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 Ratings
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| Reviewed: |
Mar 17, 2008 by World Languages Editorial Board |
| Overview: |
The site provides grammar, vocabulary, and a small number of phonetics exercises
at three levels of difficulty, as well as interactive games and puzzles for
practice of vocabulary. Most material appropriate for college and HS settings
in North America falls in the European categorization at the "beginning"
level. The site does not contain material appropriate for complete beginners.
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| Learning Goals: |
Students can practice discrete grammar points in individual exercises sorted by
topic and review vocabulary in playful activities. Some exercises are highly
contextualized and thus also practice reading skills. However the intended
focus is on grammar.
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| Target Student Population: |
The material is most useful for high-school, college, and adult learners needing
practice in discrete aspects of German grammar. Some exercises (especially
word-class recognition games, simple word searches, etc. at the lowest level)
would be appropriate for younger learners.
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| Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills: |
The German descriptors for "beginning, intermediate and advanced" conform to the
European understanding of these terms. For the American context,
"beginning"-level materials would be appropriate for the first 2 years of
college-level German (1-4 years HS); the "intermediate" level for upper-division
college courses (AP-HS), and so on. See also "concerns" under all sections
below re: prerequisite knowledge.
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| Type of Material: |
A wide array of exercises and practice types is included: drill-and practice
exercises, grammar-oriented cloze activities, animated, race-against-time games,
and manipulative exercises to practice word order. In addition, there are word
search and memory games, crossword puzzles, and activities requiring learners
to distinguish between word classes. New material is added periodically and
flagged as such.Fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, drag-and-drop, and full sentence answers, among others.
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| Recommended Uses: |
This material would be most useful when individual exercises are assigned for
the practice of a specific grammar point, or to provide vocabulary practice for
a semantic field that has already been studied in class.Possibly suitable for practicing material learned in class--not so good for introducing new material, particularly at the beginner level.
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| Technical Requirements: |
Browser with Macromedia Flash plug-in (some exercises are available in both Flash and non-Flash versions). |
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| Strengths: |
The site's breadth is an important strength, as there is at least one practice
exercise for nearly every grammar point students tend to struggle with. At the
most advanced level, very complex structures that are not often covered in
on-line materials are included (Funktionsverbgefüge!).
The most useful activities are those that offer discrete practice on very
specific features (such as adjective endings, the usage of wenn, wann, als,
etc.); these exercises are straightforward and provide quick feedback to
students. Also, the varied types of exercises, including some with animation,
time-clocks, etc. make some of the exercises attractive to students who want
"fun"-feeling supplementary practice.
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| Concerns: |
While nearly all grammar topics are included, some exercises are difficult to
complete because the difficulty level of the vocabulary used to support them
creates stumbling blocks for students. Some activities are completely
contextualized (i.e., stories, fairy tales). Though these are valuable because
of their authentic cultural context, many of the contexts would prove
challenging to the non-native learner of German, and these difficulties would
have nothing to do with the learners' grasp of the grammatical item being
practiced. In some cases, highly contextualized cloze activities have so many
blanks that they are difficult to complete, even for users with high levels of
reading proficiency. To remedy this, instructors should survey not only the
grammar point being practiced, but also the overall difficulty level of the
reading/vocabulary items involved and assess the background knowledge required
for all contextualized cloze activities before deciding to assign them.
Not all of the exercises are entirely successful in their implementation, either technically or in terms of clarity of the task at hand. Moreover, much of the language has the inauthentic quality of stereotypical grammar exercises. |
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Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool |
Rating:     |
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| Strengths: |
Many of the exercises are good reinforcement of material already learned, though few or none are adequate for introducing new grammatical concepts, particularly for beginner or early intermediate students. Most can be done relatively quickly if the student is at the appropriate level.
If one were putting together on-line resources to support grammar review,
several of the exercises provide solid, easy-to-use practice of grammatical points. Vocabulary activities, cross word puzzles, etc. are accessible, even fun, for independent study. |
| Concerns: |
Students using the site would need firm knowledge of German grammatical terms to
select appropriate exercises, and since this is often lacking, the site is
unlikely to work well when assigned for independent study. Also, since all
instruction lines are in German, and since response types vary from exercise to
exercise, instructors would need to make very specific assignments, and in some
cases probably even demonstrate the on-line activity and response type
required, to ensure that students don't get frustrated. This is particularly
the case in exercises at the lowest level of difficulty (years 1 and 2 of
college; years 1-4 of HS).
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Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty |
| Rating: |
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| Strengths: |
The technical navigation of the site is straightforward, and the variety of
exercises and response types is welcome, even as it makes completing this all in
German a challenge for students with limited language proficiency. Exercises
with pleasant animation, etc., are attractive features.
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| Concerns: |
Although there is an English version of the main homepage (as well as a French version), all other pages are completely in German, minimizing their usefulness for beginners. (Good practice for intermediate students and above, however.)
That being said, neither instructions nor feedback are always terribly clear, and could prove daunting for students. For example, in one intermediate exercise on articles, neither instructions nor the feedback to answers given make clear that when "more than one answer is possible," the student must give all the possible answers to get full marks.
Provided the instructor assists with the potential language-based difficulties
re: background knowedge and the reading of instruction lines in German, (see
#2), the site is easy to navigate technically. |
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| Other Issues and Comments: |
Some exercises do not work well or are awkward technically. For example, in one drag-and-drop, it is virtually impossible to move the names of some parts of the body into any space that the exercise will accept.
Additionally, some of the exercises subdivide the browser screen into two frames (on a 15-inch screen), requiring scrolling up and down in both frames (particularly annoying in the crossword puzzles). |
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