I had done my best and tried to explain to my American client Tom when to use ‘haben’ as an auxiliary verb and when to use ‘sein’ in the perfect German. But Tom wasn’t entirely satisfied.
“That’s certainly right, Niels. But I’m an engineer, and as an engineer, I love decision trees..
Now I am an economist, and as an economist I know decision trees well. But in the many years that I have now also been a language trainer, I had never encountered decision trees in German language training – not even in a single textbook.
Tom had presented me with a challenge, so I set out to meet it. Together with Tom, I created a decision tree on the topic of ‘haben’ or ‘sein’ in the perfect tense,
And here it is – after small corrections in the test phase with some clients:
Since then, many more decision trees have followed. And the experience has been sensationally good. Not everyone who learns German with us loves our decision-making trees, but a clear majority sees them as a great help.
It is quite obvious that learners in our target group, i.e. professionally successful adults with an academic background, benefit from methods that are tailored to the reality of their lives.