Das Erste Jahr

By Margaret Keidel Bluske and Elizabeth K. Walther

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0838435750
• ISBN13: 9780838435755
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Heinle & Heinle Publishers
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good foundation

Needless to say, speed is everything in learning a language. One wants to be sure to use the right book with the "proven" system that yields the "remarkable" results. When I undertook to learn German on my own, the vast majority of books did the job adequately, none especially remarkably, but one did it well- Das Erste Jahr. I've come to find that in a language textbook, it's all about the sequence in which the information is presented. This is what sets Das Erste Jahr apart. Most textbooks seem to start off like travel guidebooks, presenting a great deal of vocabulary dealing with finding the train station, staying in hotels, ordering in restaurants and the like. Vocabulary, though important, is really just the leaves of the tree, so to speak. There's a stack of dedicated books that you can go to for vocabulary. Das Erste Jahr focuses less on vocabulary and more on the core of language, the basic grammar, with just enough interesting vocabulary to flesh things out. Grammar comes later in most textbooks, after the basic verbs, and when it comes it usually does so in the form of unappealingly utilitarian grammar charts with an admonition to "memorize the chart but don't place too much reliance on memorizing the charts". An overabundance of grammar charts, in my opinion, is the mark of a poor textbook. Das Erste Jahr presents the grammar very early on, unabashedly diving into dative articles and prepositions. Everything is explained clearly and simply. The student gains immediate advantage in understanding the core of the language because they've gotten the grammar up-front and consequently have more time to work with it. Their treatment of plurals is another effective departure, among others. So much research on language acquisition seems to focus on the optimum percentages of time that should be given over to reading vs. writing vs. listening vs. conversation, or the necessity for total immersion, or acquisition ability vs. age, etc. Little research seems to focus on the relative effectiveness of the way the material is presented in the book. In the end, the information's the same in every book. But in one, the process of absorption is slow and cumbersome, while in another, the neuron connections seem to link up without effort. This book seems to do this mysterious thing much better than others.