Customer Reviews

Kontakte: A Communicative Approach (Student Edition + Listening Comprehension Audio CD)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

As a native German, I'm teaching German with this book for the second year at the University level. Neither me nor my students like this book - in fact, I consider it quite bad (I have taught with 3-4 other textbooks before, any of which was much better) : The "approach" is totally scattered, it tries to be so hip, while it's rather gimmicky with all its cute pictures and cartoons. Like a "lets get away from grammar"-kind of badge of honor, the book introduces a minimum of grammer, but in a confusing, incomplete, and at times faulty manner while expecting the student to "know" or understand lots of things that were never properly introduced. The students would be helpless without a teacher to untangle the mess for them. Also, the reading sections and vocabulary are rather inappropriate, containing words that are neither widely used nor easy to pronounce. This book hinders more than it helps the process of learning German in an enjoyable manner. I only use it to a bare minimum, just to stay on course with the units it introduces.

I learned first-year German with Kontakte and was generally pleased with it. There is a good amount of cultural context, and the design is lively enough to maintain visual interest.

Do not buy Kontakte a self-teaching text or if you want a structural approach to language acquisition. For Kontakte to work at all, you absolutely must have a German speaker to lead you through speaking and conversation.

I'm a native speaker of German and have taught first year German with this book - I love it, and so did my students. I think the communicative approach works great, the book offers a multitude of topics for interaction and communication. It explains the basics of grammar and allows the student to learn by using the language, rather than by memorizing rules. It is, as I mentioned, a book for beginners (first year) and not appropriate for any other level, and it is a book to be used in a class setting, not for self studies. It will not work for other learning situations, but there are other books for those settings. I have learned Spanish with the "Dos Mundos" book from the same series and with the same approach and found it the most effective language learning I have ever experienced. Used in a classroom applying a "natural approach" to language learning, this book is wonderful and an extremely effective way of starting with a new language!

... Because I teach at a highly competitive University, the students tend to be intelligent and extremely diligent; they are, at the very least, capable of activitely applying themeselves to learning a language and using their rational faculties to understand grammatical patterns and apply them in the generation of original German sentences. The authors of Kontakte, however, seem to have little regard for this capacity of the brain. Instead, they think of learning a language as something purely passive; a process of osmosis, whereby, through the mere exposure to German utterances and their mindless repitition, students will magically gain a linguistic competence. Such an approach results only in tedium, disaffection, and resentment, and places a tremendous burden on the teachers, who are forced, if they wish to create any challenge for the students, to create their own material....

For this amount of money I expected much better book. Unfortunately I think that this is one of the worst books of this type. You can buy much better book for just a fraction of the price. The subjects are confusing and as they say "information-gap activities" are definitely not fun. You better know some German if you are planning to use this one. It is made of a quality material so I give it one star. This opinion is for the Fifth Edition.

I am a college student currently using this textbook, and I have to say it is one of the most awful textbooks I have ever used. I took two years of German in high school, and had trouble with this book. The instructions for assignments are all in German, which means you have to constantly look up words to understand what you are supposed to do. On top of that, the reading comprehension sections are vastly beyond what someone with that level of German can understand. I had to as one of my friends for help, and he had trouble reading it. He is three classes ahead of me, and he had trouble reading it, that is a bit of a problem. There are usually a lot of colloquialisms and a lot of words that aren't introduced in the chapter, or otherwise defined in the book. The professor even commented on how difficult the reading portions were for someone at that level of German. The way the book introduced grammar is equally problematic. All of the grammar stuff is at the end of the chapter, and there is very little emphasis on it. Last I checked, vocabulary alone does not make a language, you need grammar too. I personally would never recommend this book to anyone, ever, who wanted to learn German.

I bought this book for an introductory class and I'm finding it well-balanced, though not perfect. Other books I've seen hit you too hard and too fast. This one introduces German basics at a decent clip. Now, I have been to Germany three times and have studied it on my own and taken one brief Conversational German course, but I do find the introduction to grammar and vocabulary pitched just right even for beginners. The disputatious reviews here point to the fact that learning a language is very idiosyncratic--we all learn differently and hopefully can adapt whatever text we use to our own learning styles. But you have to work to identify how you learn to know what's helpful and what isn't. I'm enjoying the book, neither finding it wonderful nor thinking it deplorable. Watching and listening to students in my lass who have little or no German background, I think they're doing well and not hating the text. BTW, it is expensive, but it's being used for the second semester of this course, so that breaks down to a bit over $50 for each semester, which isn't bad. Ditto the on-line workbook (which has some glitches, be prepared): that ends up being around less than $25 a semester since the "key" you buy is good for 24 months.

I took two semesters of German, using this textbook, at the community college where I also teach. Decades ago, I studied French, Russian, and Latin, and when I started German I was at first put off by the breezy, semi-immersion style of instruction now apparently in vogue. I was astonished when at the end of the second semester I realized I had learned more German, faster, than I had learned any of the other languages I had studied the old-fashioned way.

But I think that the quick progress was largely due to the instructor's skill in presenting the lessons, rather than to the book. When I could not take the third and fourth semesters of German classes, I tried to continue on my own, confident that since I had a good start through the first few lessons we had covered in class, I would be able to make my own way through the rest of the book. To my surprise, I found it nearly impossible to understand anything and I made no progress at all. As other commenters have said, this book is not for self-teaching. I'm pretty sure the key to success with this book is to find an instructor who really understands modern methods of teaching languages and is good at it.

This is a terrible text book for learning German. There is almost no explanation of what needs to be done, and what is shown is minimal. You have to look at the answers in the back of the book to get an idea of what it wants you to do. You have to read the blue sections at the end of the chapter before you read the preceding white pages, or you will not understand what is happening in that chapter. I am constantly looking on the internet for grammar instructions because there is almost nothing given in the book. Some of the words used in the exercises are not defined in the Wortschatz (dictionary). This book is designed to insure you make a lot of mistakes. Although people should learn from their mistakes, forcing people to make mistakes shouldn't be a method of teaching. I was told by my professor, who knows the author, that this text book is based on the "immersion" theory of learning a language. Imagine not knowing how to swim and getting thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool. Now as you are gasping for air and struggling to stay afloat, you are also being taught how to swim. With this book you are constantly being pushed further into the deep end with no wall close by to grab on to and catch your breath. You either learn German, or get out of the pool and drop the class. If you have to use this book in your class, expect to spend many hours looking for additional help. The book is used for two semesters: German 1 and German 2 (or equivalent). After you finish the class the book is useless as a reference. It is not useful for teaching your children or anyone else how to read, write, or speak German. This text book has made me hate the German language.

This is close enough to the 5th Edition that you can get by with it. Some of the vocab is not in here, but if you take notes in class, you will be fine, and many pages are EXACTLY the same.