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52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
German Grammar Drills by Ed Swick, September 5, 2008
This review is from: German Grammar Drills (Drills Series) (Paperback)
"German Grammar Drills" fills a need for students of the language who find the newer teaching approaches short on grammatical elements. The book very systematically presents areas of grammar, beginning with simple ones like noun genders and plurals, and thoroughly reviews the basics. Following the review there are a variety of comprehensive practice drills in workbook format. All answers appear in the back.
Areas covered include noun cases, prepositions, adjectives, contractions, verb tenses, imperatives, reflexive pronouns, modal auxiliaries and double infinitives, conjunctions, relative pronouns, prefixes, comparatives and superlatives, passive voice, subjunctive mood and infinitive clauses.
The book advertises itself as "perfect for beginning and intermediate learners." But a note of caution for beginners: the practice sentences, even in early lessons, contain words and grammatical constructs, including verbs in tenses other than the present, that the new student may not yet have encountered. A self-motivated student with a dictionary can readily overcome this one problem.
I recommend this book most highly for any student really determined to master more than just the tourist's basic stock phrases that many books, especially those for the adult learner, seem to overemphasize. Mastery of this book equals mastery of the German language.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not for beginners, July 2, 2010
This review is from: German Grammar Drills (Drills Series) (Paperback)
Though I am a beginning German student, I am fluent in both Spanish and French, and therefore know a little about learning a foreign language. I purchased German Grammer Drills, German Sentence Structure, and the German Verb tenses. The books all state that they are 'Perfect for the Beginning and Intermediate Learners", but this is not the case. The books give a few examples in English, but almost all of the exercises are in German. That's would be ok, if there were a vocabulary key given in English. But there isn't, which makes it a very difficult book to use. In order to use this book, I would have to sit with a dictionary and look up words in almost every sentence. This is very time consuming and impractical. The exercises in the book would be great for someone much farther along in their German studies. The exercises are simple and not complicated, but the fact that there are no translations makes it extremely difficult to use. One of the first exercises asks you to provide nouns that use the same endings as those in parentheses. There is a list of 15 different endings. As a beginning student, I haven't learned enough vocabulary to be able to think of enough nouns to do the exercise. There is no vocabulary given to draw from.
I think it's a great book to use as a review after you have learned quite a bit of German - to brush up on your skills. But this is definitely NOT the book for a beginner.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great review, February 18, 2009
This review is from: German Grammar Drills (Drills Series) (Paperback)
This is the perfect guide as I attempt to refresh my German comprehension in preparation for a trip to Berlin (my last study of the language was more than 10 years ago). The book is extremely well-organized and methodical, and the explanations are clear and useful. The bulk of the book is devoted to exercises, which I find nicely designed to illustrate the concepts. The answers are all at the end.
A bonus to me is that the layout and font are very easy on the eyes, and the book does not feel cluttered with gimmicky charts, diagrams, or illustrations (as far as I can see, there are none).
The only downside, mentioned by another reviewer, is that the book is not truly a beginners book. Someone with no prior experience in the language will likely find this book a little overwhelming. Not only does it assume familiarity with vocabulary (which is easy enough to look up), but it assumes some exposure to typical German word order, the conjugation of verbs, and the change in articles and adjective endings according to case.
If you know the basics however, I highly recommend this volume!
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