You know the feeling when you finally fully understand a word or phrase of a song, movie, or TV episode in the language your studying? Isn't that feeling of accomplishment the best?
Media as a great tool to use for not just language learning, but also for maintaining the motivation to keep going when it gets hard! Finding media that you're actually interested in however, can be difficult...
Throughout my language learning journey with German, I've tried searching for German movies, music, Youtubers, and so on. However, I have never had much luck finding great results.
If you're like me and have been trying to find ways to motivate and immerse yourself daily in German through media, then this blog series, covering German movies, TV shows, music, books, and Youtubers, is for you!
In this post, we're covering a variety of German Books.
I'm still new to reading German books, so this blog post will look different from the previous in this series. Let me start by telling you what's in my home library.
In my own library, I have a book titled Ich Schreib Dir Morgen Wieder that I'm currently reading. I've not read through it fully yet, but from what I have read so far, the book seems to have some really dark, personal themes. The other book I recently picked up is called Liebes Kind. It's said to be a psychological thriller. Both definitely seem to be good books for older learners.
You don't need to read these specific books though. The books you read don't necessarily have to be German books, they can be books that were first written in English, then translated into German such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc.
Something I find challenging about reading in German is how little practice I actually have with präteritum. For those of you who don't know, German has 2 tenses, the spoken tense and the written tense. Most things such as conversation and store signs are in the spoken tense. Written media such as books however, are in the written tense.
Between these two tenses, the same word can change drastically. For example, when you would say gehen in a conversation, you would write ging in a book. It's confusing if you don't know all the conjugations for reading like me. But it's definitely a great way to get more exposure to präteritum and more vocabulary, especially if you read about topics you might not talk about often.
Something I find really beneficial when using books as a learning tool, is to find out whether it has an audio book version. I then use that audio version as a tool to hear how the words I'm not sure of are said; kind of like having a native German read the book to you as you following along on paper.
When possible, I did this with the readings I got assigned for uni too. Whether English or German, I'd have a software read the text to help, so I could not only hear the words I didn't know, but also multitask.
Let's help each other out by leaving any more recommendations for German Books in the comments below.
For other German media recommendations, check out the other blog posts on German music, movies, TV shows, and Youtubers .
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