This page compiles some of the resources included or linked to on this site that may be useful for teachers at other institutions. If you find other resources on this site that should be included here, or come across any broken links or outdated information, please use the “Contact/Feedback” link in the footer to let Hartmut know!
Sample Lesson Plans and Teaching Ideas
Lernstrategien Includes general advice, and leads to pages with specific advice and resources for self-study, listening, speaking, reading, writing etc., as well as links to various “Why Study German” pages
German 101/102 Legacy Video Lectures
- These video lectures were the basis of our German 101/102 courses through Summer 2023. They were designed to accompany the textbook Vorsprung. They were very well received by students, so we are continuing to use excerpts from them until student feedback indicates it is time for a change. Sehr wichtig [=very important]: after these videos were made, we incorporated the gender neutral pronoun they into the course ==> what the videos call the er/sie/es [“he/she/it”] forms of verbs, we now call the er/sie/es/they forms. Please ignore (or look up!) outdated pop culture references, or references to Vorsprung or to our old “coursepack”! We also no longer make MSU jokes – but they were always only meant as silly jokes, which we were making at a time when our textbook was written by a professor at MSU 🙂 A small but important change: we now use the plural Studierende (and the short form Studis), rather than Studenten or StudentInnen. The link takes you to an overview of all of the videos (scroll down a bit past the vocabulary info).
- This page also includes annotated vocabulary lists, worksheets, and online exercises, all for use in our earlier German 101/102/103 courses with Vorsprung.
Aussprache Links Note especially the Fluent Forever videos in the first bullet point, and the University of Iowa Phonetics site.
- Vokabellernstrategien, including specific ideas for forming simple sentences quickly and ideas for learning noun genders
- Vocabulary Lists for University of Michigan Courses, including annotated vocabulary lists for German 101/102 with collocations, examples and mnemonics; a Basic Scientific Vocabulary for our fourth-semester course in Scientific German, and vocabulary for our German for Engineers courses.
- Lists of Most Frequent German Words, including our old Gateway Vocabulary List, used in 3rd-semester German through Spring 2019
Interactive Grammar Tutor Grammar explanations, examples, and practice exercises
Videos zum Spaß Videos annotated with vocabulary notes, explanations, links to lyrics etc., loosely following the sequence of topics in Vorsprung
German on the Web Annotated links lists under the headings “Language Learning & Reference Resources” (e.g. Online Dictionaries and Translation, Online Lessons, Finding Conversation/Email partners and Tutors), “Media,” and Links by Subject Area (e.g. Humor, Kunst, Musik, Religion, Sport etc.)
Umlaute und ß Advice for typing German special characters efficiently
Essay Correction Symbols and Additional Essay Correction Codes/Common Errors
nichtlustig cartoons – annotated list
Sidebar links: Links to some particularly useful dictionaries (Pons, Linguee etc.) and usage resources (DWDS, Wortschatz Deutsch etc.) are in the sidebar of this page!