Schulz & Griesbach's "Deutsche Sprachlehre fur Ausländer"

[Pen^3]

I am considering buying this book, but can't find out the information I want to know before going ahead.

I'm half-way through the first Lingua Latina book and really enjoy the style and the immersion method, and apparently Schulz & Griesbach's book is very similar. However, currently only having very basic German, I am unable to work out: how advanced does the book ultimately get? Does it end up at a still pretty elementary level, or something higher up? Are we talking baby book, newspaper level, or something in between?

If anyone has used this book, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks in advance to any replies.

[Osterdeich]

I was not familiar with this book, but I took a look at it on amazon.de. I can only get to page 170 in that preview, but in that range is material you will typically seen covered in B1 classes, maybe lower B2. (Konjunktiv, comparisons, etc.)

Four of the five reviews under the product are good to glowing; there's one dissenter. I was reading some of the pages of the book and I thought the content was good.

I know you wanted a review from someone who has used it to learn, but I thought you'd appreciate this too.

edit: In this book there is a lot of work on the basics including verbs. Which is good, because they can be complicated at times. There are separable verbs and changes that are irregular when going to the past participle or simple past. So this is good in this book. However, as in most German textbooks I've seen, it doesn't seem to have a lot of vocabulary. I'd grab another book for vocabulary—The Routledge Frequency Dictionary of German is the one I usually recommend.

[Bedell]

That book looks fantastic.

Is there a similar book for Spanish, by any chance?

[Pen^3]

Osterdeich: Thanks! I hadn't thought at all to look on Amazon.de, great find! Lacking much German myself, it's hard to tell what level the language goes up to, but B2 is (I think, I'd never heard this term before) equivalent to 2nd year university, which sounds pretty good to me. Might buy this for my birthday or something soon. I like the grammar part, too--thanks for that note.

Bedell: I've not used either myself, but for Spanish, similar books are "Poco a Poco" (free at http://internetarchive.org/details/pocopocoelementa00hallrich) for elementary, and "All Spanish Method" (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_esRAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y) for beyond the basics. But I have no idea if these are any good or not; I've only heard of them from someone I used to work with.

[Bedell]

Thanks for that. I can make good use of them. I love this forum; the breadth of knowledge is unbeatable!

[Scribo]

Fantastic recommendations. I wonder, perhaps we can put together a quick list of LLalikes for various languages?

Looking at this German one, it looks great, but one wonders how to progress, it throws so much vocabulary at you. I suspect a dictionary is needed.

[Pen^3]

Fantastic recommendations. I wonder, perhaps we can put together a quick list of LLalikes for various languages?

That is a brilliant idea.

It would be ideal to have a list of similar texts, for people who benefit from learning that way, with the following information:
- language (obviously)
- alphabet used (useful for Greek etc.) and any indication if how to read the alphabet is explained
- level (e.g. introductory, able to read a newspaper, can read most novels, school child, honours in language at university, etc.)
- how much is covered and recommended supplement types if there are any gaps (grammar, pronunciation, vocab, etc. and corresponding dictionaries, grammar texts, pronunciation tutor, etc.)
- anything else useful

[Osterdeich]

Osterdeich: Thanks! I hadn't thought at all to look on Amazon.de, great find! Lacking much German myself, it's hard to tell what level the language goes up to, but B2 is (I think, I'd never heard this term before) equivalent to 2nd year university…

Pen, you're welcome. The level B2—and the others from A1 to C2—can be read about here.

I like the ideas that you and everyone else here are exploring. I will contribute for German and perhaps French, although my proficiency there lags. It would be great to see what everyone comes up with.

[spiphany]

I should respond here, since the recommendation for Schulz and Griesbach probably came from me originally, one way or another.
I didn't learn German using it (I found it after I was already fairly fluent in German). I continue to believe that it's a useful textbook for a particular group of self-taught learners, but it won't suit everyone's needs.

It is and it isn't like Lingua Latina. It's not a set of connected readings which allow the learner to deduce meaning from context. It's in part a fairly traditional grammar-and-drills style textbook which is written entirely in German and includes simple readings that introduce and reinforce vocabulary at the beginning of each chapter. The exercises do a wonderful job illustrating how German cases and syntax work and they give chances to practice it in a very controlled, guided manner.

It was written in the 50s or 60s and hasn't been updated substantially since then. So -- you're not going to find information on contemporary German idiom, dialogues that will prepare you for booking a hotel or doing business in Germany, or a lot of relevant cultural information. If you like your language teaching to be embedded in a realistic communicative context, this isn't the book for you. The vocabulary is deliberately limited and the introduction of material is slow and systematic.
If you're particularly interested in acquiring reading competence in German and like to be able to see how all the grammar fits together rather than being presented with a bunch of idiomatic expressions which are useful but contain all sorts of grammar that you haven't yet learned, I think this is probably an excellent textbook.

There's a book by Hannelore and William Crossgrove called "A Graded German Reader" which is quite good for learning and introducing vocabulary from a very beginning level. I absolutely recommend it regardless of your ultimate goals.
At a more advanced level (i.e., for people who already have a solid foundation in grammar and basic vocabulary), there's "Aus deutscher Geschichte" by Werner Haas and a series of "Cultural Graded Readers" mostly by C.R. Goedsche focusing on the lives of famous Germans. These are all long out of print, but it should be possible to find relatively inexpensive used copies.
There may be more recent readers aimed at beginning-intermediate level learners, I'm afraid I'm not widely familiar with the current pedagogical material as I'm not the intended audience and haven't been for a long time.

For French, I like the (again out-of-print -- notice a trend here?) book "Beginning French: A Cultural Approach" by Hendrix and Meiden. It's not really Lingua Latina style at all, but it does have substantial readings and a systematic approach which I like.
There's also the "Easy French Reader" by R. de Roussy de Sales (in print and fairly inexpensive) -- the beginning part of this does come pretty close to Lingua Latina, in terms of being able to read and understand it & learn vocabulary from context without any previous knowledge of the language, although it helps coming from an English-speaking context as many of the words will look somewhat familiar. It's just a reader, there's not really a formal grammar component.

I suspect in the end, of the courses currently widely available, Assimil probably comes closest to the "inductive" method of Lingua Latina. (I assume this is the appeal for most people -- my needs and learning style are somewhat idiosyncratic) Whether you're willing to pay the price tag that goes with it you will have to decide for yourself, of course.

[Scribo]

Wow I had no idea you learnt German, I guess I always assumed you were native. Either way your post just increased the utility of the thread manifold, thanks.

I'm actually going through this book now, I think that as an auxiliary book its great.

[Scribo]

Italian: L’italiano secondo il «metodo natura» and Introduzione alla letteratura italiana.

[Scribo]

Italian: L’italiano secondo il «metodo natura» and Introduzione alla letteratura italiana.

[celebrimbor]

Schulz and Griesbach looks decent, but it lacks the magic of Lingua Latina.

If you enjoy the Lingua Latina method, I recommend you read Kato Lomb's Polyglot. In brief, her suggestion for learning German would be: learn how to pronounce the German aloud, then just pick up a German popular novel (perhaps for a book you have already read in another language) and start reading, using a pencil to mark new vocabulary and grammar structures in the margins as you figure them out through context.

Then again, it's nice to have a book specially designed for learning in this way -- it will save you a few migraines in the beginning