German books and all other things

Learn Spanish - my new blog

2009-06-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

I've created a new blog entitled Learn Spanish with Maria Fernandez.

If you're looking for a site with free Spanish lessons, podcasts, videos, advice on how to learn Spanish, and information on the Spanish culture, this is it.

Harry Potter in German

2008-05-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

Are you looking for a site where you can get all the Harry Potter books and movies in German? This link will take you to all the editions of Harry Potter, used and new, for children and adults.

You can also find all the audiobook editions, as well as the dvds. The information gets constantly updated, so there are always new products on offer. The prices are great and there's plenty of information.

German audio magazine for intermediate and advanced students

2008-02-19T02:29:00.000-08:00

Schau ins Land is a great German audio magazine for intermediate and advanced students wanting to increase their vocabulary fast, and improve their comprehension skills efficiently.

It’s a bimonthly publication on a 1-hour cd plus booklet. The cd contains interviews with famous German speakers from all walks of life, plus articles on food, travel, current affairs, cinema, music, wine, the arts, sports, etc.

The booklet that accompanies the audio cd contains the full transcript of the cd and a 500+ word German – English glossary. This allows you to concentrate on listening and learning without having to waste time using a dictionary or making lists of words.

To practise many of the new words and expressions that come up in each issue, there’s also an additional cd with German audio flashcards.

A 1-year subscription costs $129. If you want to see and hear Schau ins Land, here is a free sample.

Posted with permission from Champs Elysées Inc.

3 surefire ways to give up learning German

2008-02-14T02:25:00.000-08:00

Keeping up your motivation, self-discipline and spirits when it comes to learning German isn’t easy. In fact, there are some ways of guaranteeing failure in record time. Whether your aim is to achieve a certain level of competence or to learn the language well, avoiding those tactics is essential.

I have studied and taught foreign languages for a long time, and in my experience these are three of the most important things you should never do when learning German.

Using a language course you don’t like, no matter how much someone else has recommended it to you and how good it’s supposed to be. If YOU don’t like it, it won’t work. The good news is that nowadays it’s easy to find out a lot of information about language courses before you buy them, and the best ones give you a money-back guarantee.

Boring yourself to death with printed dictionaries. Dictionaries on paper aren’t always easy to use, and all too often what you’re looking for either isn’t in or it’s buried among hundreds of words and impossible to find. The fastest, easiest and most accurate way of finding the words and phrases you’re looking for is with electronic dictionaries.

Always having to figure out what to do next. No matter how much motivation and self-discipline you’ve got, if every time you sit down to learn some German you have to work out your own lessons, you’ll be wasting precious time and energy, and eventually you’ll give up. That’s why it’s so important to follow a good language course that suits you, and preferably from cover to cover without skipping lessons to avoid knowledge gaps.

If you’re looking for German language courses in book format, cd, cdrom, mp3, dvd, etc., you’ll find the widest range, at great prices, at German Bookworld.

Free German lessons – gender quiz

2008-01-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

To help you learn some German, I’m regularly going to add free lessons to this blog. This first free lesson is a quiz where I give you twenty German nouns and you tell me their gender.

Future free German lessons will cover vocabulary, verbs, word order, adjectives, plurals, noun forms, prepositions, false friends, spelling, pronouns, set phrases, proverbs, and more gender quizzes.

If you want to suggest a lesson, please post a comment below and I’ll see to it.

Gender quiz:

Can you tell me the gender of these twenty German words? You can see the solutions here.

der – die – das
.......... Jacke	the jacket	.......... Bluse	the blouse
.......... Rock	the skirt	.......... Ring	the ring
.......... Halskette	the necklace	.......... Hemd	the shirt
.......... Kleid	the dress	.......... T-Shirt	the T-shirt
.......... Jeans	the jeans	.......... Krawatte	the tie
.......... Anzug	the suit	.......... Schuh	the shoe
.......... Socke	the sock	.......... Pulli	the pullover
.......... Handschuh	the glove	.......... Hosen	the trousers
.......... Mantel	the coat	.......... Hut	the hat
.......... Regenschirm	the umbrella	.......... Strumpf	the stocking

Where to find German books and audio books in US dollars

2008-01-16T04:50:00.001-08:00

At german –bookworld.com you can find thousands of German books and audio books by both classic and modern authors. You can get them in US dollars, UK pounds, Canadian dollars and euros.

Their fiction section has novels, thrillers, theater, poetry, comic books, manga, short stories and children’s literature. Their non fiction collection covers photography, biographies, cookbooks, history, law, medicine, nature, family, reference, religion, science, sports, travel, and more.

If you can’t find the book or audio book you want, you can contact them through their forum and they’ll find it for you.