i started learning German from scratch a few months ago. so far, i have used assimil, linguaphone, mini stories on lingq and Olly`s short stories. However, these contents were too far away from being compelling. Listening to these again and again kills my passion for the language. As Steve always says, we need compelling and authentic content. Can you guys recommend that kind of content for A2-B1 level. Thanks.
not sure if this helps but I like to read the news so I import news content from the LingQ news to import page. Ive found real interesting stuff to read form that.
2 Likes
Try the âDinoâ: Learn German With Storiesâ series by AndrĂ© Klein. They have âadult contentâ and plenty of humour, tracing the misadventures of a young language learner from Sicily in several German cities. You can get most of the books in paperback or on kindle, but also with Herr Klein reading them on audible, so you can âlistenâ, âreadâ or âread and listenâ as you prefer. His latest in the Dino series is âLockdown in Liechtensteinâ and a recent book was âDigital in Dresdenâ, so they are certainly based on contemporary themes. He has also this year self-published a book âEasy German Dialoguesâ aimed at beginners and intermediates.
website: andreklein.net
What is âcompellingâ is so very personal!
I find more than enough compelling content is on the lingq daily newsfeed - just think of what you would need to pay for all those newspaper and magazine subscriptions! Skip anything you think might be boring. And even if you find the photo for that news item is just âclick baitâ exercise your own judgment to quit at any point and move on to something else.
Then there is the capacity to trawl the entire internet and look for subjects you are personally interested in so that you can import them into lingq. Creating your own âspecialistâ content is invariably much more interesting than following what some course designer thinks you might be interested inâŠ
3 Likes
You can try my German courses for beginners A1/A2.
They are quite easy:
Deutsch von Anfang an:
Erste SĂ€tze:
Deutsch fĂŒr AnfĂ€nger:
Kleine Dialoge:
Erste Deutschstunden fĂŒr AuslĂ€nder:
Meine ersten Texte:
5 Likes
Maybe import television series episodes from ZDF German TV channel and work through text over here. This way you will be exposed to the spoken form of the language. You will find something there that piques your interest and then there are free ebooks available that you can import based on your interest. I do not know if level A2-B1 really matters. With so many tools we have on lingq, we can decipher the materials with the help of using bilingual text. For example, I read the book âPermanent Recordâ by Edward Snowden in English as I really am into data privacy topic and what secret agencies can do with the data that we share with websites like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc So I read the book here in German (imported ebook in German, you can purchase it from thailia.de, bucher.de) and following along audiobook from Spotify(freely available). It was the most rewarding thing I had done in a foreign language like German. In the end, I realize that words are just carriers they have no power without thoughts. And, we humans either Germans, Turkish, or Pakistanis, are exposed to the same chunks of the thought patterns. It is just that we just use different word carriers for expressing the same thought patterns.
2 Likes
Yeah, I do have the same problem but you need to be patient. If you are a beginner you need to go through boring stuff until you have enough vocabulary to search for what you really like and have more flexibility. (Steve also says this).
Probably this happens when you are at 10k known words but not really sure about it. I donât like to search for too many words if I want to read something I like and at 4k Iâm still too behind. Like @ajaz0810, I like read the news but for now there are still too many things and words I donât know and not enough daily time to learn them. But Iâll get there with patience.
Or, you could start focusing on what you really like as a subject and force yourself to go through the initial vocabulary that you donât know. After a while the words on a specific subject are always the same and youâll enjoy more about that content. My 2 cents!
4 Likes
Dino lernt Deutsch series as someone already mentioned in my opinion is excellent for this level. Following that is another series for intermediate learnersâŠBaumgartner and Momsen Detective stories. Iâve started the latter, but havenât gotten far (too many resources to choose from !).
Iâd say the majority of my reading at your level was at Nachrichtenleicht.de. You can import the article and they have the article read in a slow manner. You can download this and upload to LingQ. There are 5-7 new articles a week on various things.
Evgueny mentioned his content on LingQ which is excellent. Vera has some very good content too.
So honestly, not real need to repeatâŠthere is so much content. A lot of folks here donât repeat anything. Youâll see the common words in other lessons and content so you will naturally get ârepetitionâ of words, but in different contexts which will also help to solidify.
I personally do like to repeat some of the shorter content, but I wonât do it more than a handful of times over the course of a week (noteâŠiâm maybe spending about a half hour a day on various content).
1 Like
If youâve already done Assmil then youâre familiar with the concept of comparative reading â text on one side, translation on the other. You can do the same thing with books and audiobooks. You donât have to suffer through boring beginners content, you already have the basics down, just start reading and listening to books.
4 Likes
think you could also start watching some arte documentries are now on youtube aswellâŠ
since arte is multilanguange channel for the most part i think there should be subtitels
not sure if it is geolocked might need a vpn but gives a big library plenty of diffrent topics from technical to more foodvlog/travelvlog style stuff like Zu Tisch in ⊠( about half an hour , visiting a region and eating some regional dishes )
videos between 10min - 1 hour in lenght
if that is still to hard maybe arte junior might be better to start about 1-5 min long videos for kids
Iâd recommend (1) first to figure out what you actually find compelling. Tip: look at what youâre watching/reading in your native language. (2) Select specific key words and translate them into German. (3) Search YouTube for videos with CC. (4) Import it and read, listen, read.
1 Like
I have also started a few months ago like you. If you have Netflix, Iâd suggest you to try to find some good series there. E.g. I am watching âDarkâ and importing every episode in LingQ and going through it sentence by sentence. Of course it depends if in your country you have the German version and the German subtitles available.
1 Like
Iâm still getting to A2 and Iâm currently enjoying Brian Smithâs books: e.g. Brian Smith He also has also recordings, so you can hear online for free first and decide if they are at the right level. Elegant Wedding Invitations - Customize & Print or Download The intermediate book is a bit of a stretch for me, so might be the right level for you.
1 Like