<p>I am taking AP German this semester, and I have many issues with the teacher, which I won't detail now. I have to take half of the class as "Independent study," and if it were up to me, I'd rather take the whole course independently. However, considering that is not an option, and I want to limit my interactions with the instructor, does anybody know of any media that can be used to supplement the study of AP German? I've looked nearly everywhere, and it does not seem like a single company makes a prep book made for the AP class. Any suggestions would be delicious.</p>
<p>If you can get your hands on some of the old fill-in-the-blank sections for grammar/vocab and possibly some of the reading passages or writing prompts (actually, if you PM me later I may be able to find at least some of the writing/speaking prompts for you), that's basically all the "test prep" you need to do... the important thing is just that you be comfortable reading/writing/speaking/hearing German, which need not be accomplished through any set curriculum. Rarely will you be required to know some unusual phrase--being able to understand it in context or use appropriate constructions to get your point across is enough. </p>
<p>You'll want to find material to read--poetry, novels, magazines...--and some reason to write regularly (a journal, essays, whatever). German music and online radio stations will help with listening comprehension, but you'll have to be somewhat creative with practicing to become reasonably fluent yourself. If you naturally think in words, you can just make an effort to think in German, but that's not quite the sort of "conversational" ability you'll eventually want... it might be possible to find someone in Germany to talk to using an online "phone" to improve each other's language abilities; I don't know.</p>
<p>Anyway, I guess my point is that incorporating speaking/listening/reading/writing in various forms is all you need to do, provided that you've studied basic grammar (nom/akk/dat/conI/conII and most of the irregular verb forms).</p>
<p>I'm fairly precocious with German, so I don't think I need to go to all those lengths for test prep. Thanks for the suggestions, though. When I want to start practicing for the test, I'll find the free response materials at AP Central. There are also four other people taking AP German, so I'll have them to practice with, but I know that my teacher is essentially awful, so I wanted to expand my German education in my own control. I guess I'm just looking for something that can be easily used to self-teach concepts that aren't necessarily taught in the class. For example, unusual verbs, nouns, and adjectives (like defibrilate, cornucopia, and phosphorescent), idioms, and colloquialisms.</p>
<p>Oops, I guess I made that sound like it was all test prep advice. Sorry about that! </p>
<p>The problem is that after a certain point, everyone starts learning a language by immersing himself as much as possible in it (rather than by learning lists of vocab and grammar rules). That's probably the only way you're going to learn "unusual verbs, nouns, and adjectives..., idioms, and colloquialisms." You'll pick them up reading and listening and notice that you start using them in your writing and speaking (or you'll need to look them up in order to say something at some point, and after a few times you won't bother with the dictionary).</p>
<p>A vocabulary list can be helpful to increase retention of words you only see or hear a few times (just note new words/expressions on a list, look up any extra forms, and look it over occasionally). But I still say the most important thing is to read a lot, write a lot, speak a lot, and listen a lot (not just to other people learning German, but to native speakers, which is where a radio or somesuch can be helpful).</p>
<p>Yeah, you're right. I have one issue of der Spiegel and sometimes I listen to Deutsche-Welle. I don't know where I can find German novels of moderate difficulty.</p>
<p>^Right now I'm reading Angels and Demons auf Deutsch. But i got it in Germany... Still I'd suggest english-language books that have been translated to German, because you're more familiar with the difficulty.</p>
<p>there are no prep books, I looked everywhere last year.</p>