German Graded Readers

[WildGinger10]

Not sure if this has been talked about here but I couldn't find any threads in a search - there was one set of resources listed somewhere but the website didn't seem to work anymore.

I am trying to move forward in my German learning and I think picking up some very beginner graded readers will be useful, but they seem to be tricky to track down in person. I also don't want to spend a bunch of money on some from Amazon or something and have them turn out to be too advanced or not very helpful. Does anyone have resources for graded readers in German that they would recommend? I'm thinking a reader that doesn't have a "translated" side but one that lists vocab would be useful. Something on the computer that I can copy/paste sentences and vocab into Anki with would also be ideal.

Anyone have an idea of where I should go?

[patrickwilken]

I've never used them, I jumped straight to The Hunger Games on a Kindle with pop-up dictionary, but this might be helpful:

https://www.europeanbookshop.com/languagebooks/subject/GER/m4/c21/6

[jonm]

Does anyone have resources for graded readers in German that they would recommend? I'm thinking a reader that doesn't have a "translated" side but one that lists vocab would be useful. Something on the computer that I can copy/paste sentences and vocab into Anki with would also be ideal.

Anyone have an idea of where I should go?

Yes! I'm a big fan of the Dino lernt Deutsch books. I wrote about them in the last three paragraphs of this log post. Each book finds the main character, Dino from Sicily, trying to make a go of it in a different German city. You get a sense of those cities, and the story beats are entertaining and surprisingly true to life.

Vocabulary is bolded and translated at the end of each chapter. You can copy-paste from the ebooks, and they also come with premade Anki cards of the same vocabulary. You can see what they're like here. I haven't used the included Anki cards, but I've made some of my own using snippets from the audiobook versions (which are well narrated by the author, with good production and sound effects). I find everything reasonably priced, and there are various bundles available (ebook and audiobook together, or sets of the different books in the series).

[DaveAgain]

The Goethe Intitute's eLibrary has some. (search for 'A1')

https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/kul/ser/onl.html

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My local library has some from a danish publisher

https://www.alinea.dk/serie/easy-readers

Some from Klett

https://www.klett-sprachen.de/easy-read ... iter=titel

And some from Aschehoug.

EDIT
Duolingo's "stories" might suit you too. This is all German, but you can look up the words by hovering your mouse over them.

https://stories.duolingo.com/

[malach]

I prefer reading physical books, so I can't help you with digital copies. I'm getting a lot out of Brian Smith's series: http://www.briansmith.de/books.php (the audio is freely available online). The pre-intermediate level was about right for me having already learnt and forgotten some German before. Now I'm finishing up the intermediate series.

I have also used the BlackCat catalog: http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/en/catalogue/german/ The two I bought came with a CD recording and various exercises.

Two other places i have bookmarked, but not used, are: https://german.net/reading/ (online graded stories) and eurobooks, which has a range of books (in advanced search, select German and Readers).

[Speakeasy]

I have a collection of over fifty unilingual German Graded Readers, with audio recordings, from a variety of European publishers. To my great surprise and dismay, having spent a small fortune in acquiring this collection, I found that working with these types of materials – when compared to some version of the Multi-track Approach – provided limited opportunities for making real progress in German. Why so? Well, …

The grading of the Graded Readers is unreliable. To be more explicit, while the grading of these readers is consistent within a particular publisher’s collection, it varies significantly between publishers. That is, one publisher’s set of A2 Readers could easily find itself within the A1 range of a rival publisher’s collection.

Although the situation has improved slightly over the past few years, the vast majority of Graded Readers are adventures and mysteries written for an audience of pre-teens and young adults. For this reason, the average adult could easily find these types of materials uninteresting and devoid of any incitement to concentrate on the learning process.

The language deployed in Graded Readers is a repetitive subset of that encountered in language courses meant for presentation in a classroom environment. Once you’ve read two Readers at any particular level, you have, effectively, read them all. In addition, the language used in the readers is not as easily transferable to other areas. Yes, of course, it represents standard German; however, after having read through over fifty of these short stories, I came away with the impression that I had become a specialist in reading German Graded Readers. That is, the readers did not really provide the improvement that I had anticipated.

For this reason, I would suggest that the OP vary his study of German by working with a small selection of standard courses (Assimil, Linguaphone, Living Language Ultimate, FSI/DLI Basic) and then move on to native materials (slow news, et cetera). Having reached the A2-B1 range, one could then purchase a small collection of “pulp fiction” novels (for adults) along with the corresponding audio books as a bridge to more serious literature and more advanced audio. Meiner Meinung nach!

[jeff_lindqvist]

One year ago, I wrote:

My main problems with such books (especially the colour-coded Easy Readers series from Ernst Klett Verlag) are the control questions at the end of each chapter (I just want to read a text that gets a bit more difficult little by little - I don't want a test), and the word lists. Nearly everyone I've seen has had English as the "L1", i.e. supposed difficult words in the text are translated to (or explained in) English. I've even seen the German word Hund get translated to dog, while I already know that it's hund in Swedish.

[rdearman]

One year ago, I wrote:

My main problems with such books (especially the colour-coded Easy Readers series from Ernst Klett Verlag) are the control questions at the end of each chapter (I just want to read a text that gets a bit more difficult little by little - I don't want a test), and the word lists. Nearly everyone I've seen has had English as the "L1", i.e. supposed difficult words in the text are translated to (or explained in) English. I've even seen the German word Hund get translated to dog, while I already know that it's hund in Swedish.

Which is presumably where we get the English word "hound" from?

[jeff_lindqvist]

Old English hund "dog," from Proto-Germanic *hundaz (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian hund, Old High German hunt, German Hund, Old Norse hundr, Gothic hunds), from PIE *kwnto-, dental enlargement of root *kwon- "dog." Meaning narrowed 12c. to "dog used for hunting" (compare dog (n.)). Contemptuously, of a man, from late Old English.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/hound

[WildGinger10]

Yes! I'm a big fan of the Dino lernt Deutsch books.

This looks like EXACTLY what I'm looking for! The fact that they come with Anki flashcards built in is AMAZING! Thank you so much, I will start with these!

And thank you to everyone else for your input, I will take them all to heart and search around much of the other material in the near future. I definitely understand about the potential for these to not get me as far as I might desire, but I will be on alert for that. However, I'm VERY far from jumping into any REAL texts, like airport books, so I'll start here and try to work my way up.