german textbook courses

Have Fun Learning German Fast

Busuu German offers German learners a dynamic combination of online lessons, language exchange and mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android.

Busuu offers many of their features for free :) This includes picture-based vocabulary training, writing exercises, reading comprehension exercises, video chat, interactive exams and a bustling community for social exchange in German.

The Busuu system allows you to keep a track record of your German studies and mark your progress as you complete each lesson. You can work through your lessons at any time, enabling you to fit your study schedule into your daily life however you choose.

Find Friends and Practice or Exchange

Finding friends is easy in the Busuu community! Quickly search and contact other German learners to practice with as well as exchange partners to share and trade with. Plus, there's a free video chat function for easy access to language exchanges right in the same interface you're using to learn.

Stay Motivated in Style

In order to keep you motivated, Busuu has created a beautiful interface which allows you to grow and visualize your own language garden as you make progress learning German. If you are interested in learning more than one language, you will have a tree for each language that sprouts and shoots to the sky as you progress through the lessons and levels. It's quite a thrill to see this grow and know it's a visual representation of your language skills!

Free German Mobile App for iOS and Android

Busuu offers free mobile apps for learning German on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android. The free app takes you through the basics for getting around, and is especially useful while traveling.

Summary

BBC Languages German provides solid learning resources for beginning and intermediate German learners. There is a self-contained beginner's course, a 12-week newsletter course and multiple video resources, a TV series and a book!

The BBC has done an amazing job of providing free learning resources for many of the world's languages, including Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and others.

This is a great site for total beginners to start learning practical German that will serve while traveling in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

From Website

Quick Fix: Printable holiday phrases with audio and mp3 download

For Beginners

German Steps: A self-contained online course

German in 12 Weeks: Sign up for weekly emails with tips and encouragement

Talk German: A video-based online resource with activities plus TV series and book

Intermediate

Cool German: An audio guide to German slang with mp3 downloads

German for Work: Information and practice for those using German at work

Other resources

Deutsch Plus: A longer TV course with book and website

German across Europe: A historical and geographical profile of the language

Germany Inside Out: Website complementing TV travel documentary

Visit BBC Languages German.

Summary

FSI is an acronym for the Foreign Service Institute, "the (US) Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community".

Over the years, the FSI has researched, designed and taught language courses to Foreign Service staff and diplomats. These courses are now available and licensed to the Public Domain.

FSI-Language-Courses.com (and .net) is a sweet and simple website that provides users with the ability to view and download the Foreign Service Institute's courses for 31+ languages. The content is provided by individuals donating time and resources in an overall effort to provide quality languages-learning materials for free worldwide.

Sounds good to me. :)

In the German section of the site, there are currently two volumes of a basic course in German. This course gives total beginners a solid and useful introduction to practical situations that you actually encounter in your average day while traveling, studying or working in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstien, Switzerland, et al.

From Website

Welcome to fsi-language-courses.com, the home for language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute. These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain.

This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. This site is not affiliated in any way with any government entity; it is an independent, non-profit effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages. Courses here are made available through the private efforts of individuals who are donating their time and resources to provide quality materials for language learning.

Visit FSI-Language-Courses.com German Courses.

Related Links

FSI Language Courses in German Pre-Formatted for Download of One File!
US Foreign Service Institute Website
US Foreign Service Institute on Wikipedia
German Language on Wikipedia

Summary

MIT has joined a growing list of universities worldwide in the OCW (OpenCourseWare) Consortium. An OpenCourseWare is "a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses".

Of interest to language learners is MIT's Foreign Languages and Literatures Department on the MIT OpenCourseWare website. While courses in this department range from "Communicating Across Cultures" and "Japanese Literature and Cinema" to "Topics in South Asian Literature and Culture" and "Expository Writing for Bilingual Students", they do also include specific language education courses. Currently at ocw.mit.edu, OpenCourseWares are available for learning the French, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish languages.

What makes these truly "free and open" to the general public is the Creative Commons license under which these OpenCourseWares are licensed: The Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike 3.0 License. In a nutshell, this license gives the public freedom to share, copy, distribute, display and make derivative works of the courses as long as they give proper attribution, do not use it for commercial purposes and "share alike" (under the same license) any new changes or improvements.

This is an exciting project to see! In time, free and "OpenCourseWares" should be available for learning all the world's major languages and, I hope, at least some of the minority languages as well. Bravo MIT and the OCW Consortium!

From Website

MIT OpenCourseWare is an idea—and an ideal—developed, supported, and embraced by the MIT faculty, who share the Institute's mission to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship to best serve the nation and the world. In 1999 the Faculty considered how to take best advantage of the Internet to advance education, and in 2000 proposed OCW. The rest is our history...

Link

Visit the MIT OpenCourseWare Foreign Languages and Literatures Department.

Summary

Wikibooks is a great idea. Like Wikipedia, Wikibooks consists of content that is public domain. That means that anything there is reusable in any fashion, such as for teaching.

This particular wikibook was the Collaboration of the Month in 2005.

From Website

The question arose early in the development of this textbook as to precisely who would be the target audience. Although intended to be a "beginning" textbook on German, many felt that the early lessons were too difficult for younger students with very limited or no experience with German and, perhaps more importantly, limited skills in English grammar. For this reason a textbook on three levels was conceived.

Beginning German (Level I) puts more emphasis on building vocabulary around subject matter interesting and useful to young students.

Basic German (Level II) emphasises grammar, and assumes a greater knowledge of English grammar more typical of an older high school or a college student. If you are just beginning to learn German or attempting to teach yourself, you may wish to try both approaches and see which works better for you, since some people require a strong structural approach to learning a new language while others find this "structure" only impedes progress by adding another layer of complexity.

Intermediate German (Level III), which requires even more knowledge of English, is for college students, preferably for sophomores or juniors.

With even more complex lessons, grammar and vocabulary comes Advanced German (Level IV), which with the most complex and difficult parts of the German language, is for late college students (Seniors) and college graduates.

The last level, which is a review level, but also has cultural facts and the history of the German language, is Reviewed German. (Level V).

An existing, separate text, German/Grammar, may eventually be merged into the lesson modules or developed into useful appendices as a grammar reference. At present, however, German Grammar is an expanding, significant contribution to the textbook; it provides an important reference on German language grammar rules useful to the student working through any of the three levels.

Visit the German Language Wikibook.