Category Archives: listening

German fairy tales – read, watch and listen

German fairy tales are not the best solution for totally beginners, however, it’s worth trying reading or listening to their easier versions (see below). They are ideal for learners who would like to improve their vocabulary and have great imagination and love to read, listen or watch fantasy genre at the same time. We are talking here about stories and films which were written or made by Germans. The plot is always great, the films are of highly quality and you will enjoy watching them.

READING

If you would like to READ fairy tales, then feel free to take advantage of the following possibilities:

Reading – EASY language:

Literatur in einfacher Sprache – when you are there just click on the Märchen box on the left hand side menu. These texts have been adjusted for kids with hearing impairment.
Goethe Institute has adjusted 12 most popular Grimm fairy tales for learners: Grimms Märchen zum Lesen

Reading – “NORMAL” language:

Autenrieths Linkbibliothek für Lerner und Schüler (when you are there, just click on any of the provided links and chose a fairy tale that you would like to read).

LISTENING

Listening – EASY language:

Grimms Märchen zum Hören: Goethe Institute has also provided a possibility for learners to listen to fairy tales. They are between 3 and 16 minutes long.

Listening – “NORMAL” language:

You can listen to Grimms Märchen as radio dramas too. When you are on that web page, just click on the links in the right hand side menu.

FILMS

If you would rather WATCH films, there are two possibilities for you:

My favourite source of German fairy tales: Fairy Tales in the ARD Mediathek

Another valuable source of fairy tale films can be found here: Märchen TV (this is actually a real fairy tale TV!)

FOR TEACHERS

Materials provided by Goethe Institute that you can use for your classes can be found here: Märchen im Unterricht. You can find many other interesting stuff there. Just look at the tabs at the top of the page!

listening

Radio Stations in German

For advanced learners (>B1): if you wish to listen to radio in German language, I recommend you the following radio stations:

Different topics:

If you wish to find various radio stations, just navigate to radio.de – you will find there radio stations that broadcast anything: from news, music and sport to comedy and radio dramas (radio dramas livestream: hoerspiel radio).

News:

B5 aktuell broadcasts local and international news in German from their main office in Bayern.

Inforadio rbb broadcasts local and international news from Berlin.

NDR Info broadcast also news, but from Meklenburg-Vorpommern. In the evening you can listen to Jazz in NDR Info and on weekends longer reports.

Music:

kronehit is being broadcasted from Vienna (Austria) and I like it very much. They are different because they communicate with the audience whole the time.

ego.fm is something for curious listeners who wish to familiarize themselves with somewhat ‘different’ music both in English and in German. I highly recommend this radio station which broadcasts from München.

radioeins is similar to ego fm – also a very good radio station with good music. They broadcast from Berlin.

gong fm broadcasts mainstream music i.e. currently planetary popular hits.

listening

More of listening in German

Author: Jadranka Bokan

Learners often complain that they have difficulties understanding German spoken language. That is why they need to practice listening skills. There are many possibilities for that.

Do you prefer Watching German films and TV-series?

More formal listening

There are many listening sources with the specific purpose to help you practice your listening skills in German. This means that the texts have been prepared with that goal and they offer you some exercises too.

Deutsch-to-go is a good solution if you like it short and at different levels (from easy to difficult), like in school. Those are audio recordings prepared by native German teachers. 2 new texts are being published every week. You can find printable texts there too.

Deutsch Perfekt is actually a magazine for German language learners. However, they also have an online version where you can find many texts for listening and reading, sorted by their difficulty level.

Another solution would be Audio Lingua which also offers short recordings made by native German speakers (but not teachers) at different levels (A1 and above).

Slowly spoken news in German from Deutsche Welle are a good choice for advanced learners (B2-C1). News are being published daily.

Videos from the Wissen2Go YouTube channel is another respectful resource for advanced learners (C1-C2).

You can exercise listening at the levels A1 – C1 at the deutschlernerblog too.

Learn German is a YouTube channel with a great offer of audio books (A1 and above). Students just love Die ganze Wahrheit audio book. It is allegedly at the B1 level, but you should be able to understand a lot even if you are at the A2 level. The text (PDF) for this audio book can be downloaded here.

There is also another useful listening resource provided by Goethe Institute: Grüße aus Deutschland.

There is also a podcast called Slow German where you can find listen and read in German. You can listen to this podcast even if you are a total beginner. Topics are divided by categories.

Do you want to learn German with me?

More informal listening

If you like it less formal, then I would recommend that you listen to German pop music. There are many German bands and musicians, but my favourite is Clueso. His texts are simple and he was even a Culture Ambassador of the Goethe Institute. While you are working something else, you could listen to the radio. That is my favourite informal way of learning German. German radio stations vary from those who broadcast only news, over those who stream only radio dramas to those who are just regular radio stations with a lot of music.

listening

German Music

Author: Jadranka Bokan

You would like to hear some German music, but you don’t know where to start?

The best way to learn German through songs is to love a particular song and decide to understand each and every word of it.

Here is a sneak peek for you (a playlist with 15 videos, duration: about 1 hour):

Here is another playlist with songs which are more suitable for kids/school which means that my teacher colleagues could freely use them for their classes with kids, younger teenagers or even older teenagers: