Schaum's Outline of German Vocabulary

by Edda Weiss

Covering German vocabulary, this text is divided into the following subject travel, services, food, shopping, medical care, home life, entertainment, sports and leisure activities, politics and education. Exercises with answers are included to test comprehension.

Genres: German Literature, Reference

266 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 1998

Reviews

[Charlie]

I learned some words from this book, but generally I wished it had been written differently. The main body of the book consists of 21 chapters. Each contains several pictures with a series of sentences based on each picture. Vocabulary words in those sentences are italicized and English glosses for them are provided in the margins. The contextual presentation of words is helpful. In between each picture unit are several vocabulary exercises, mostly fill-in-the-blank. Some of these were more frustrating, as the sentences were not always crafted carefully to remove ambiguity. There are also exercises in which one answers questions about a new picture. Again, these vary in their quality. Most have a paragraph that incorporates some of the vocabulary and an alphabetical list of key words at the end. Occassionally some words sneak into the paragraph that haven't been previously introduced, forcing me to hunt.

The format is pretty good, but this book is severely limited in content. It really does not cover a representation of German vocabularly, or even conversational vocabulary. It focuses almost exclusively on public transactions between a guest or customer and an employee (airline attendant, waiter, bank teller, usw.). More abstract material - expressions of time - and even some basic concrete vocabulary - the family - get pushed into appendices that are merely lists. Emotional states and mental actions are absent. Verbs of communication receive no focus. There is no chapter on school or the library, so the authors missed their chance to sneak in basic academic terminology (science, literature, geography, usw.).

Also, though supposedly revised in 2009, some of the vocabulary and the pictures are a bit dated. Especially the chapter on the computer looks to have been left in 1990. This is irksome, as the front cover proclaims, "The latest terms and expressions that German speakers use today."

In summary, this book is basically German Out About Town. Since I am using it primarily to learn to read German for the humanities, it didn't suit my needs well.