German on the Web
The Internet is a wide and wild place, and while there are many incredible resources for German, it can help to have a little bit of curation. Here are our recommendations! If you have the time and interest, I'd highly recommend wandering around through these link lists to find ones that are best suited for your own learning style. And if you find any super-helpful sites or apps you'd like to share, email me the links, and I'll add them to this list!
In this links collection, you'll find recommendations related to:
Language Learning Sites, Grammar Pages, and other Structure Resources
Social Media and Communication (person-to-person speaking and listening exposure)
Media: Online Videos and Podcasts, TV and Radio, Newspapers and Magazines
Viel Spaß dabei!
Vocabulary: Most students find some form of flash-card work to be most effective when memorizing vocab. Some need to have physical flash cards, while others like the freedom and variety online flash-card programs provide. Find out what works best for you!
Quizlet: Best. Study tool. Ever. As far as I can tell, this is still currently the gold standard in online study help and flashcards. You can use it to study whatever you want (make your own quiz sets), but I've started things off for you with the chapter vocab (broken into chunks, the way it is in the book). You can use these sets as flash cards (with audio, and it's pretty good audio), play games with it ... all sorts of stuff. Highly recommended (and I've done half the work for you already, so at least check it out!).
Vokabel.com: While not as slick as Quizlet, this flashcard program allows you to save the lists you make as a "test" on your own hard drive, so you don't have to be online to access them.
Memrise: This one's entirely online, so there's no saving to your hard drive (yet), but it's got a huge variety of options and ways to test your knowledge, along with a lot of ready-made vocab and grammar tests. More importantly, you can create your own sets of tests for yourself (along with mnemonic tips, images, and other great features) and share them with others!
Online Dictionaries: This is a huge list (that includes some awesome slang sites), but if you just want a quick link, I'll just say that imo, PONS, and LEO. are by far the best online dictionaries, but TÜ Chemnitz’s Biolingus. also has some areas of strength, especially for certain technical terms. These dictionary-site links can be insanely helpful to have open in a separate tab as you are working or browsing online. It's perfectly normal to forget the occasional noun gender, so if you're not sure -- look it up! With the dictionary sites, it takes all of two seconds.
Linguee: This site falls somewhere between typical dictionary and translation tool, and it can be incredibly helpful as a tool to see how certain terms have been translated across the Internet in context. Warning, however: it doesn't have the best filter (or any?), so some of the examples it gives are from terrible Google Translate translations that are just flat-out wrong, so take everything you see there with a grain of salt.
Translation: Translation programs and browser features can be helpful if you find an entire website in German and want to quickly find out what things are generally about, but as far as providing truly believable and accurate translations, they're pretty full of hilarious fail. If you don't believe me, run a paragraph through a translator into German and then back into English again. It's like some bizarre game of translator telephone. Moral of the story: DO NOT use translation programs in any language courses at NAU. Produce your OWN German when you're given writing assignments. Anything else will be considered cheating.
Reading authentic texts is one of the best ways to acquire both excellent vocab in context as well as cultural and historical insight into the countries where that language is spoken. Read for pleasure, and you'll find your vocabulary as well as your ear for proper sentence structure and tone will shoot through the roof! The online German reading library through the Goethe Institut is a great place to start; it has a wealth of amazing media resources at all levels, including a lovely selection of children's books and books for beginners!
Goethe Institute free online resources, including fun (and actually useful) apps for IOS and Android.
EasyGerman on YouTube: Cari is adorable, and they've broken the lessons down into A1-C2, according to the European Frame of Reference for Language Proficiency. The grammar lessons are okay, but the cultural segments are outstanding and hilarious.
Deutsche Welle: Learn German with Deutsche Welle, the German independent public broadcasting organization. This site has a truly dizzying amount of media resources and learning materials.
A fantastical, Grimms-themed online grammar review. from the University of Texas. A lovely, slick website that includes all the grammar you could ever want in some very cute ways.
Interactive Grammar Tutor: Explanations, examples, and (for most topics) self-correcting exercises on the fundamentals of German grammar, from the Amazing Hartmut of the University of Michigan. Highly recommended, and often includes very silly examples.
A Comprehensive Grammar Review from Dartmouth
Udemy through NAU: While online autonomous language courses are typically not as effective as interactive classroom ones, sometimes they can be helpful if you need review, have a gap semester when you're not taking any language classes and need to keep up, or want some support while abroad. NAU provides all students access to Udemy content, including these German resources.
Online German Lessons: A comprehensive list of all sorts of other places you can find practice lessons for various aspects of German grammar and vocab. Check this out if you have some time on your hands, but don't get overwhelmed.
Self-Study Advice. Self-study advice and other advice on learning strategies.
Advice and links for practicing listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
General Language Learning Resources (Email partners, Chat sites, International Channel etc.) Links to an external site.
Placement Tests (curious about how you'd measure up with the sort of multiple-choice tests many German universities use for placement?)
If the face-to-face conversation groups led by native speakers we offer at the GELL Center here at NAU aren't quite enough for you and you'd like to chat with German speakers around the world, there are a wealth of programs to help you with that, too. Be sure to share your experiences with us so we can pass on recommendations!
Treffpunkt This one's actually (sort of) local: Treffpunkt is non-profit organization/restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona where you can sample German food and chat in German. They have a number of regular events like Stammtisch, so check them out if you're in the area!
HelloTalk Free app (Android and iOS) for finding conversation partners around the world and at home. More info here Links to an external site..
Italki ("I talk-y") Find conversation partners and paid tutors. More info here Links to an external site..
Speaky Find partners, chat or make audio/video calls in your browser. Currently (2017) only allows you to sign up via Facebook or Google.
The Mixxer Find language partners and talk to them via Skype.
Nesuku Recent start-up. Connect with native speaker conversation coaches or teachers for $10/hour. The conversation coaches and teachers are vetted by the site, so if you can afford the fee, you can work consistently with the same native speaking conversation coach. The site attempts to partner you with conversation coaches whose profile/interests are a good match for you.
Linguar: Connect with other language students (especially German students learning English) to chat, text, skype, and generally practice communicating in a low-stress environment.
Conversation Exchange: Same idea, different site. I haven't entirely vetted this one yet, so if it works well (or not), tell me. But it's free.
Verbling: Using Google Hangout to form groups, this site allows you to set up various groups and chat rooms to practice a target language. You can also participate in mini lectures and private tutoring with native speakers (for a fee).
German-Learning Discord: Discord is a free app that allows for text chat, voice chat, and easy file sharing, and it has a beginner-friendly interface that can be used on mobile. This particular German server is a place for German learners and native speakers from all over the world to interact, with relatively active chat groups, reading circles held every weekend, and even lessons following a free online textbook.
StoryCorner "One story. Five days. One chapter per day through WhatsApp." Learn words within the context of entertaining mini-stories, for free. Each chapter also has one featured word from their vocabulary trainer app vobot (a paid app), so if you have that app, you can also practice related vocab in conjunction with the story.
Here are a few we'd recommend; be sure to share your favorites, too!
Musik: Listening to music in your target language is one of the most effective motivators out there, and there is quality German music in almost any genre you can think of.
I've put together a YouTube playlist of around 200 German songs spanning the 1970s to now (with the bulk of the list from the last 10 years or so). Enjoy, and let me know of any ones you'd recommend adding! (And if you haven't already, check out the open-source content filter uBlock Origin to avoid having songs be interrupted by ads every 30 seconds.)
Die 100 besten deutschsprachigen Songs von Tonspion on Spotify is a pretty great playlist of contemporary songs performed in German, with a very wide variety of genres and songs from the 1960s to 2018. Great playlist to find artists you might like to check out!
Videos:
Telenovella: Nicos Weg (See the video description for links to related activities and materials)
“Harry – gefangen in der Zeit (Harry, Caught in Time) is a bilingual, interactive series from DW that includes fun associate activities, vocab training, grammar explanations, and a bunch of interesting socio-geographic information.
Star Wars auf Deutsch: If The Rise of Skywalker didn't ruin all things Star Wars for you, check out what's available online, or switch over to German dubbing if you have Disney+! The YouTube offerings obviously get put up and taken down regularly, so you do need to sift a bit, but you can usually find entire series and films if you look in the right place. Möge die Macht mit euch sein! And for any of you really hardcore fans (or those just curious about what hardcore German SW fans look like), check out the "deutscher Kostümklub" German Garrison. Hilarity.
Zeitungen, Zeitschriften, Nachrichten [=Newspapers, Magazines, News]
Deutschland.de (a site for German learners with articles on a wide range of topics)
Note: This is mainly meant to be a collection of free resources, but it goes without saying that if you have access to Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or any of the other online streaming services, you should explore both their original German-language offerings (Netflix is especially great for this) as well as their dubbed and subtitled options (The Mouse is king of dubbing).
One of the best ways to motivate yourself to want to learn a language is to pursue topics that actually interest you in that target language. Choose a topic that interests you and explore away: