Deutsch lernen im Internet - German for Beginners

I often find myself "pushing" material of "hueber", mainly their course "Schritte" for beginners and "Ziel" for advanced learners. So I am happy to declare, that their "white-board CD" is rather useless, the English XXL-Glossary written solely with American learners in mind, the teacher-DVD is not that great too (I prefer the "teacherbook" for "Tangram", they made teaching really easy; never loved the course itself though), and no Arabic Glossary available for "Schritte international". But I do not think that matters that much. "Berliner Platz" by Langenscheidt is by now a bit too old, thus they did a modernised version - I doubt that it is now perfect for the new A1, A2, B1 exams. I will check in summer. "Studio D" claims to have been the first to offer "all", still I was disappointed by their CD-ROM, I would wish for more exercises in the basic book and feel they are...

Lange nicht geschrieben. Aber es gibt Neues: Die Deutsche Welle hat eine Telenovela zum Deutschlernen produziert! "Jojo sucht das Glück!" Mir gefällt die Serie aus kurzen Videos sehr gut - aber wichtig ist natürlich immer für WEN das Material gut ist: Das Niveau ist etwa B1; die Videos haben Untertitel, ein guter A2-Lerner kann so auch viel verstehen. Die Arbeitsaufgaben zum Video sind aber oft sehr schwer, oft eher für B2 oder C1! Also positiv: eine motivierende und interessante Serie für B1 Lerner, mit Material für sehr Fortgeschrittene. Material für B1 hätte ich noch besser gefunden ... aber: "Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul." also bei google: jojo dw suchen, den Link klicken und schon könnt ihr Jojo sehen - und am Besten downloaden (mit Untertiteln) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5284739,00.html

german.about.com war nicht schlecht. Nun hat Deutsch einen kompetenten Koordinator: Frau Ingrid Bauer. She is bilingual, and improved that site a lot! I do recommend her free newsletter, too! LINK http://german.about.com/od/onlinecourses/u/StartLearning.htm

Übersetzen Übersetzungsübungen Deutsch-Arabisch und anderes Material zum Thema "Mauerfall und Deutsche Einheit"

If you click on the title of this post, it will link you to: http://www.wdrmaus.de/spielen/mausspiele/spiel.php5?id=170 Die Maus is a very popular children-program on German TV. This "game" is about Tom, who loves Sandwiches with strawberry-jam and honey. Just follow the story (flash-player needed) and choose the "right" decision for Tom to get that Erdbeer-marmeladen-brot mit Honig All decisions will work in the end! Have fun und lerne Deutsch!

If you click on the title of this post, you will be linked to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZAWygYoN30&feature=channel "Learn German - Lesson 1" - and there are 17 lessons more! Still those 18 videos of 8-minute- length are not extremly interesting or usefull; and the number of views drops from 300.000 for the first lesson to just 2000 for the last ... . Still it offers good practice for pronounciation: Listen and repeat! Youtube will also offer you LOTS of other "German-courses". Most are (much) worse than "Learn German" - but check them all! ;-)) Except the most popular one: Learn German With SpeedyConKiwi! - a young German trying to teach German - and a complete failure at that ... But a Million views ... . Facebook: I am sure there is more out there, but the DEUTSCHE WELLE is on facebook now, offering a lot of materials and all that facebook-stuff. http://www.facebook.com/deutschewelle But better go directly to thei...

I just posted the link to a website for kids. Now I just discovered it is also offering special exercises for adult learners of German! Clicking on the title of this post will link you to: http://www.allgemeinbildung.ch/fach=deu/Familie_01a.htm an example of their exercises. It is about family (mother, uncle, etc.). Well done! Not all of their exercises are that helpful, but if you do not like one, just go back and choose another! http://www.allgemeinbildung.ch/fach=deu/=deu.htm#Bildwortschatz

If you click on the title of this post, you will be linked to: http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/20/0,3672,8063636,00.html HEUTE is the news-program of the ZDF, the second public TV-station in Germany. Here they offer links (check the box on the right!), to eight websites dedicated to children and partly sponsored by the government, as they are considered to be of educational value. At "Lernspaß für Kinder" you can learn about German history, geography etc. http://www.lernspass-fuer-kinder.de/cms/front_content.php It offers also short films. But most of the stuff on this 8 websites is not really for beginners. Die meisten Dinge sind für Anfänger zu schwer, für A2 oder B1 Lerner aber interessant.

Im Internet gibt es auch Websites für "deutsche" Kinder. Some exercises for kids are fun for adult learners of German, too. (Or at least they may be useful.) In der Schweiz gibt es eine Seite - sponsored by playmobil? - with over 6000 exercises: http://www.allgemeinbildung.ch An example for vocabulary-training: http://www.allgemeinbildung.ch/fach=deu/ErsterWortschatz_Zuhause_01b.htm By clicking on the title of this post, you will be linked to that exercise! Often pictures do overlapp, just click on the renew/reload button.

No idea, why my web-links INSIDE the posts do not show up ... if you wonder: try clicking on THE TITLE of the post - it will usually link you to the most relevant website for the post in question. For the last two post that would be: http://www.stepintogerman.org/index.php?catID=509&navID=509&GOTO=1 and http://www.hueber.de/deutsch-als-fremdsprache/lehrwerke/ if you know what to do (except that I should learn HTML ... ) your advice is welcome!

The Goethe Institut in California has a cool website - loads of German music and more. They also prove how easy German is (for those who already know English). Even a ZERO-Beginner should be able to understand the three German texts there at least well enough to do the tasks they come with. Try - or if your German is better: check out the music-videos! Have fun - und lern gern!

The new CD-ROM for "Schritte 1 - 2" is finally available. But though I consider SCHRITTE to be maybe the best German-Course for most classes, I was a bit disappointed: The CD-ROM offers a lot of useful exercises - about 1400 items (things to click or write) I would say - and all is fine, but it is also not very interesting or motivating. I expected more creativity from HUEBER (the leading publisher). Thus the winner is still: The CD-ROM for "Themen aktuell 1" - it comes as a free gift with the course-book, and it has more exercise-items than any other CD: over 2000. As the CD is a kind of animated and interactive version of the book (which was worldwide the most successful for the last 25 years) it may even be possible to learn German just with the CD - though a teacher in addition is of course better ... I welcome any comments you have on that! You can check out this and other software at the hueber-webpage: Just be aware: The exercises for THEMEN...