Customer Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect German Sentence Builder (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very comprehensive German verb workbook and I found it to be exactly what I needed to prepare for an upcoming trip to Germany and Austria. This product is probably best for a student with some familiarity with the language, as it is very comprehensive. I have had two years of High School German and one year of college level German, albeit many years ago, and found this book to be an ideal review. With Germanic languages, the verb is integral to the listener's ability to understand the meaning of a given sentence, and this guide enables the student to attain the level of confidence required to understand the action. I wish I had used this product when I was in high school, as it would have certainly accelerated my progress with the language. I have also tried Rosetta Stone and other similar DVD-based products, and found them to be too slow for the type of review I needed. As a break to my German verb studies, I found German news programs via the web to be an ideal supplement to this guide, allowing me to tune my ear to normal conversational German. In summary, I find this product very useful and give it an A-plus. Sehr gut!

I write "disappointing" as a life long language teacher and learner. My main criticisms are two. First, the production values are low, with examples apparently pasted into the explanations in what looks like photocopies (hence these phrases are "dead" in a digital reader, cannot be searched for or marked up).

My second problem is bad editing. There are a huge number of capitalization errors, which are crucial to correct German. These add to the impression that the book has somehow been cut and pasted by non-native speakers, native-speakers never having tolerated such inaccuracies. As an intermediate student of German, it is not for me to say that the sentences are unidiomatic, but compared to texts and exercises prepared in German (such as Dreyer and Schmitt's Lehr- und überungsbuch der deutschen Grammatik -- alas, not in ebook form), the sentences often ring false or at least awkward. Save your money and if you have to, go back to paper books.

Ed Swick's work is practical and representative of real, everyday conversation folded into lessons of usage and grammar. I find it very helpful. I am a beginning German learner but believe that intermediate German speakers would find this workbook to be helpful for review purposes.

Very good book. Not one to start with as you need to know the basics of verbs and nouns first.

This book is probably only useful to anyone with good prior knowledge of the language or with a fluent speaker to guide you. If you are thinking of using this as a resource to learn German, I wouldn't bother.

I am new to the German language, and I bought this book to help me. Of no fault of the book, it is not for a beginner, or for an intermediate student. It presupposes fairly advanced fluency with the language.

Personally though, I am quite dismayed by teachers (and writers of text books) of German, who love to make a not-so-easy language like German, then work hard to make it more intimidating. I have not not come across a single book which makes the study more inviting. Even for the German language, no matter how important its grammar may be, I am sure there is another way to teach the language.

Chinese has such books. Sanskrit is more difficult than German. My own mother tongue Gujarati, from western India is not easy either. However, I have tried with great success (based on their reception and reviews) to simplify Sanskrit Sanskrit: An Appreciation Without Apprehension, and Gujarati A programmed text to learn Gujarati (Setubandh language series). Teachers of languages, and students of these languages may want to look them up. I am not just trying to plug my books. The point is, even as a teacher of languages, my problem with the German remains formidable.