Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While this book does have its (weak)points, it should not have the title it does. As a teacher of German who has experience in the AP German test, I eagerly awaited the arrival of this book. It didn't take more than a few pages to see that this would not be useful to me or any of my German students who might want to prepare for the German exam. The introductory pages did not mention the AP German test and its contents at all. Instead it explains to the students how to write an English essay and a variety of other basic test-taking tips and strategies one could find in any test-preparation resource. It seems that a book on this topic would have at least sketched the set-up of the current test format of the AP German test. An organization was not evident, and the book lacks a table of contents. The "listening" sections were basically scripts with the questions interspersed. There were some trivia-type questions not found on the AP test. This would be very disconcerting to students who looked at this book. Regretably, what IS found on the AP test: sample essay questions, the story-board pictures, for example, were nowhere to be seen. Included is mention of and the actual script of a sample "9 minute" lecture, during which the students are encouraged to "take notes while listening". This lecture format has long since been deleted from the test format. The copyright date in the book is 2000, which is sad, as the materials should be better up-dated. A list of supposedly valuable vocabulary found in the appendix, was merely a photocopied version of some old text book, which I am sure could be found on my own bookshelf, or that of any German bibliophile. To my dismay several pages of these copies were illegible. The vocabulary would have been more valuable if it had been in some logical order or categories. To say the least, this book was an absolute disappointment. Evidently we German teachers and our students are still left empty-handed, compared with those of our colleagues in other languages. This book is shameful and embarrassing and should be avoided at all costs. [Your money] is better spent on dictionaries or on old textbooks at a yard sale. Don't waste your time on this. It should be taken off the market and I will be sharing this opinion with every colleague I can in the country.