German Grammar [antikvár]

Preface As its name implies, this book contains only the prime essentials of German grammar, and is intended as a text book for those beginning the study of German. Its chief objectives are to identify, explain, and exemplify the high points of German grammar, and also by constant repetition in abundant reading and translation exercises, to implant a basic vocabulary of 760 words. The fundamental keynotes of this book are simplicity and repetition. Mature, well prepared students, reciting three times a week, can master the contents of this book in one semester. It is my own experience, however, that students lose nothing in time or accomplishment, if they devote twenty-five or even thirty weeks to the beginning grammar. This book is not the result of a capricious impulse to add one more text to an already overcrowded field, but is rather the outgrowth of several ideas that have insistently forced themselves upon me in some thirty-odd years of experience in teaching first-year German classes. These ideas, which, I trust, will conduce to simplification and clarification in presenting German grammar, and which I have tried to emphasize in this book, are: (c) Topical or unitary lessons (b) Very small vocabulary (760 words) (c) Simplified treatment of noun declension (?) Abundance of German text (12,000 words) (e) Complete one-page conjugations of 26 verbs. Topical or Unitary Lessons. All beginning German texts must contain the prime essentials of German grammar, whether they be distributed over sixty lessons or compressed into sixteen. The sixteen-lesson book must, obviously, crowd several grammatical themes into one chapter. The whole problem then simmers down to sequence, grouping and presentation. Any sequence that ever has been, or ever can be devised, will be subject to harsh criticism since practically every unit of German grammar has its proponents who demand for it a position in the first third of the book. As to 5