German for Reading Knowledge

Rating:
Summary: Tedious and unclear
Review: This book is not a great value. It does not explain German grammar with the clarity found in April Wilson's "German Quickly" or even Sandburg and Wendell's "German for Reading." It is particularly weak when explaining prepositions and the extended adjective construction, and it does not give pragmatic advice about figuring out the various crucial elements in a German sentence. Moreover, the exercise sentences are dull, and not worth the effort needed to translate them. This book is a classic mainly because German teachers are too lazy to seek out substitutes.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious and unclear
Review: This book is not a great value. It does not explain German grammar with the clarity found in April Wilson's "German Quickly" or even Sandburg and Wendell's "German for Reading." It is particularly weak when explaining prepositions and the extended adjective construction, and it does not give pragmatic advice about figuring out the various crucial elements in a German sentence. Moreover, the exercise sentences are dull, and not worth the effort needed to translate them. This book is a classic mainly because German teachers are too lazy to seek out substitutes.

Rating:
Summary: Getting to the point
Review: This is a great book to use in conjunction with a course, not on your own. FIU is offering a course that goes by the same title, which makes the understanding of the grammer easier to digest. If you are serious about learning to decipher German text, or just want to become fluent in another language, I suggest you enroll in a basic German I course, so that it all comes together. With this book I have moved forward in my knowledge faster than I did when I just took German I for a full semester. If you are serious about learning, this is a great handbook.

Rating:
Summary: Not for faint-hearted learners
Review: This standard college text for acquiring a reading knowledge of German is monumental in scope and demanding in design. This is a serious book for serious learners only.

Now in its fourth edition, this warhorse is a solid, no-frills approach that builds on the old-fashioned principles of incremental vocabularly and grammatical precepts, followed by complementary readings using that controlled vocabularly and grammar.

The 30 chapters are short but dense, interspersed with several review chapters and additional readings, along with several useful appendices and a German-English glossary and index in the back.

Learning German for the sole skill of reading is much like learning a dead language such as Latin. The joy of the spoken word is not part of the process. But this book helped me conquer the thorny and difficult German language and adequately prepare for a graduate examination in the language.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent but tough.
Review: Worth every penny of the price. Good for a strong foundation in German grammar and phrase construction.