Schritte International: Kursbuch und Arbeitsbuch 5 mit CD zum Arbeitsbuch

I've been learning German for ages, I'm a teacher myself, and I really like these textbooks.Pictures are nice (yes, they DO matter), and the grammar is really well organized.A perfect way to keep learning this beautiful language.

great

I bought this book because it was a set textbook for my evening class.I attend evening class mainly to keep up my spoken German and revise grammatical points, and perhaps learn some new vocabulary or idiomatic German.One of the penalties of this sort of course is having to buy the course book, however bad or tedious it is.One thing I hate about modern language course books is that because they think they have to make it fun and interesting, it is always a splash of inappropriate colour, no matter what effect this has on legibility. You know the sort of thing: There will be panels of text on randomly coloured backgrounds (often using "fading colour", so you will end up with something like red text on an increasingly dark purple background. Every page just looks "busy" and distracting. I don't know what they think it adds to the process of language learning. I personally think it only takes away. It might be tolerable for youngsters (although has anyone actually liked them if they really do like this kind of thing?). It is intolerably for some of us, ahem, more mature students.Also, the in the main text part of the book, it is very unclear what actual teaching points they are trying to make. I will say that the work book is better in this respect, and it is also reasonably legible, although the type could be a bit bolder. I suppose the argument would be that it's up to the teacher to explain the teaching points. My experience has been that even the teachers get bored with these types of books after a few weeks, and come up with their own teaching material.One problem is that of course the whole book is in the "target language", so there is no guidance in the students own language over tricky grammar points, etc, so additional books must be consulted. (It is impossible to discuss grammar in the language being taught unless the student is already at a very high standard. It's like a dog chasing its tail.There is also the special problem about German language books in that Germany has a uniquely unfortunate history, meaning that there are some sensitive cultural issues in the area of interracial harmony, etc. Without spelling it out, let's just say that we see the usual political correctness on display here ... par for the course, and inevitable, I suppose.It's an uninspiring book, but probably not worse than most of the others of its type.

Excellent service and product

Book brought for a languages student.