How to Use Short Stories to Boost Your Learning Bring up the story with a language partner and talk about your opinions and feelings on the matter! Many of these stories will also bring up topics that have the potential for controversy. They also boost oral skills. This one might surprise you, but here’s how they can help your speaking: Stories often feature real-life dialogues, which will introduce you to a variety of colloquial expressions and speaking mannerisms.You will often want to emulate powerful writing, and reading short stories will lead to your appropriating of new grammar structures/elements, which you can then use in your own text production. There is nothing as good for writing as imitation, and great writers stimulate imitation. They teach you vocab and slang. Some of the more lively aspects of German-like usage, slang and popular phrases-can often come alive in powerful short fiction pieces. Stories that focus on certain topics and locations function really well as vocabulary units, as interesting words and phrases are presented in an exciting context.They are highly motivating and authentic. Short stories present real-life language in meaningful ways, and their cultural and emotional impact goes well beyond the learning of grammar structures, vocabulary and the like. The cultural element can even be a powerful stimulus for continuing to learn German.Considering the directness and simplicity of language in many easy short stories, they can greatly boost your reading comprehension without straining your concentration. They are, well, short. As opposed to novels and longer texts, short stories are ideal because they can often be read in one sitting.Learning German with short stories has a myriad of benefits for you, regardless of your current level. (Download) Why to Learn German with Easy Short Stories
This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. “Der zufriedene Fischer” (The Happy Fisherman) by Heinrich Böll 3. “Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten” (The Bremen Town Musicians) by the Grimm Brothers.2. “Die Geschichte von Hyazinth und Rosenblütchen” (The Story of Hyacinth and Roseblossom) by Novalis.“Das Märchen” (The Fairy Tale) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 5 Easy German Short Stories You Can Tackle as a Beginner.Where to Find Easy German Short Stories Online.How to Use Short Stories to Boost Your Learning.Why to Learn German with Easy Short Stories.I’ll show you just how to get started with German short stories, where to find them and five easy ones you can start reading today! Plus, they can expand your awareness of the world and of German culture. Short stories make fantastic material for listening, speaking and writing practice. Rowley (1902), British Library, via Wikimedia Commons.Ap5 Easy German Short Stories to Boost Your Learning
Image (top): via Boril Gourinov, via Flickr. For more book suggestions, see our pick of the best books for cat-lovers.
Told by Figaro, a cat living in Italy, the story fuses commedia dell’arte tropes with its genuinely laugh-out-loud feline narrative voice.Ī number of these classic cat stories are included in Diana Secker Tesdell’s anthology, Cat Stories (Everyman’s Library POCKET CLASSICS). Carter herself said that ‘Puss in Boots’ was ‘the first story that I wrote that was supposed to be really funny, out-and-out funny’. Le Guin’s story is named after the famous thought-experiment designed to explain quantum physics – the cat in the box may be alive or dead, and until you open the box you have to act as though the cat is both alive and dead – and, sure enough, the story climaxes with such a speculation about a literal cat in a box.Īngela Carter’s classic book The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories, in which she offers her own distinctive take on classic fairy tales, features this idiosyncratic retelling of Puss in Boots, a story dating back as far as the sixteenth century. A strange and at times frustrating story – postmodern in many ways – by one of science fiction and fantasy’s most acclaimed authors, ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ is concerned with something that preoccupied Joseph Conrad: the reality of our perceptions of the world, and the link between language or storytelling and ‘the real’.