Preaching - Warm-up
DURATION: 20-30 MINS
I'd like you to imagine the following three stories. Don't rush anything. Take your time. With a bit of practice, it won't really take much longer than 3-5 minutes in total. The highlighted words are the important ones. Do not try to memorize anything, please. Simply imagine the situation as good as you can. If the stories don't work for you, don't worry. Simply scroll down to the list of words and use the Superhero technique on them. Ready?
Learning Tip
It is much easier for most learners to imagine things with closed eyes. Of course, you need to have them open to read the stories which means you read one or two sentences first and then close your eyes to imagine what you've just read.
Story 01 (m)
A Superhero is flying in the sky. But he's pretty lazy and is sitting on a flying chair. As you know it's pretty cold up there in the sky which is why the Superhero is wearing a thick sweater. Actually, it's a super-sweater as it is also bulletproof. After flying for some time, the Superhero has to land but he's trying to take off his thick sweater at the same time and can't see a thing. As a consequence, he crashes into the ground leaving a giant crater.
Make sure to take in story 01 fully before moving on to story 02.
Story 02 (n)
All German babies are fat. That's because they are being raised with beer. They are also pretty quickly trained for business which is why they are given a mobile phone from day one. Imagine a big fat German baby talking on its brand new mobile. Maybe you know the movie Boss Baby, which would help here. This baby you imagine is also holding a giant glass of beer in its left hand. It's a glass, not a mug. That is important. Because when it's done drinking that glass of beer, the baby throws it over its shoulder and it shatters on the ground into a thousand pieces. It quickly burps and gets into its toy car. A tiny one. So cuuuuute. Off it rides into the kid's room.
Make sure to take in story 02 fully before moving on to story 03.
Story 03 (f)
This is a story about a German fairy. You remember Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, right? But any other fairy will do just fine. German fairies have strict working regulations and so it comes that our German fairy is sitting on the ceiling lamp drinking a cup (not a glass, remember that glasses are for beer only) of milk while smoking a cigar. She's reconsidering her life choices looking at her credit card statement. That makes her so sad, that she takes out her credit card and cuts it into many tiny pieces with her magic wand.
Not a Story Person?
Even if you worked through the stories above, here are the words for which you learned the gender:
- Stuhl (m) - chair
- Handy (n) - mobile phone
- Tasse (f) - cup
- Boden (m) - ground
- Decke (f) - ceiling
- Kreditkarte (f) - credit card
- Lampe (f) - lamp
- Glas (n) - glass
- Auto (n) - car
- Pullover (m) - pullover
Again: this is not about remembering the German meaning of those words. All you got to do is to remember that a chair in German is of (m)asculine gender.