Guide to German lessons

After learning the basics of German, progress depends on regular contact with the language. A lesson can contain a news article, short story, video subtitles or another text appropriate for your level and interests.

As you read, the site compares words in the text with your personal dictionary. You can see which vocabulary is new, save the words worth learning and later practice them separately. Working with complete sentences also makes meaning and usage easier to remember than studying isolated word lists.

1. 1

   Choose a suitable text

   Start with material that is interesting and not overwhelmingly difficult. Articles, stories and subtitles are all useful sources.

   Personal lessons are private and cannot be published to other users. You are responsible for using source material in accordance with applicable copyright laws.

2. 2

   Create the lesson

   Open My Lessons, select New lesson, enter a title and paste the text. The other lesson fields are optional.

3. 3

   Read for general meaning

   Read the complete text once before stopping at every unfamiliar word. First try to understand the topic and use the surrounding sentences as clues.

4. 4

   Save useful words

   Click a new word to open the dictionary panel. Add a translation and any optional information that will help you understand and remember the word later.

5. 5

   Read the text again

   Return to the complete text after examining the vocabulary. The second reading connects the new words with their sentences and the overall meaning.

6. 6

   Practice and revisit

   Review newly added words in the Practice section. Return to the lesson later and see whether the text has become easier to understand.

When you are signed in, word markings reflect the current state of each word in your dictionary.

Anonymous visitors can read course and public lessons, but an account is required to create personal lessons, save words and maintain individual word markings.

Only the translation is required. The other fields are optional, but they can make later practice more useful and help distinguish meanings or grammatical forms.

Word

You can add uppercase and lowercase word forms to your dictionary. Choose which form of the word you want to add.

Translation

The meaning that fits the current context. This field is required.

Lemma

The base dictionary form. For example, gehen is the lemma for gehe, gehst, ging and gegangen.

Comment

Additional information useful during practice, such as a noun's article and plural or the important forms of an irregular verb.

Phrase

A short example or relevant part of the original sentence that preserves context.

Lemmas

Several inflected words can belong to the same lemma. The lemma count is therefore often a better estimate of your core vocabulary than the total number of word forms.

Uppercase or lowercase

Words in German have different meanings if the first letter is capitalized or not. The word Werte (plural of der Wert) means "values, valuable objects", but werte, as in "ich werte", means "I value, grade, judge". You can enter both Werte and werte to your dictionary as separate words.

Suggestions

Suggestions can reduce typing and can make your learning process easier. For some words there are no suggestions, for some words you might get unexpected suggestions, so please always check that the proposed information is correct for the sentence you are reading.

Lemma tokens

This is a bit more advanced feature of the site that might be useful to some users. If you are confident that you know the word and its variations, you can add the lemma and the connected words to your dictionary as known, without consuming your dictionary space. This action also reduces the number of your actions; instead of writing translations and comments for each form of the word, you just say you know this word. For example, when you encounter a lemma word in your text that you know, like "gehen" (a very common word in German), you can add the variations of this word as known to this word (gehe, geht, gegangen...) so that you automatically mark these variations in text as know. Not all words have this feature because there needs to be a clear link between the lemma and its connected words (tokens). For example, word sein is complex: sein is the verb "to be", but it also means "his", and there is also a noun "das Sein" (being, existence). Such words won't have this option.

Using lemmas in your dictionary and lemma tokens can be turned on or off in the user's settings page. You can also turn on and off the way the number of words are displayed if you use lemma tokens.

Personal lessons

Created and managed by you. They are private, editable and intended for content you personally want to study.

Public lessons

Prepared by the site and available to all visitors. Their content cannot be edited, but signed-in users can save words to their own dictionaries.

Course lessons

Structured beginner material with prepared text, explanations, audio and review. Start with the course if you still need a foundation in German.