Speed Up Your German is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and explains the errors most commonly made by learners of German, enabling students to learn from their mistakes while enhancing their understanding of the German language. Each of the eighteen chapters focuses on a grammatical category where English speakers typically make mistakes. Each chapter is subdivided into two levels: Level 1 explains the root cause of the error while level 2 goes deeper into the grammar allowing students to choose the level they want to work at. Each point is clearly explained and exemplified and a range of exercises reinforce learning. Suitable both for classroom use or self-study, Speed Up Your German is the ideal resource for all intermediate learners of German wishing to refine their language skills.

Speed up your Chinese is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and explains the common errors that English-speaking learners of Chinese repeatedly make. The book brings together these common errors to offer a valuable insight into the differences between English and Chinese and to reveal the inner workings of the latter allowing students to enhance their understanding and mastery of the Chinese language. Key features: organizes basic principles of Mandarin grammar into coherent categories. learner-oriented and problem-solving approach analysis approximately 150 commonly made errors. highlights and explains differences between Mandarin and English mnemonic devises provide vital learning strategies exercises with full answer key to reinforce learning examples in traditional characters provided in the appendix. Speed up your Chinese is the ideal reference for all learners of Chinese.

‘Excellent book. The chapters put together and systematise a lot of material that is often taught in an anecdotal or haphazard sort of way, if at all. Students will learn a great deal from the book and have their confidence in using Spanish considerably boosted as a result.’ – Jonathan Thacker, Merton College, University of Oxford, UK ‘An invaluable, highly original and methodically sound approach to correcting and eliminating common, yet difficult-to-eliminate errors.’ – Manuel Delgado, Bucknell University, USA ‘The user-friendly format and page layout makes Speed Up Your Spanish a highly practical reference source for students and teachers.’– Ma Victoria García Serrano, University of Pennsylvania, USA False friends, idiomatic expressions, gender and capitalization are just some of the areas that cause confusion for students of Spanish. Learning how to avoid the common errors that arise repeatedly in these areas is an essential step for successful language learning. Speed Up Your Spanish is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and explains such errors, thereby enabling students of Spanish to learn from their mistakes while enhancing their understanding of the Spanish language. Each of the nine chapters focuses on a grammatical category where English speakers typically make mistakes in Spanish. Each chapter is divided into sections that classify the concepts and errors into subcategories. Full explanations are provided throughout with clear, comprehensive examples and exercises to help the learner gain an in-depth understanding of Spanish grammar and usage. Key features: carefully selected grammar topics and examples based on the most commonly made errors exercises throughout to reinforce learning shortcuts and mnemonic devices providing vital learning strategies a Companion Website available at www.speedupyourspanish.com providing supplementary exercises as well as audio files. Suitable both for classroom use or self-study, Speed Up Your Spanish is the ideal resource for all intermediate learners of Spanish wishing to refine their language skills. Javier Muñoz-Basols is an Instructor in Spanish at the University of Oxford. Marianne David teaches Spanish at the Trinity School in New York. Olga Núñez Piñeiro is Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Westminster.

German Quickly: A Grammar for Reading German is a thorough, straightforward textbook with a sense of fun. It teaches the fundamentals for reading German literary and scholarly texts of all levels and difficulty. It can be used as an introductory text for students with no background in German, or it can serve as a reference text for students wishing to review German. The grammar explanations are detailed and clear, and the accompanying reading selections, consisting partly of aphorisms and proverbs, are intriguing. There are also many informative appendices, including a summary of German grammar, a detailed description of German dictionaries currently available, and a vocabulary list of 3200 words that are commonly encountered in scholarly writings.

It's true that some people spend years studying German before they finally get around to speaking the language. But here's a better idea. Skip the years of study and jump right to the speaking part. Sound crazy? No, it's language hacking. Unlike most traditional language courses that try to teach you the rules of German, #LanguageHacking shows you how to learn and speak German through proven memory techniques, unconventional shortcuts and conversation strategies perfected by one of the world's greatest language learners, Benny Lewis, aka the Irish Polyglot. Using the language hacks -shortcuts that make learning simple - that Benny mastered while learning his 11 languages and his 'speak from the start' method, you will crack the language code and exponentially increase your language abilities so that you can get fluent faster. It's not magic. It's not a language gene. It's not something only "other people" can do. It's about being smart with how you learn, learning what's indispensable, skipping what's not, and using what you've learned to have real conversations in German from day one. The Method #LanguageHacking takes a modern approach to language learning, blending the power of online social collaboration with traditional methods. It focuses on the conversations that learners need to master right away, rather than presenting language in order of difficulty like most courses. This means that you can have conversations immediately, not after years of study. Each of the 10 units culminates with a speaking 'mission' that prepares you to use the language you've learned to talk about yourself. Through the language hacker online learner community, you can share your personalized speaking 'missions' with other learners - getting and giving feedback and extending your learning beyond the pages of the book . You don't need to go abroad to learn a language any more.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

This book aims to take users from scratch to having a solid base in German within six months, and to feel comfortable with the language in as little as three months. In only half an hour a day users will move ahead naturally until they are at ease with all the basic structures needed for communication and become familiar with the basic words and grammar of German. The method comprises two phases: the passive phase, in which users simply repeat what they hear and read, and the active phase, in which users begin to create sentences and imagine themselves in a variety of everyday situations.