Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Unlocking German with Paul Noble: Your key to language success with the bestselling language coach

Rate this book
Ever tried to learn German and found it too hard? Bestselling language coach Paul Noble has a quick and easy way to get you back on track with his unique tried-and-tested method.

Keeps things simple with three basic rules; don’t skip anything, don’t try to memorise anything and cover up to test yourself. A fun, jargon-free way to learn Easy-to-understand German pronunciation PROVEN to work; Paul can teach anyone a language, even people who think they’re incapablePaul’s course teaches you how to speak German more effectively, giving you the building blocks to form a huge range of conversations. This is a practical way to learn the aspects of language that you’ll actually need and use; from booking a hotel room to navigating a menu, Paul will effortlessly build your confidence and give you the tools to handle any holiday situation. You will unlock a range of vocabulary you already know.

There is nothing so complicated in foreign languages that it cannot be made simple.” Paul Noble

A quick, easy and fun way to unlock your basic language skills. Perfect for beginners, this book will give you all the information you need to build basic conversations and get by on your travels.

326 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 11, 2018

120 people are currently reading
148 people want to read

About the author

Paul Noble

139 books51 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
93 (58%)
4 stars
46 (28%)
3 stars
13 (8%)
2 stars
5 (3%)
1 star
2 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
Profile Image for 8stitches 9lives.
2,853 reviews1,724 followers
July 20, 2018
Let me start by saying that I have wanted to learn German for a while as I love Germany and have many German friends who I would like to be able to talk to in their mother tongue. Paul Noble knows exactly how to get you engaged and absorbing information rapidly. This book is miraculous! I have read plenty of books that tout themselves as being the one book that can teach you the language in a very short amount of time. Up until I read "Unlocking German with Paul Noble" I have not found any of them lived up to my expectations or their claims. Here, Noble truly has you learning by methods I have never seen before and, most importantly, they work!

If you are looking to learn a language you cannot go wrong with these books from Collins. I can't recommend this highly enough. As it says in the synopsis, even if you struggled at languages in school or find it difficult to learn or remember what you have been taught this is the perfect title for you! Absolutely brilliant!

Many thanks to Collins for an ARC. I was not required to post a review and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
28 reviews8 followers
December 8, 2020
Sehr guter buch

This book gives you the basics of German grammar and sentence structure. It does this in a very laid back and easy to understand way. There is a recap of the sentences and words you have learned after every chapter. By the end of this book you should have some understanding of how to put sentences together and some basic German vocabulary. I recommend this book to beginners.
Profile Image for Iain Dignall.
55 reviews3 followers
Read
December 21, 2018
Superbly structured and a useful learni g tool. Good at presenting sentence structure.
Profile Image for Vidar Alne.
20 reviews
September 26, 2020
Jeg synes de fleste grammatikkbøker er nokså tungtfordøyelig lesestoff. Det er bøker jeg møysommelig presser meg igjennom. Paul Nobles bok er heldigvis et hederlig unntak. Unlocking German er skrevet for de som innehar litt tyskkunnskap og de uten noen kjennskap til språket. På drøyt 25o sider gir Noble en underholdende introduksjon til setningskonstruksjon, katapultord (weil og dass) og – på skånsomst mulig vis – kasussystemet. Hvert kapittel begynner med en engelsk setning (Can you come over tonight), som man da lærer å oversette til tysk (Kannst du heute Nacht vorbeikommen). På slutten av hvert kapittel er det en sjekkliste over det man bør ha lært før man går videre til neste kapittel.
Anbefales til alle som ønsker å lære seg eller bli bedre i tysk.
61 reviews11 followers
July 5, 2020
This book uses a really clever and novel approach to learning a language. Paul Noble quickly gets you speaking useful phrases in German rather than the not so useful phrases you may have learnt on a traditional German course.
I learnt German at school, can remember odds and end but haven’t spoken any German in years. I found this book great at reminding me things I’d forgotten and new ways to remember and use the skills I do have plus new ones.

The book starts with explaining to you just how many words are very similar in German to English and how we can use simple rules to move from one language to another (in most cases).

This is a book you have to work through from the beginning, page by page, it's is structured in particular way to aid learning. Each chapter slowly builds up a multicomponent phrase. As you go through the chapter, the author asks you to cover the answers written in red with a bookmark or piece of card, to get your brain working and so that you actually work through the multiple micro-tasks. Each answer in German has a pronunciation guide as well as the actual written answer. There's no active memorisation required but the use of spaced repetition gets you effortlessly remembering how to say all sorts of different phrases.

At the end of each chapter are increasingly long word/phrase lists that the author encourages you to keep going through until you only get 3 wrong. That sounds hard, but the way you're taught to put phrases together and the spaced repetition actually makes this much easier than it sounds. Noble also reminds you to not try and do too much and that if it takes all week to get through the word list, that's ok.

You start learning how to put together the phrase Can you come over tonight?" and end with being able to hold a conversation including things like "Hey, wait a second, do you think I’m oblivious to what’s going on? You’ve got a hangover!" By starting with words that are similar to the English equivalents and slowly building up sentences, sub phrase by sub phrase, Noble soon has you speaking increasingly more complex German phrases.

There are no long lists of grammar rules to memorise, instead there are really useful tips like how to remember when to makes changes to match gender and when you don’t, and ways to remember how German phrases are put together. For example, describing “weil” (because in English) as a catapult word because of how the it causes the verb to move in the sentence and to go with it, a simple description of how to recognise a verb.

The book ends with ideas on where to go next as this book really is just a stepping stone to further learning although a really useful one. It definitely builds confidence and makes you realise learning a new language does not have to be as difficult as many courses make it. School may have you put off learning languages for life, but this book shows it doesn’t have to be that dull and difficult! I will definitely look up Noble’s audio course as this way of learning does seem much more sensible and useful than the usual ways!

Whether you are totally new to German, learnt a little at school but not used it since, or know some German but don’t feel like you know anything actually useful, this is a great little book to get you going and feeling confident about learning and starting to Speak in German.
Profile Image for Matteo Cordero.
144 reviews4 followers
September 18, 2023
Unlocking German with Paul Noble is a great way to learn German. It is a short but dense language book. It comprehends different theories about grammar and other easy and fun tricks for how everyone can learn German. Noble states that if you already know English you can speak German (40% of the German words are English words). Unlocking German offers you different exercises and practices that will help memorize numerous vocabulary. This book is for beginners: it will help you achieve basic listening and speaking skills. It will also allow you to ask elementary questions such as ordering a coffee, talking about the weather and many other more.

Paul Noble's Unlocking German is amazing, especially for learning a difficult language such as German. it helps you and encourages you in your first journey to learn it. I recommend it if you are interested in learning German and I also suggest you go through the Audiobook correlated with this book.
Profile Image for Catherine Craig (Angelic Light).
1,136 reviews20 followers
September 15, 2022
This is an amazing, informative and useful guide to learning German, which I loved. Some of my family live in Germany, so I have been busy learning the German language to help with my visits to Germany, and this book has proved very useful in this quest.

The book is nicely laid out and easy to read, and I like how Paul makes everything easy to understand, as he provides neat, detailed texts which are repeated throughout the book.

I have also listened to some of his audiobooks, which are amazing.

I just loved this book, and I will use it a lot in the future. Highly recommended!

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book.
Profile Image for Priya Bhowal.
176 reviews33 followers
July 19, 2019
I liked the fact that for each sentence the pronunciation was given in the brackets. However for a new partner like me, learning straightaway sentences without learning letters and words was not helpful. For people looking to master this language for studying and /or living in Germany skipping the steps will not be too helpful. This is like a spoken German book
Profile Image for Léa.
9 reviews
July 30, 2019
Very useful book, funny and up to date with actually nowadays-used vocabulary. I have learned German before but forgot everything, but with this book my brain is back on track and ready to speak German again.
The sentences we learn with Paul Noble being very basic, I recommend this book as a start only before using an other learning method such as the one he suggests at the end of the book.
11 reviews
January 30, 2019
Enjoyable

An excellent way to pick up German. The author has used the similarities between English and German words to make an easy route into starting to learn German. Highly recommend
Profile Image for Annarella.
14.2k reviews165 followers
January 22, 2020
A very useful book. I wanted to refresh my German and I found this book very useful.
It's recommended to whoever want to learn some German or refresh their knowledge.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
3 reviews
May 1, 2021
I like it the pace and I felt I've learnt German.

Simple and effective.

Get it.

Good learning experience, well thought out and I enjoyed it so much that I have all his other books.
Profile Image for Alžběta.
640 reviews1 follower
August 24, 2022
Wow, Paul Noble's method is fantastic! It took me several weeks to listen to the book twice (I really wanted to solidify all the new knowledge) but I now feel very comfortable speaking my - admittedly - very basic German haha. I'm excited to see how much I can learn from the next book!
Profile Image for Alexandra.
180 reviews
June 11, 2025
I'm struggling to keep it all in but it's been fun working my way through the book the way it's been set out.
and now I have my new favourite phrase "Denkst du, dass ich tomaten auf den augen habe?" hopefully with me for the rest of my life.
Profile Image for David.
28 reviews2 followers
April 1, 2019
A superb introduction to Noble's learning method.

It works. An excellent aid.
Profile Image for Huei Suen.
11 reviews
March 7, 2020
Well structured and effective. Learnt so much from this short book!
Profile Image for Trez.
22 reviews
May 18, 2020
Excellent book. It really helped me understand the structure and good vocabulary basics. Most importantly it told me what to do afterwards to keep learning. Sehr gutes buch. Vielen danke!
Profile Image for Dit.
7 reviews
July 5, 2021
I dont recommend it for people with a level of B1 and higher.
Profile Image for Tiana.
30 reviews29 followers
November 15, 2022
Never thought I would have fun learning German... Great book!
Profile Image for Ravenclaw Library Books.
492 reviews11 followers
May 4, 2024
This is the perfect book for those who want to learn German. It keeps everything simple and focuses on you learning words as opposed to simply memorising them.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning German.
Profile Image for Laura Duffy.
484 reviews3 followers
January 20, 2019
This is the perfect book for those who want to learn German. It keeps everything simple and understandable and truly focuses on you learning words as opposed to simply memorising them. Perfect gift!
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.