Living German

This is a well designed text book taking the user from absolute beginner through to a high level of knowledge of German grammar in a structured, methodical and engaging manner. The stories illustrating the grammar points of each chapter are entertaining and "everyday" with most of the vocabulary needed for the chapter being found just after the story itself. There is then an explanation of the grammar points raised by the story and finally various exercises for the user to try out (with answers at the back of the book!) It isn't perfect of course. Occasionally some vocabulary not relevant to the story is presented and required vocabulary is missing, necessitating a dive to the back of the book to the vocabulary section (German to English only) where the word might still be missing. A pocket German-English/English-German dictionary will be a useful adjunct. There are also some errors in the text where it appears that newly revised wording has not been seemlessly integrated into the previous edition's text. These are, however, very minor quibbles and the book is well worth its price tag.

As a former student of German looking to restart my German study after 12 years, there was no way I wanted to go for a “hallo wie heißt du?” sort of approach. This book is thankfully not that, and jumps straight in there with sentences, grammar and understanding.However. Most of the texts are about a girl called Liesel and her dull family. It feels very “Janet and John” and quickly annoyed me.Another thing that lets it down are the errors in the text. It says things like “answers on page 320” but page 320 is completely unrelated. Also very occasional mistakes in the vocabulary - e.g. “est ist” instead of “es ist”.

Beware! The audio which is supposedly available online is impossible to access - at least it was impossible for me. Essentially if you want the audio (and without the audio recording the book in itself has very limited value, especially for beginners) you need to go to the Teach Yourself website, then you need to log in - but first you need to sign up. If you are logging in from your desktop PC you will be told you can only access the audio from your mobile phone device (!) then you try from your mobile phone and you are told you need to install an app in order to do this, then you search for the relevant app and you get a reply it's not available! In the end, exasperated like I was, you most likely give up and request a return and lament for good old days when you could buy things like this with a physical CD so you can actually use it, that means play it, listen to it and copy it if you want, etc., and not get stressed and waste your time searching and accessing the audio somewhere there in the big www.

I sort of love this book and also complain about it while I'm using it. It's very comprehensive and very old-fashioned, I suppose, in its grammar-based approach. It's been updated, but the editors haven't quite got that consistent (it's obviously not right for the main female character to be a housewife these days, so a Polish student has been added in as cleaner! However, the exercises don't always reflect that sort of change). More importantly, though, there's little explanation of anything behind the grammar and not so much in terms of colloquialisms. It's a million times better, though, than any of the learning apps (and I've tried a lot). It's easy to dip into because of its compact size and the reference section is handy. Almost great.

I have been teaching with various editions of this book since the 1960's! Unlike modern books that try to impress you with glossy pictures and "relevant" topics, this book makes no apologies for being straight-forward and down-to-earth. You will follow the adventures of a "typical" German family (with the obligatory cat and dog) and, with the help of the CD, you will be able to teach yourself without getting confused. What might appear difficult grammar is introduced by means of simple vocabulary. I regret that the book announces itself on the front cover as a "grammar-based course" as this makes it sound quite dry - which it certainly isn't. If you are teaching a beginner or teaching yourself you could not choose a better text.