Learning German for a Grad School Exam

[deactivated user]

Hi all!

I am attempting to teach myself reading knowledge of German for my graduate school foreign language requirement. The exam involves translating a passage of ~300 words from an intermediate level text chosen in advance by myself. Has anyone else tried to do this? Does anyone have an recommendations for resources outside of Duolingo, whether they are websites, textbooks, etc? So far, I've also been googling German short stories and translating them from scratch, but obviously that can get difficult.

Thanks!

[KenBookmye]

Memrise has a bunch of German courses

[deactivated user]

Thank you! I'll definitely check it out.

[wombatua]

I'm actually doing the University of Wisconsin's German for reading knowledge course (http://continuingstudies.wisc.edu/languages/german-reading.html). I'm doing it for work (dealing with quite a few German primary sources in my research right now; I'm also doing their French reading course). It's not cheap - it's around $1,000 for the course; for me, work's paying for it - but I'm quite pleased with it so far.

[deactivated user]

Thanks!

[Art.dUke]

Maybe it's an idea to take any Wikipedia article you like ... and switch it to German

[deactivated user]

Good idea! I'll definitely try that :)

[pinkpiggy0530]

YOU DESERVE A LINGOT

[deactivated user]

Well, thank you!

[deactivated user]

An idea: Themen Aktuell 1,2,and 3 or a different good quality series going to B1 (is this the level you mean by intermediate?), one grammar book like Klipp und Klar, lots and lots of reading, for example with help of Readlang, Memrise for vocab practice.

Basically, you need to have a solid enough grammar knowledge, some vocabulary, and experience with reading and understanding stuff in context. Especially the reading practice is necessary. Books, news articles, anything.

If your exam is about professional German, used in your field, I highly recommend reading a few textbooks or publications for professionals in German. I found this extremely useful.

[deactivated user]

Thank you!! This was really helpful!