Customer Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect: German Pronouns and Prepositions (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

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3 star:		(1)
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I'm a MS & HS German teacher and I think this book is a great resource for teaching students or teaching yourself. Each new section begins with an explanation of the grammar concept, followed by several practice exercises. The explanations & exercises are very comprehensive and the answer key is included in the back of the book. I own all three books in the series (Pronouns & Prepositions, Verb Tenses, & Vocabulary) and I recommend them all!

This book is similar to the layout of the workbook required in my german 102 class. It definitely helps with extra practice of those prepositions and pronouns which can get a little confusing for first-time german students. As the sentences get more complex, pronouns and prepositions are a little more difficult to work with. This book gives really good straight-forward and basic exercises that are very helpful. NOTE: I had to keep my German Dictionary close by, however, because some of the vocabulary is a little advanced compared to where I am in class. I would suggest having a good dictionary or a fairly large vocabulary base before using this particular workbook. All in all, it does what it advertises it will do.

From reading the other reviews it sounds like others are coming to this book from the opposite end I am. Pronouns and prepositions are some of the hardest features of a language to master, so I bought this book in spite of already being quite proficient in German in hopes it could help me sort out the more challenging aspects of the language. What I found, instead, was a pretty basic overview of how prepositions and pronouns work.

I'd venture a guess that by the time a person has acquired the amount of vocabulary this book assumes, they would already have mastered 80% of the material the book presents. This book is definitely intended as a review book for someone who has already had a good amount of exposure to the language. I'd say this book could be helpful for someone who'd had around 2-3 years of German at the college level but still needed practice with pronouns, prepositions, and noun/adjective/article endings.

If you're a beginner, you'll definitely find this book assumes a level of grammar and vocabulary that you don't have. But at the same time, if you're more advanced, don't expect too much detail about the real idiosyncrasies of German grammar - such as what prepositions to use with uncommon verbs, etc. You won't find that here.

For an in depth presentation of German Pronouns and Prepositions, this is an excellent book.

My criticism is that in the Kindle edition, the Table of Contents is not functional, so you are unable to select a chapter or the answer key and go there. Instead, I have to guess at the location to get to a given topic. It takes a little time, it works, but its not very user-friendly.

I have found this book to be very tough for a beginner to use. There are a great many new words thrown at the student. So many that it makes it very difficult to do the exercises due to not knowing what the sentence context is. And I'd rather be learning the specific exercise and only a few new words rather than the exercise mixed in with a ton of new words.

It's a book for people who somehow learned a bunch of German words before learning how to use the Pronouns and Prepositions, which I would think is rare.

The Spanish booklets of Practice Makes Perfect, written by Dorothy Richmond, where so much easier to use because she kept the sentences as simple as possible while teaching the concept needed. And when a new word shows up, most of the time, the definition is in parentheses next to the word. In this book, the exercises are devoid of definitions, forcing the student to look up a portion of the words to understand the sentences. I don't find that very useful. These things need to be taught on a gradient without a lot of new things all at once.

If you want to use this book, be prepared to look up many words. I'm sure it has all the basics, but I think a little bit more effort on defining words would have resulted in a much more usable text for me.

I like the way the book is arranged. Pronouns and prepositions are always a problem for me in German and this book provides me with a good deal of help.