Practice Speaking – A New Type Of Exercise

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Hello everyone,

and welcome back to your favorite German learning blog of all time.
So, originally, I wanted to do a review this week and tell you about an interesting new tool. However, as I was actually using the tool to prepare the review, I actually found a couple of issues with it that are so big that I have decided that I can’t really recommend it after all, and I cancelled my review.

I didn’t have anything else prepared, but since it’s been a while already and I wanted to give you something to study, I decided that we’ll do some

Speaking Practice

Most of you probably remember from a few weeks back that EF (a big company for language travels) is working on a speech recognition AI and that we can use it here on the site.
Last time, we did a multiple choice type of activity and today, I want to try out a new type of exercise – one that helps you train common patterns and phrasings.

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Posted on June 22, 2021 by

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Word of the Day – “leiten”

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to our German Word of the Day.
And today, we’ll take a look at the meaning of

leiten

Leiten is the German brother of to lead. And they do share a common theme. But leiten does quite a few things that lead doesn’t do. Like giving us water and electricity, for example. Or setting up this Ikea rack Fälör. Or even giving us a nice start into a text, like right now.
So, are you ready to jump in?
Then let’s goooo.

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Posted on June 11, 2021 by

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Practice Past Tense – By Speaking (#OMG)

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Hello everyone,

and welcome to another episode of “A new feature.”
And yes, I know it doesn’t sound all that exciting after all the new features we already had this year. But this one is really really epic because it is about

practicing speaking with… AI

OMG, the buzz… it’s soooo strong :).

Here’s what’s going on… some of you might have heard of the company EF, Education First. Their main focus is
organizing language travels and programs around the world and they’re a pretty big company. And they have a small department that is building their own custom speech recognition AI system, that they’re offering to teachers so they can create cool interactive exercises.

Bob, the leader of the team (who used to be a fellow reader here), reached out to me a while back and told me about this sytsem and that I could include it here on my site.

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Posted on June 3, 2021 by

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What’s an article

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Hello everyone,

and welcome back to our little series on the most important grammar terms. And today, we’ll take a closer look at one

articles

Now, most people who speak English would immediately think of the and a, when they hear “article”, and many German learners would experience a visceral reaction, like a surge of anxiety or a slight skin rash. So it’s definitely one of the most wide-known terms.
What’s less clear, though, is the question of what articles are, what they do and what other types of articles there are. And by looking into these things, we’ll learn what’s maybe the most important lesson of today… that grammar terminology is a god damn mess, and no one knows what they’re talking about.
So, are you ready to jump in?
Then let’s go.

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Posted on May 27, 2021 by

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