Karl C. Sandberg (1931–2000)

I suppose it'll never happen, but this really should be brought back into print. Jannach's 'German for Reading' is now the standard, and it's terrible. By the time you're through with Sandberg, you've already read sections of Faust, selections from Spengler and Kant and Jaspers and Jung... and so forth. So, get this from a library and save yourself the eighty bucks it costs to get the other german for reading books.

I borrowed this book from the local library and read about half of it, before ordering it from Amazon. It arrived yesterday. Like all the other reviewers, I love the book.

I had read Louise Selbert's excellent "Skills & Techniques for Reading French" earlier, and found Sandberg's book a good complement.

Sandberg's approach is very different from Selbert's.
Sandberg's book addresses graduate students who need to quickly acquire a reading knowledge of French to pass a language exam. I'm not a show more student, nor do I have to take exams. But I found the book helpful in enhancing my French reading skills. It uses a programmed approach. Instead of detailed exposition of a topic, it first gives tiny snippets of grammar & vocabulary, followed by short sentences in small exercises to illustrate the topics. These sentences are taken from long passages that appear later at the end of the chapter. By the time you get to these entire passages towards the chapter end, you would have virtually covered all the component sentences earlier via the small exercises earlier. This is the format of Sandberg's programmed methodology. And it works! My French proficiency is intermediate. I found my French reading ability moving a notch up, even having completed so far only slightly more than half of the book.

As other reviewers have noted, the book's price may deter some. For me, however, it is value for money. While some of the passages are pre-war, they are well chosen in terms of subject matter, depth and style.

I recommend it highly. show less

A language instruction book that consists of short passages followed by multiple choice questions. All in Spanish. Useful for beginning and intermediate-level Spanish students seeking to improve their literacy. Probably too boring to read on your own, but this was a good textbook for the Spanish literacy class I took.

Clear and easy to follow for independent language study. The exercises are well-designed for tracking your progress and practicing on your own. Add a dictionary, elbow grease, and stir!