Online language resources

German learning resources

	Online test
	Complementary website to textbooks
	Online courses / blogs / learning platforms
	Listening and watching
	Reading
	Dictionaries
	Grammar, spelling
	Cultural / Intercultural information
Games Law	German for Business

Online test

Goethe Institut: Short German proficiency test
This short online test will give an approximate placement in one of the six levels (A1-C2) of the Common European Framework.

Complementary websites to textbooks

Berliner Platz 1 – online activities - Beginners
This complementary website to the textbook features interactive activities like grammar and vocabulary exercises.
You can find the textbook (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

Optimal – online activities - Beginners / Intermediate
This complementary website to the 3 vol. textbook features grammar and vocabulary exercises as well as exercises for reading and listening comprehension.
You can find vol. 1& 2 of this textbook (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

Schritte International – online activities - Beginners/Intermediate
This complementary website to the 6 vol. textbook features interactive vocabulary and grammar exercises.
You can find vol. 1& 2 of this textbook (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

Tangram aktuell – online activities - Beginners / Intermediate
This complementary website to the 6 vol. textbook features interactive activities like texts for reading comprehension, vocabulary and grammar exercises.
You can find vol. 1/A1.1 & 1/A1.2 of the textbook (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

Aspekte 1 – online activities - Intermediate
This complementary website to the textbook features interactive vocabulary and grammar exercises.
You can find the textbook (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

em neu – online activities - Intermediate
This complementary website to the 2 vol. textbook features interactive activities like texts for reading comprehension, vocabulary and grammar exercises.
You can find the textbook “em neu. Hauptkurs” (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

Mittelstufenbuch DaF – online activities - Intermediate / Advanced
This complementary website to the 2 vol. textbook features interactive activities like texts for reading comprehension, vocabulary and grammar exercises.
You can find vol.1 of the textbook (incl. audio CDs) in the Open Learning Centre.

Online courses / blogs / learning platforms

Deutsche Welle - online courses for all levels - All Levels
“Deutsche Welle” offers courses up to intermediate levels as well as activities for advanced levels and for business German. Use this site to choose the most suitable course/ activity for you.

BBC - online courses for beginners - Beginners
This site offers 3 courses for Beginners: German Steps (A1), Talk German (A1), Deutsch Plus (A1/A2), learning games and a short test to find the right course.
All course feature interactive exercises, audio files, concise grammar explanations, useful vocab lists and up-to-date cultural notes.

JETZT Deutsch lernen – an e-learning platform for German - Intermediate / Advanced
The exercises are based on articles from the online youth of the renowned German newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. This site also features video-clips as well as interactive components like discussion boards, a tutored chat room and a wiki writing workshop.

Listening and watching

Audio-Lingua - a collaborative bank of authentic audio resources - All Levels
You can listen to short (max. 2 minutes) recordings on various subjects by native speakers. The archive can be searched for recordings by level of difficulty, length of the recording, age or gender of the speaker.
You can directly listen to the audio files, download them or subscribe to the podcast.

KuBus - videos on cultural and social life in Germany - Intermediate / Advanced
These 49 videos cover topics from “Bildende Kunst/ visual arts” to “Wirtschaft und Soziales/ economy and social matters”. All films and accompanying materials (texts with background information, transcripts) can be accessed in German, English, Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese.

lyrikline.org – a multilingual internet platform for contemporary poetry - Intermediate / Advanced
You can read over 1500 poems in German or in one of the various translations. This site also features audio files (poems read by the author), bibliographies and biographies for each poet.

Lost in Deutschland – a video-podcast with quirky reports about life in Germany - Intermediate / Advanced
Very entertaining video diary of a Brit living in Germany.

locopodia - audio-guides for many Austrian, German and Swiss cities - Advanced
Choose a city on the interactive map and you can not only listen to factual information about this place but also to stories, fairy tales and legends. You can also download the audio-files or subscribe to the podcast. For some of the recordings you can even print out the transcription for reading along.

vorleser.net - free audio-books in German - Advanced
Download hundreds of free audio books (classic and contemporary literature) to your mp3 player or computer. For many of the classics a full text version is also available for download.

Reading

SPIEGEL Online, Zeit Online, FAZ and Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Intermediate / Advanced
Web presence of some of Germany's most important magazines and newspapers.

Perlentaucher – web magazine focusing on cultural issues - Intermediate / Advanced
This excellent online magazine offers a daily round up of reports from major German language newspapers.

19th-Century German stories in German and English - Advanced
You can read stories, narrative poems, twenty fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers' and six classic picture stories by Wilhelm Busch. This site not only features dual-language texts, but also an online dictionary, quiz questions on some of the texts and interesting information about writers and their work.

Projekt Gutenberg - free electronic books in German - Advanced
The “Projekt Gutenberg” offers texts in German from more than 400 classical authors. At the moment you can read about 5000 novels, 20 000 poems, 1800 fairy tales, 1,200 fables and 3,500 legends!

Literaturport - database for contemporary German literature - Advanced
The “Autorenlexikon” provides profiles of almost 4000 writers from both past (only from the Berlin-Brandenburg region) and the present. Many profiles of contemporary authors are linked to free audio clips. Other interesting features are weekly book recommendations and “Literatouren” where various authors take the reader on a literary tour through Berlin.

Dictionaries

LEO and Beolingus
Very helpful online dictionaries

Pons
Dictionary with flash card builder for beginners.

Goethe Institut
A wide selection of further German online dictionaries.

Grammar, Spelling

Interactive Grammar Exercises - All Levels
This site of the renowned publishing house Schubert-Verlag offers interactive grammar exercise for all levels.

Grammatical Terminology - All Levels
Test your knowledge of grammatical terms with this interactive game.

Grimm Grammar – a grammar with interactive exercises - Beginners / Intermediate
This site, featuring thirty-six Grimm's fairy tale characters, offers grammar descriptions in English/German and interactive exercises. The grammar concepts are presented in communicative contexts using predominantly discourse-length language samples.

grammis – a grammar for linguists and readers with a keen interest in discursive grammatical explanation - Advanced
This comprehensive grammar, edited by the Institute for German Language, provides grammatical rules, a "terminological dictionary" for non-experts and a "grammatical dictionary" for experts and professional linguists.

Cultural / Intercultural Information

The Goethe-Institut London
The Goethe-Institut organises a broad variety of events to present German culture.
With more than 30,000 books, videos, audio-cassettes and computer software available, its information centre serves as an excellent resource for those interested in contemporary Germany and the German language.

Tatsachen über Deutschland - key facts about Germany
This site, available in 17 languages, offers information about industry and business, social life, culture and politics.

DAAD – German Academic Exchange Servicel
This useful site for German/ foreign students and scholars provides information on study and research opportunities in Germany, a scholarship database and even two German proficiency tests.

OEAD - Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research
This useful site for Austrian/ foreign students and scholars features information on study and research opportunities in Austria and a scholarship database.

Swissuniversity.ch - Internet Portal of the Swiss Universities
This useful site for foreign students features information on study and research opportunities in Switzerland and a scholarship database.

Games

Musikreise - a musical journey through Germany in form of a quiz - Intermediate / Advanced
Go on a music tour of Germany, discover the lively music scene and visit the websites of top groups. At every stop there's a quiz question to answer.

Duden Sprachspiele - online language games - Advanced
This page offers online games like cross words or trivia questions on idioms and quotations. You can also put your grammar and spelling to the test with the “Deutschquiz”.