Category: Hacks & Tutorials

Hacks & Tutorials

How to Use Anki to Master a New Language

Are you learning a new language and looking for ways to improve your vocabulary and retention? Look no further than ANKI flashcards. ANKI is a powerful and versatile tool that can help language learners of all levels to improve their skills and retain what they have learned. In this blog post, we will discuss some…

German

4 Sites To Help You Improve Your German Pronunciation Which Aren’t Google Translate

What do you do when you don’t know how to pronounce a German word? It’s a simple question, right? But there are many answers! Today I’d like to share some resources that will help you find the right pronunciation of any German word out there within just a few seconds, no matter how offbeat or…

Hacks & Tutorials

Learning Languages With Netflix Has Just Become So Much Easier

Many language learners are watching movies to improve their listening comprehension and pick up new words. Some like to just immerse themselves in the foreign language with foreign subtitles, others watch it with foreign audio and subtitles in their native languages, but no matter how you’ve been doing it, learning German (or any language for…

Hacks & Tutorials

How To Create ANKI Flashcards From Your Kindle Vocabulary Builder

The Vocabulary Builder on Kindle Paperwhite (and Oasis, Voyager) is a powerful feature for language learners if used right. It collects all the words that you look up, including their definition and context. You can then use a rudimentary flashcard system and group them into “learning” and “mastered”. However, for serious spaced repetition practice, the Kindle…

German

Behind The Pages: The Making Of A Talking Book (Café in Berlin EPUB3)

As an author of stories for language learners it’s always important to me to create materials that are both fun and useful on a day-today basis. So perhaps it will not come as much of a surprise that many of these works are based on my own experiences (and frustrations) of learning languages myself. A couple of weeks…

German

How To Do A German Accent In 4 Simple Steps And Become the Next Supervillain

Do you sometimes wish you didn’t have a foreign accent while speaking German? Perhaps then for once German natives would stop switching to English and finally honor your painstakingly constructed utterances! Well, it takes time to develop a good command of a foreign language, especially when it comes to accent-free speaking. The muscles in our throat,…

German

How To Use A German-English Dictionary with Kindle Cloud Reader

As a language instructor and author of language learning textbooks, I’ve always found the Kindle’s built-in dictionary a great tool to make reading foreign language texts more fluid and frictionless. Whether it’s on your Kindle ereader, on your iPhone or iPad Kindle app, or Kindle Android app (see links for detailed instructions), custom dictionaries can be…

German

How To Watch German TV Online In Your Browser Or Mobile Device

Learning German with apps and self-study textbooks is a great way to start, but after a while translating isolated sentences and stuffing your brain with flashcards and grammatical explanations will not be enough anymore. Whether you start looking at German children’s books, easily written short stories or German novels, eventually you’ll have to expose yourself to more…

German

Add a German-English Dictionary To Your Android Kindle App

After writing a tutorial on how to enable a German-English dictionary on the Kindle app for iPad and iPhone, today I’d like to share with you how to enable the same functionality on your Android Kindle app. On your iPhone or iPad Kindle app, you can just purchase a dictionary from the Kindle store and…

Hacks & Tutorials

Best Ebook Reader Apps With Word Translation For iPad and iPhone (iOS)

As an author of German language learning stories I always recommend to turn on instant translation features on tablets or ebook readers so that students can learn new words without leaving the text. Simply tap/click a word and read on! What sounds like such a simple feature, can often be curiously hard to find on even…

Hacks & Tutorials

How To Become A Better Writer By Finding Creativity Within Constraints

Lately, an interesting writing app has been making the rounds. It’s called Hemingway, and it promises to “make your writing bold and clear”. The way it works is that you type or paste in a few paragraphs, and then the app will try to highlight long and complicated sentences, unnecessary adverbs and overgenerous use of…