Reading culturally interesting and entertaining short stories to enhance your German is an easy way to improve your German language skills. This book contains a selection of 100 short stories for beginners with a wide range of genres, all prepared specifically for German language learners. The aim of this book is to teach different German vocabulary and phrases associated with short stories, and to improve your German language skills in a short period of time.

Each of the first 80 short stories takes about 2 minutes to read and averages about 150 to 200 words. Important words and phrases relevant to each topic were carefully selected. Stories 80 to 100 are longer and slightly more advanced in terms of vocabulary. They are followed by multiple-choice questions and answers. Stories 80 to 90 come with English parallel text, take about 3 to 4 minutes to read, and contain some of the vocabulary from the previous stories. The last 10 stories take about 4 to 5 minutes to read and consist of most of the previously mentioned vocabulary.

All stories are written by a German linguist and native speaker to ensure you can learn from authentic material while fine-tuning your German vocabulary and improving your comprehension.

The content is intended mainly for elementary to intermediate level learners, but it will also be useful for more advanced learners as a way of practicing their reading skills and comprehension of the German language. The stories have been arranged according to their degree of difficulty, and each story is accompanied by a key vocabulary section and story-related questions.

Using this book effectively

For the absolute language beginner, it's probably more beneficial if you listen to the stories first, and then read them aloud. Then review the key vocabulary section and reread the story once more or until you get a grasp of it.

Vocabulary will be introduced to you at a reasonable pace, so you’re not overwhelmed with difficult words all at once. Here, you won’t have to look up every other word, but you can simply enjoy the story and absorb new words from the story’s context. To learn German effectively, you just read each German story one at a time and study the vocabulary after reading.

The German contained in here is written using easy-to-understand grammar and vocabulary that both beginner and intermediate levels can understand, appreciate, and learn from.

Some stories are focused on dialogue. These stories contain loads of natural dialogue, so you can learn conversational German as you read. This is doubly beneficial as you will improve your speaking ability as well. Over time, you will build an intuitive understanding of how German functions. This differs from a more theoretical understanding put together via learning rules and conceptual examples.