Preface

Practising German Grammar is intended for students of German at school and university with a good basic command of the language. It is particularly aimed at students who wish to enhance their competence in the written language. The exercises will help consolidate key grammatical structures of German and develop confidence in applying them. The Workbook covers all the major aspects of German grammar, and is designed to accompany Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage (GGU), revised by Martin Durrell (5th edition, Hodder Education, London, 2011). The chapters are set out in parallel to the chapters in GGU, and each exercise has a reference to the appropriate section. At this level, individual learners have widely differing needs and learning strategies. Correspondingly, this book offers a uniquely wide range of different exercise types. Exercises consisting of individual phrases and sentences practise essential grammatical structures. Text-based exercises enable the learner to see these structures in a fuller context, while working with advertisements, modern fiction, scientific explanations or managerial guidelines. Projects encourage students to discover grammatical regularities themselves. All these exercises have their place at different stages in the process of learning German, and individual teachers and students will select those which they find most appropriate, congenial and effective. A key provides answers to all the exercises, with alternatives where appropriate and explanations where necessary. The key to projects and open-ended exercises offers a selection of probable findings or solutions together with hints on additional possibilities or further exploitation of the material. This makes the book suitable for use with or without a teacher, although some of the projects and text-based exercises will be most rewarding when undertaken in small groups. Advice on tackling the various kinds of exercise and on using the book with and without a teacher is given in the section Points for the user. The book had its origin in material used with first-year undergraduates at the University of Oxford. Additional exercises were then designed to widen the range of competence for which the book would be suitable, and to cater for different learning styles. Most of the ‘Projects’ were developed over a number of years and have been used at all levels of undergraduate teaching in Alberta, London, Manchester and Oxford. The authors would like to thank Professor Richard Sheppard for giving the original impetus for the project, and Dr Sonia Brough and Tristam Carrington-Windo for their assistance and advice. Above all, thanks are due to the students who have contributed to the development of this book. Martin Durrell and Katrin Kohl dedicate this edition to their co-author and colleague Gudrun Loftus, who sadly died in tragic circumstances in autumn 2010 while this new edition was in the course of preparation.