Here are some free tools and resources I recommend.
(Note: None of these links are affiliate links. I work totally independently and I will only recommend you tools and resources that I’ve used myself, worked with myself and I’ve also recommended to my students.)
FREE online-course
The “VHS-Lernportal” is a complete, FREE online program co-financed by the German government and better than most paid traditional language books.
- Click here to learn how to create an account for FREE.
- Click here to learn the German alphabet
Online Dictionaries
To look up unknown words I recommend these online dictionaries:
- Leo.org (to simple look up words)
- Linguee.de (this one gives you a lot of samples of actual real articles where the word is used in context)
The official German dictionary is Der Duden.
Online Textreader, translator, flashcard generator, and vocab trainer
READLANG is a powerful tool to help you read texts online at your current level, translate words and sentences that you need to look up and best of all, learn these new words with flashcards.
So it not only translates words and full sentences on your browser but also stores your new words into flash cards so you can review and learn them afterwards on your smartphone. (You can start with the free version that translates single words and then see if the pro version that includes phrase translations is worth it.)
Proofread by Instant Spell/Grammar Checker
- LANGUAGETOOL is a powerful spell checker for German that is not only 10x smarter than your google spell checker but also knows German Grammar rules.
Online language partner
ITALKI has tons of language partners online. You’ll find tandem partners for free, informal tutors at a low cost and even professional teachers.
Best FREE Podcast course
Best FREE Podcast course to
- grow your confidence in speaking
- become more accurate with this weird German grammar
- improve your German accent
spending just 10 minutes a day while commuting to work
Of course, that’s my podcast course :-) Check out previous episodes here.