This letter was originally sent to MyA5Letter subscribers on Sunday, December 21, 2025.
Dear friend,
Happy 4th Advent Sunday 🕯️. I hope you’ve been enjoying this Christmas season — “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” — with all the Christmas shopping, decorations, and Christmas Markets (especially if you live in Germany!).
As one of the last two newsletters of 2025, I’d like to do something different. Today I’m answering the questions I received from Instagram through the poll celebrating the 10K milestone.
Thank you so much for appreciating my thoughts, insights and experiences, and for sending in such lovely questions. Let’s go through them all, shall we?
How have you been?
Thank you for asking this simple yet very touching question ❤️.
I am doing very well, mainly because I’m now officially on a one-month out-of-job holiday, completely free from work haha.
When the question was posed about a month ago, things were a bit more turbulent, as I was finalizing my resignation and contemplating what to do next — career-wise, and personal life-wise. Now it has been much calmer.
I am looking forward to Christmas Eve (read: Christmas presents 🎁), then to setting up my new Bullet Journal for 2026, and then to…my 3rd trip home this year.
How old are you?
I was born in ‘93 and will be turning 33 very soon (you might not believe this if I told you in person 😆).
Anyone else from the early 9x generation here?
Chị tự học tiếng Đức từ số 0 ạ? Do you learn German from scratch?
How long have you been studying German?
Any recommended book for learning German please?
I groupped these 3 questions together as I’ve actually written a full overview in this blog post How to Self-Learn German from A1 to C1: Courses, Books, Tools , which covers my German learning journey and all the resources I use.
I’m now in my 3rd year living in Germany and learning German. I don’t use a lot of different materials, as I find it consistent, cost-saving and more importantly, less juggling and overwhelming between study options.
I love learning vocabulary with Uni? Sicher! 3 and PONS textbooks, in combination with Deutsch Perfekt magazines and online videos and courses (all free!) from Deutsche Welle website. I also genuinely enjoy learning Grammar, so I highly recommend the full Grammatik Aktiv trilogy.
Despite today’s preference for AI-powered speaking apps, or the common criticism that grammar learning is boring or useless, I strongly believe that having a solid grasp of a language’s structure is like growing a sturdy tree with strong branches.
Only then can green leaves and sweet fruits (my metaphors for vocabulary, phrases, and expressions 😉) grow naturally and come together well in a sentence.
Grammar is the backbone of producing a language with quality and effectiveness, and it helps me better understand the complexity of German.
What study method do you think helps you make the most progress in learning a language?
I compiled 10 different tips / study methods to (self-) learn a language in this blog: How to Learn a Language by Yourself: 10 Steps to Fluency.
I love 80-20 rule, not only for language learning but also for many situations in life and work, for producing quick and impactful results. However, I find that most standard textbooks and language courses are not designed with this principle in mind. As a result, language learning often takes a very long time to progress through each level. I wish there were more resources built around the 80/20 approach.
But if I had to choose the one method that helps me make the most progress, it would be immersion. Here are some different examples of immersion from my German study: attending meetings in German, listening to conversations between German colleagues, doing dictations with long texts or audio scripts, despite not knowing every word and only understanding half of everything the first time.
But the result: a quick familiarity to the sounds of the language and the way sentences are built, increased reading comprehension from studying emails and documents at work, or simply being forced to speak and use the language everyday.
A fun project inspired by immersion and journal I did this year was language journal. You can read more about it here: How To Start A Language Learning Journal? (60 Journal Prompts A1-B2 Level).
I challenged myself to journal daily for 30 days straight in German. It was truly a game-changing experience, and something I highly recommend trying if you haven’t already.
👉In short: with immersion, you become a very active learner. That’s how you progress the fastest.
How to get rid of phone addiction? Give some suggestions.
Believe it or not, I do not struggle with phone addictions, so I might not be the most helpful here. I am probably one of the last resistants, who does not use TikTok and only see a Facebook mention…a year later 😅.
One practice that does help me is consciously reminding myself that our time is finite, and that it shouldn’t be wasted, especially on mindless scrolling, brain-rotting content, or irrelevant information.
There is so much beauty, so many books, and so many interesting things in real life waiting to be discovered, learned, and experienced. Keeping this in mind helps me use my time more intentionally.
That’s it for today’s letter. Thank you again for the 10K milestone and for all the thoughful questions!
I will be posting more language learning content, and especially, Bullet Journal 2026 setup via MyA5Gram over the next 2 weeks.
Until the next email: enjoy the Christmas holidays to the fullest 🎄Have yourself a warm, cozy and lovely time with your loved ones!✨
With lots of love,
Suani 💕