper). If you simply read new material silently to yourself, your chances of remembering that material are not good. If you speak the new material out loud in a normal voice, you will greatly enhance your chances of learning and retaining the information.