Deutsch Zusammen

by Johanna Watzinger-Tharp and Frank E. Donahue

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0536011672
• ISBN13: 9780536011671
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Pearson
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Solid, complete, effective textbook

I am a teacher of college-level German. Deutsch Zusammen is the most effective introduction to German I've seen for adult learners of the language in a classroom setting. It presents the notoriously difficult German language in a systematic fashion, breaking down the grammar into do-able "bits", providing understandable explanations for them and lots of practice in the Lernheft, where students can check their own answers. True, there are numerous errors in the workbook (almost entirely in the answers--for which I withhold a star), but most mistakes are obvious even to the learner, and the instructor can clear up anything else. Deutsch Zusammen differs from most German textbooks in its focus on students' learning the German language from the ground up, building on more and more knowledge as they progress. Most other textbooks promote "swimming" in the language rather than building it up, that is, exposing learners to far more language than they are able to understand at that time. This is based on the mistaken notion that adults should learn a language much as children do, by being surrounded by it and making sense of it gradually. Adults learn differently than children do, though, and Deutsch Zusammen is based on this difference, presenting small parts of the languange, with explanations, in an orderly fashion. I have seen the effectiveness of this approach, and I believe it is far more satisfying and less frustrating to most adult learners than the "swim-in-the-language" approach. It is amazing how quickly students can gain competence in the language with this book (when properly taught), not only vocabulary, but also grammatical accuracy, because they understand the underlying system of the language.Have no fears that this is just a grammar book, like the Latin textbooks of old. No, Deutsch Zusammen gets learners communicating about the real world and about their own lives from the first lessons. In the lingo of foreign language education, this is a highly communicative approach.In short, the strengths of Deutsch Zusammen--its completeness, logical organization and understandable explanations--so outweigh its weaknesses that I recommend it strongly as a textbook.