Hello everyone,
And welcome back to yada yada, intro intro… you know how it goes :).
Today, I have a really really cool new project I want to tell you about that’s just PERFECT if you want to grind out some German practice and that you almost certainly haven’t heard of.
Sievers Study Hall
The project is a website /web-app made by Clément, a French guy who had to learn German while in Zurich and he decided to create this to (and I quote):
“to make it easier for people like me to do the unsexy
but necessary work required to learn a language.”
Preach, brother! Preach!
If you want to check it out right away, here’s the link
Sievers Study Hall – Practice German Grammar for free
But I’ll also add the link again below.
So what is it?
It is basically a website with exercises for the important aspects of grammar:
- conjugation,
- pronouns,
- tenses
- articles
- …
And that notably includes:
- verbs with prepositions
You know… combinations like “warten auf” or “denken an“. Exercises for this are often hard to come by, and here you get over 750 questions about JUST THIS!
And while the website itself is very minimalist, the amount of practice you can do there is monumental!
Like… for the topic of verbs with prepositions, there are about 750 questions or combinations covered, ordered by Level (A1, A2…) AND including da-words and wo-words.
Here’s a screenshot:
This is only a PART of the exercise sets for ONE of the grammar topics, mind you.
The amount is really crazy.
The exercises themselves are always simple typing, either just a word or form or a form in context.
You type, hit submit and you get the answers and new question right away without any delay.
So it’s absolutely PERFECT if you want to just grind out some practice.
Like… for me, this would be PERFECT, because I like to just repeat, repeat, repeat and the less friction there is the more “volume” I can do in a 10 minute session, while on other apps I spend half the time just “navigating”.
For transparency though, not all exercises are equally useful. The one about just verbs and their meanings for instance can be a bit meh.
Like… for example, the task was to translate “to assume something is true, to suppose, suspect something” and I entered “annehmen”, but it was marked wrong and “vermuten” was the answer.
But this is a general problem with plain word to word translation practice and it’s also something you can get used to. You just have to accept that the app “wants” this synonym in that moment, and not the other.
Overall, this is a really great tool. And the best thing is…
It is totally free!
Free of charge and free of ads.
And from what I understand, Clément has no plans to change that.
Actually, he recently open sourced it, too, so if you’re a dev, you can find it on GitHub.
So, absolutely amazing project and you should definitely check it out.
Like I said… the site is very minimalist, so you might feel a bit lost in space here and there. Think of it as an exercise gym where you just walk in, pick a machine that you want to do an exercise on, and then you do your reps.
Don’t think about it in the usual terms of “create a profile” and “get diamonds and hearts and owl poop”.
So… here’s the link:
Sievers Study Hall – Practice German Grammar
Now, there is no direct way to contact Clément at the moment besides his email address on the page. So if you come across some bug or glitch you can email him. But you can also leave a comment here. Clément said, he’ll check the discussion and I’ll also email him directly if there’s something that needs fixing, like text running off screen on mobile or something like that.
And also, so long as he doesn’t have comments, here’s also a great place to leave your general thoughts and feedback about the project.
Do you like it, do you find it useful? Would you use it? What would you improve?
I’m really curious to read your thoughts on this. For me, this is exactly the tool that I would want, but my learning style is a bit “particular”.
Anyways, I was really happy to tell you about this and I hope you like it.
Have a great week and see you in the next one.
This is very helpful, except I now know I’m still at A2 and not B1 as I hoped. :)
I’ve noticed that once I start an exercise I will stay with it longer than with other forms of study – so a great benefit to me.
Thank you very much for this.
Wait, what makes you think you’re A2 instead of B1?
It’s good that the tool makes you practice more. Stuff like this is a numbers game, not an accuracy or diligence game, imo.
My scores. I have some big holes here and there.
And some odd ones that I would think I would know but got wrong. Like the PP2 – gemocht – I don’t think I’ve ever used it.
My goal is to be able to read your average book in German. Something like an Agatha Christie or Issac Asimov. Not there yet.
So, big picture it doesn’t matter what level I’m at. Not doing this for a job. More to improve myself.
Hi it’s my first time here on this blog post and I really found this page amazing. Also I’m gonna mention how helpful Sievers study hall is, it’s a really practical tool and i seriously wonder why it is so unpopular among learners. Btw thankyou very much for sharing it with us.
It’s super duper new and most people don’t know about it.
I think there’s a big fat gap in the market for tools like this that just let you practice in bulk without stupid cartoons, gems, “progress” tracking, ads and 5 clicks per answer and all that other garbage that slows you down.
Clément, the revised “Artikel” exercises are fantastic! Your site has become my favourite training app by far, even more than my Brainscape flashcards into which I have put many hours of work. I’m sure I’ll keep using my flashcards, but there is something about the rapidity or immediacy of your platform that works really, really well for me. Thank you!
“but there is something about the rapidity or immediacy of your platform that works really, really well for me.”
Same!! I mean it would be if I was learning German. For stuff like the articles, I want as little friction as possible. Just mass practice, no tracking. I’ll see the “tracking” in daily life when I know more articles than before :)
Hello msfeather,
I’m really glad you enjoy it!
In you think about an exercise that could be useful to you or others, I’ve created a page so users like you can add comments: https://substack.com/home/post/p-165292603?source=queue
Best regards,
Clément
Great tool! Thank you for sharing. I too need a ton of repetition, and this scratches that itch!
Hello Wrangler,
Thanks for your message! I’m glad you like it.
Best,
Clément
In Level 1, I’m not sure, but I think the word order in Der Bus fährt ab 8:00 Uhr jede Stunde sounds a bit unnatural and would be better as Der Bus fährt jede Stunde / stündlich ab 8:00 Uhr.
Actually having the frequency at the end is more natural, since this is main “payload” of the sentence. Like.. the sentence most likely talks about “how often” primarily. Your version also works, but if I wasn’t aware of context, I might be a little confused as to what you’re saying.
Sievers Study Hall is excellent! Just the practise with prepositions that I need. Thank you. Jonet
Thanks Jonet!
I’m glad you like it.
Best,
Clément
It looks very useful. I’ve bookmarked it.
Other day I was looking up the word “weswegen” on Google. I saw yourdailygerman.com in the results and so clicked upon it. I noticed that the audio rendition of the word was “in English”.
Here’s the page I was at:
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning/wegh/weg/wegen/weswegen/
Could you tell me what device and browser you’re using? This is an auto generated pronunciation created by the browser and which voice it has depends on the browser.
A Windows 10 laptop & Google Chrome. I clicked it a second time to make sure. Indeed, it said “Weswegian”.
Same happens in Chrome on macOS. I checked some others and they’re all pretty badly mangled. (eg “beseitigen” sounds like “beseedigen” and “ausrichten” is more like “orsrishten”).
Hmmm, that’s weird. Maybe it’s actually connected to what language the browser is in but it shouldn’t be. The way it works is I give the browser an array of what I want including what language this is and what voice it should use.
I guess I need to write some developer tool printouts and then ask one of you to send me screenshots.
I also want to switch this to 11labs anyway, but I have to capture save and tag the produced audio, so it’s only done once and then saved on my server and that’s a bit coding intensive for very little direct “ROI” (business talk intensifies).
The pronunciation is usually based on a very strong American accent for me.I played around with it in Chrome and Firefox on Windows 10, Windows 11, and Android.
I eventually got it to switch to a German accent by changing the browser language to German. It only worked in Firefox on Android, and it’s still not great. For example, “in der Regel” comes out as “in der Rechel”.
I really like it when you record your own pronunciation and I listen to those several times, but it’s no problem if it’s not there, so I just skip the ones where the play button has a dotted line (AI voice).
I’d love to record everything but it’s just too much. It’s like 8000 recorded words at the moment. I’ll look into the language thing. There has to be a reliable way to tell the browser what language it’s dealing with.
No, I get it. The recordings that are there are a treat, that’s all. I just wanted you to know that at least one person really appreciates them.
Hey could you possibly give me a console log of what you see once you press play? I’m printing out an array of voices the browser has at the ready. It should come after the line “SPEAK got called”.
Please expand the array, so I can see the full set of voices.
Either copy paste here or via email. That would be a HYYYYYUUUUUGE help :)
Shit, sorry, I missed this request: I’ll email the console contents after loading the page linked above and clicking on the “audio arrow” immediately after posting this.
Perfect, that was exactly what I needed. Should be fixed now!
Under Konjugation => Präsens => A2 there are quite a few errors in Levels 19 through 24. I‘ve used the white flag to bring these to Clément‘s attention.
Hello Msfeather12,
Thanks for letting me know!
There were a lot of errors so I went through the whole dataset again to correct them. I reloaded the application so now it should be better.
Best,
Clément
Merci bien, Clément!
I’ve now done Level 2, and noticed a couple of examples where an alternative answer could also be correct:
Sie arbeitet in einer großen Firma.
Ein Flugzeug fliegt über die Stadt. (when it is crossing the city’s airspace in a clear trajectory)
Still a great resource!
That’s a great resource! I like the way you can proceed through the exercises with minimal clicks. I’ve just finished Level 1, and there are three examples (all practising the use of ‘ab’) in which the English and therefore (I think) also the German are not idiomatic: The concert starts from … The bus leaves … from From tomorrow my vacation begins…
These sound awkward in English. We would say, The concert starts at… The bus leaves at… My vacation begins tomorrow. To practise ‘ab’, these need to be reworded as (for example) The film will be in the cinemas from 1 July. Please arrive at the party from 8:00 pm on. I will be on vacation from tomorrow.
Hello John,
Someone else also mentioned the sentences in ab at level 1 as not being very idiomatic. I will have a look and find better sentences.
Best,
Clément
Just curious, where did you get the sentences that are there now? Most of them seem good, and simple, which is always a plus.
I’ve played with the site some more and I like the improvements, and the fact that we can leave comments there now. Cheers!
Interesting and handy site! Only played around a little, but looks like it will be useful for me (Verben mit Präpositionen ärgern sich mich immer so). Couple of things with room for improvement:
I did the A1 Verbs with prepositions, and would get ones like “treffen zu”, which I’ve not heard before and at least to me don’t sound particularly idiomatic. Maybe I’m flat-out wrong. But this is why, eventually, a great feature would be something like a sentence or two as examples of the idiomatic usage in the answer box that appears after submission, where it says, in this case, “to meet for = treffen zu”. A similar one would be “to change on, to change about = ändern an” – the English translation here is a little unclear itself and unidiomatic, so it’s very difficult picturing how to use these words practically (which is the key to learning them).
EDIT: okay so I just saw there’s exercises with sentences too. Even better. Couldn’t we lift example sentences from there to help explain the context of usage? Now I know e.g. “Sie treffen sich zu einer Besprechung.”
EDIT 2: Ah the other thing I wanted to mention. In the answer box, it would be great to indicate the case that the following noun/article takes. Example: “denken an (Akk)”.
EDIT 3: (sorry for all the edits; I really should just wait to get my thoughts out in one go… alas) re my edit 1 suggestion — probably a reason not to do this is that it would prepare the learner too well for the actual sentence exercises. So in this case, the ideal would be for different example sentences in the standalone verbs with preps exercises. I understand that is labour intensive though. Hence, a “long-run” suggestion…
Hello janguv,
Prepositions seem to be the section use the most, so I will improve it by adding the case and also adding more context such as “to change something about something” etc.
That will take some time to do it correctly but I will release it for Preposition-Verb pairs first.
Thanks for the feedback !
Clément
Seems great tool, only BIG Problem is that there are some people (like me) who are very screen sensitive when the web pages are shown in Black and also showing red letters. So it’s very hard for me to look at it without having Augenschmerzen.
Hello Sergio,
That’s definitely a problem. I’m always using “night mode” on every application I use and I thought everybody was doing the same.
Could you give me 1 or 2 website that are not giving you any issue? You’re not the first person who told me the “night-mode” them is giving them problems.
Best,
Clément
Honestly, I’d just add a day mode switch. Shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m not a fan of the dark either.
Hallo Leute! I appreciate the opportunity you all have given me in sponsoring my membership, and can‘t wait to advance my German knowledge!
Hello everyone, just wanted to say a big thank you to the amazing folks who paid extra to sponsor my account. i really appreciate it and i’ll make sure to pay it forward when i can :)
I love this. One question I have is that the answers aren’t saved; ie if you’re part way through a section and leave, when you return you find yourself starting over again. Clemente mentions this in the FAQ section and states one’s answers are probably saved in cookies. That was not the case for me. If there were a remedy for this it would be great.
Now having said that, is this a labor of love! Wow! Thanks so much Clemente!
Hello Gordon,
I’ve noticed this issue as well. I’m going to do an update today, and we should know tomorrow if the problem has been solved or not.
Let me know in the next few days if the problem disappeared :)
Best,
Clément
Tres utile! Merci, et pardon pour n’utilise pas les accents, je n’ai pas le clavier pour ca ici dans la Russe : )
Someone tell Macron that sanctions are working.
(sorry, couldn’t resist :)
Salut Kevin,
Merci pour ton message! Je suis heureux que tu trouves l’application utile.
Bonne journée,
Clément
This is a very helpful site. I shall be using it again. Many thanks to Clement.
Hello Pat,
Thanks for your feedback! I’m glad you find it useful.
Best,
Clément
I love the idea of Sievers Stidy Hall but after practicing a few A1 exercises, I am finding several mistakes. For example, Siever says erinneren an takes the dative but it actually takes the accusative
Siever: ich erinnere mich an dem Namen
S.b. ich erinnere mich an den Namen
Example 2:
Siever translates “i show the picture to my friends” as
Ich zeige dem Bild meine Freunde
S.b. Ich zeige das Bild meinen Freunden
Not ideal for sure. It depends on how many errors there are. I think 10% is acceptable for a free resource, but anything higher slowly makes it less and less useful.
I very much disagree that a 10% error rate is acceptable for a free app. The value of a free resource is that it is free AND accurate. If it‘s not accurate, then it‘s not valuable, whether free or otherwise. Having said that, the error rate will go down as users flag the errors — Clément has introduced a „white flag“ button for this purpose — and they are corrected.
Just out of curiosity, is there any error rate that you’d be okay with? I’m asking because all these new apps that use ChatGPT or another LLM do basically come with a certain amount of errors and I think most learners just put up with it or don’t really realize it.
A “flag for review” button would be great. And then the ones with the most flags each week could be checked.
Ohhh, that’s such a great idea!!
Hello Jeffrey,
That’s a great idea! I don’t think everyone will send me an email each time they’ve found something fishy and it will allow a smoother communication for error.
I’m going to look into this :)
Best,
Clément
Hello Marty,
As mentioned elsewhere, there were indeed a lot of errors in the A1 Artikel exercises. I’ve hidden them for maintenance until I correct them. I’m sorry for this.
Since more people are using the app now, I’m going to make more effort to check each new level before I release them. The A1 Artikel issue will be a one-off.
Someone below mentioned the idea of a flag to alert when a question has an error. That’s a great idea to continually maintain the the app.
I hope you’ll still find the app useful.
Best regards,
Clément
Hello,
Some typos:
“there about 750 questions” (there are about 750 questions)
“and “vermuten” was the answers” (and “vermuten” was the answer)
“here an there” (here and there)
Let me just say that Clément is an absolute superstar for creating this and offering it to other people for free, how generous and altruistic of him… THANK YOU!!!
And this seems to be right up my alley, a gym sort of thing, no frills, 100% efficiency, it’s just my style of learning, so I’m actually raring to give it a go. Will email Clément with feedback as soon as I’ve used it enough to actually have a proper opinion :))
And thank you too, Emanuel, for introducing us to this tool!
Bis bald!
Mass volume practice like this is the best, in my opinion.
Back when I was “studying” French, there was a simple vocabulary tool similar to this where I could just grind through hundreds of words and it would space them out with Spaced Repetition and it was just perfect.
Hello Elsa!
Thanks a lot for your comment, I’m looking forward to your feedback :)
Best,
Clément
Your site – j’adore!!!
This is exactly the kind of platform that suits my needs and personal tastes – mass practice, no interface frills, it really helps build a solid foundation. I cannot thank you enough for your effort, mon pote!
I was hoping to see here some commentary on Duolingo?
No, I just said I might make my Duolingo thoughts if people are interested in yet another review of it.
How does Duo compare with Reddit in terms of German? Only ask because I currently tutor on Reddit.
Just curious:-)
Duolingo doesn’t do much in the way of explaining. There used to be a Duolingo forum that was pretty good, but it got shut down a few years ago. Reddit had its downsides (I haven’t used it for a while), but you could almost always find someone who really knew their stuff. Some of them would really take their time with you.
There were native speakers on r/German who could explain just about anything and make it seem simple, and a couple non-native speakers (translators) that were great too. I learned a ton from them. I’ve been on the explaining side in the English subs, and it was fun, but a labor of love.
I might have been one of them! My handle’s ExpressStart16116:-)
I’m an ex-Duolingo user, where I began German. Luckily I started long enough ago that the forums and user feedback were still present and working well. It’s criminally irresponsible, how casually they disposed of all that useful information.
It’s one of the biggest downgrades ever, seriously.
They’re so different that you can’t really compare them. Duolingo is a practice app where you do exercises following a predefined path and the only interaction you can possibly have is with AI.
How do you tutor on Reddit?
More or less directly with the interlocutor. One simply logs in, is automatically assigned a random handle or Kennwort, then choose a post of interest and you’re in business.