Learn German With Stories: Café in Berlin - 10 Short Stories For Beginners (Dino lernt Deutsch - Simple German Short Stories For Beginners) (German Edition)

Love these Andre Klein books. Another way to keep language learning more fun and less of a chore. Very effective vocabulary builder, too. I enjoy the stories in these books and it helps me stick with my German learning.

So I've been studying German on and off for about two years now but this year I started to really kick it into gear as I want to go to school in Germany. I would say I'm almost at the A2 if not on the cusp of it. However, as expansive as my vocabulary was I was procrastinating like HELL to improve my listening skills because, lets face it, listening is problem the hardest obstacle to overcome to acquire a language. Anywho, I knew I had to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, movies, shows, youtube videos, news, etc. in German to at least TRY to improve my listening skills.I looked überall for audio that was beginner friendly to no avail. I think stumbled upon these audio books. When I do my listening exercises I like to close my eyes to try to heighten my other senses especially meine Ohren lol. Thus I closed my eyes, clicked play and BAM....one paragraph into the first chapter of the stories I was absolutely SHOCKED that I understood what he had said. I just didn't hear the words. I was able to translate the words in my head fast enough to keep up with the speaker. I opened my eyes in SHOCK! I took off my headphones and smiled den ganzen Tag about finally getting through some German audio and understanding over 90% of the content.These stores are GREAT! Cohesive and entertaining theme(s), right tempo, and not too much to bite and chew.Highly recommend for beginners.

I like how the book puts translations at the end of the chapter for the story. It helps me learn new words when a new word is inserted with a bunch of other words I already know. Some people complain about the stories being too short, but I like the shortness of the stories. I think it makes it easier to get through with some new knowledge and not have to take too much in at once. Each story is probably less than 10 paragraphs. There are only 10 stories in this book. I wouldn't mind seeing a few more stories in each one of these books. I noticed the person who gave this book 1 star was upset at how simple the stories. I personally like the simpleness, because I'm still getting started with German. They definitely aren't very funny or entertaining though as the book suggests. They basically read like this:I have a car. It goes fast. My roommate has a car. He drives slowly.So I can see the point of the 1 star reviewer, but I personally need a book with this simplicity for where my current learning level is.

I liked the book very much. I highly reccomend Café is Berlin for beginner German learners. The stories are fun, quick to read, and easy to understand.I will check out the other volumes in the series.

I find that repetition of interesting media is the best for language acquisition. Since there aren't any German series or movies on YouTube that I have found to be highly interesting and addictive, I went with this German Beginner-level audiobook series that comes with an eBook. I like it more than DW Nicos Weg A1-A2 video lessons.The sound effects, the clearly enunciated speech from the AudioBook plus the eBook make this a great series to hit the ground running on oral comprehension. It is short enough to replay the whole AudioBook every other day. I am on my third listen and this repetition has allowed me to ingrain grammatical structures; this practice makes it easier to write grammatically correct sentences and get closer to internalizing German genders. Although I know that, practically, one can simply remember tables of gender endings and cases, I have always found my production comes quicker with just hearing and reading the same thing again and again.I look forward to purchasing the Intermediate Level detective/mystery series from the same author.

I am extremely impressed with this collection. Through the 10 books the writer took me from almost zero German to a pretty good level of reading comprehension. The books follow a carefully graded progression in terms of vocabulary and grammatical patterns. Each book centers around a different city in Germany, and thus the reader learns the most salient features, cultural aspects and language peculiarities of places like Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, etc.Then there's the story line: Dino's adventures in each city are not only engaging but funny. As the reader reaches book 6, the language gets a bit more complex and the adventures also become, at least for this reader, more interesting. The chain of events slowly start introducing some more serious socio-political situations resulting from Germany’s past and present. Dino’s girlfriend, for example, works as a reporter in a refugee camp. They also help Fadiyah, a Syrian refugee make it from Sicily to Munich where her brother works.I also bought the 10 books read by the author. That proved to be invaluable help while learning how to pronounce what I was reading. I normally listen to the author’s reading while I drive. Some other readers have mentioned the glossary at the end of every chapter. That is a great time saver, but I have also been using the Google translator as extra help. Because I have written in between the lines the translation of all the new words, I recently decided to acquire the eBook version of the 10 books. That way I can read the stories without any translation and thus test my knowledge of the language I’m learning.An interesting grammar point. I have learned that the past tense in SPOKEN German is normally expressed as the Present Perfect in English. That is, instead of saying “I went there,” German speakers prefer to say “I have gone there” [Ich bin dort gegangen]. That trick worked for me very well. However, while reading Dino’s adventures I learned that in WRITTEN German, apparently the real past tense is most frequently used. So it was time for me to start learning all the past tense forms of all the verbs I knew. Until then I was happy to say: “Dino has eaten a Pizza,” [Dino hast eine Pizza gegessen] with these books I learned that in writing it’s more common to write: “Dino ate a Pizza.” [Dino aß eine Pizza].I am lucky to have a friend who speaks very good German. With him I can discuss the stories and thus practice conversation.In short, This is an excellent way to learn German reading comprehension in a challenging and intelligent way.Very soon I’ll be ready to start Andre Klein’s next collection of stories.