Learning German through Storytelling: Mord Am Morgen - a detective story for German language learners (includes exercises): for intermediate and ... & Momsen Mystery) (German Edition) Paperback – September 5, 2012

This book fills the gap between stories and examples that are too simplistic for German language learners who are not beginners any more but also haven't reached the vaunted heights of "advanced" learning yet.I took a year of German in college and have various reasons to keep it up and improve it throughout the years. That being said, I am by no means an advanced learner. I'm barely intermediate. This book was a bit of a stretch for me but still digestible and enjoyable!

Disclosure: I got this for free during some kind of promotion or something, I don't know if I would have bought this.I took German for three semesters, the last semester being in the spring of 2008. I speak it to myself sporadically to keep it going, sometimes read articles and get the gist, you know, about proficiency level. I went to Germany and was able to be talk to people who did not speak English while in a stressful situation, but I couldn't have a long idle chat with someone.This little story was perfect. I mean, the word that were given at the end of each chapter were words that I did not know (sometimes slang, sometimes idioms, sometimes non-everyday words [like "corpse" or "crime scene"]). The grammar was appropriate to the level of vocab that was expected. There are a few questions at the end of each chapter that are part comprehension and part making sure you understand the grammar. Answers are at the end of the book so you don't accidentally peek too soon.It is very short. I read each chapter two or three times (once without knowing the meaning of the new words; once with them; and once either out loud or silently, whichever I didn't do earlier) and it took me a few days of a chapter or two a day. I would totally recommend this to someone in my situation: proficient but rusty, wanting to read something fairly interesting but easy to understand, and wanting to get back into studying German. This is not going to teach you much; it's more like the paper you put on top of a fire to make it light quickly and easily.

I am at level B1 in German. The book is written so I could understand the story yet certainly challenged my vocabulary.It is also a well written story that kept me interested.Definitely a good read.

I first came across André Klein's work in Café in Berlin, a collection of very short German stories that follow the hapless and entertaining Dino as he tries to make his way in Berlin. I really enjoyed Dino's adventures, but I wanted something a bit longer and more difficult. Fortunately, I found that Klein had written another series of books, beginning with Mord am Morgen, and intended for "intermediate and advanced students" as opposed to Café in Berlin's audience of "beginners". This sounded perfect. I liked the idea of a longer continuous narrative, and I figured it would be good for me to read something a bit more challenging.Unfortunately, Mord am Morgen didn't quite live up to my expectations, for a variety of reasons. First, while the story is "longer" in the sense that it is a continuous narrative rather than vignettes that can be read in any order, it's not actually longer overall; I still read the whole book in about an hour. Second, while the sentences are probably more difficult, a lot of the increased difficulty just comes from the significant reduction in vocabulary provided at the end of each section. This is not very helpful. It was frustrating to see all the empty space on the page where there could have been useful words. It's true that I could still follow the story without the additional vocabulary, but I missed having the extra learning tool. And it deterred me from checking the vocabulary at all, because more often than not the word I was looking for wasn't there.My main problem with this book, though, is that some of the questions at the ends of the sections are just flat-out bad. In Café in Berlin, the questions were comprehension-based, testing whether you understood what had happened in the passage you just read. Probably 75% of the Mord am Morgen questions follow this approach, and those questions are fine. But there are also questions that just test outside knowledge, which is completely unhelpful and annoying. For example, at one point the detective goes into a bar and orders "red and white fries". There's no further discussion of it, so it doesn't make sense to ask in the comprehension questions what exactly that means. I happened to know from Café in Berlin that it referred to fries with ketchup and mayonnaise, and you'd have a pretty good chance of guessing that based on the colors, but it could conceivably refer to fries from Austria or fries made from a special kind of potato. The important point is that figuring out the answer to the question has absolutely nothing to do with reading the preceding story, and that's bad. If you asked me out of nowhere what "red and white fries" were, and gave me a choice of those three options, I'd have just as much chance of guessing as I would if I'd actually read the story.Other bad questions deal with synonyms: "Which word is not a synonym for this one?" Well, one of those words actually appeared in the story, but I have no way of deciding between the other two unless I happen to know the words already. Again, not helpful as a follow-up to the story. Then there were the questions that just didn't match the story exactly: we read that an event happened "around 1:30", so we choose "1:24" as an answer, because it's obviously not 10 or 4. Or when someone gets shot in the leg, that's apparently equivalent to the foot, because it's definitely not the arm or the shoulder. Awkward. Finally, there were occasional questions about word order ("Which word order is incorrect?"), which I don't think is really appropriate in a book that doesn't have any discussion of grammar. And again, these were questions that didn't depend on reading the preceding section; I could answer them just as well without reading it at all. Basically, it seems like not a lot of thought went into coming up with questions that were pedagogically appropriate as follow-ups to the reading passages.So, this may seem like a lot of criticism, but at the end of the day this book still has one huge thing going for it: I don't know of any others that serve the same purpose. You'd think there would be plenty of demand for easy-reading stories with accompanying vocabulary, intended for language learners at various stages of the process, but I can't seem to find any. I do have some dual-language books, but that's not quite the same thing. And I have a book of fairy tales probably intended for children, but it's not as interesting. So despite the flaws of this book, I'll probably continue on with the series, just because there's no alternative. And for beginners, I'd definitely recommend Klein's Dino stories, starting with Café in Berlin.

I loved this book. The story is engaging and the murder mystery is interesting and clever. The characters are likable and delightfully, subtly witty, and the two detectives have a great rapport. The vocabulary help is just right (and comes at the END of each chapter, a big plus when you want to understand all you can from context first), and the narrative, while understandable to an intermediate-level German student, is grown-up in tone. The illustrations add wonderfully to the character and ambience of the book. It's very hard to find material at this reading level that isn't dumbed down and that adults and teens can enjoy. I would gratefully buy a whole series of these. Please write more.

This is the first in Andre Klein's series, and as with many first efforts in a series, this has a rough edge or two. It is a solid little short story, however, and as it's purpose is to teach the reading of German, one shouldn't be expecting Moby Dick. I have progressed through Klein's stories and my audio language studies to the point where I found this easily digestible, having been working at my German off and on for over a year now. I don't study it daily, just when the thought hits me, and after a layoff of a few months I had no problems with this story. Klein's got the touch. My only gripe is that his end of chapter glossaries could be fleshed out more. no matter which German/English dictionary I activate on my Kindle, it lacks quite a bit. I recommend having your own print dictionary handy to help you out with the odd words you don't have a clue about.