50 Ways to Improve Your German

by Sieglinde Klovekorn-Ward

Make more of your German skills 50 Ways to Improve Your German gives you the power to improve your working knowledge of German and eliminate basic speaking and writing errors. Each one of 50 top tips for improving spoken and written German has comprehensive explanations as to where and why you might go wrong. The tips are grouped into grammar, spelling, false friends, pronunciation and cultural faux pas sections. There's even free downloadable audio content available to help you with your pronunciation.

Genres: German Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2010

Reviews

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't find this book very helpful at all. Most of the content focused on basic grammatical rules, which strikes me as something more appropriate for a beginner's German book, rather than a book that claims to offer ways to improve your German. For example, one chapter more or less just says, "Capitalize your nouns in German, and don't ignore umlauts because they are important to the meaning of the word."

Several other chapters were just on correct endings for adjectives and verb conjugations. Now, I'm not saying it isn't hard to master those aspects of German, but they are topics that should be covered in any basic German book. I expected this book to offer something more than that.

There were only a few chapters that even came close to what I expected, in which the author discussed subtle differences between difficult to distinguish words, and how to make the correct choice among them. More of that would have made this book truly useful for improving my German.

As written, the book should have been titled, "A Brief Recap of Beginner's German."

[Word Owl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very handy little book if you want a concise overview of the grammatical nuts and bolts of the German language. It's a good handbook. Entire Review here.