Both young and old love stories, and Friedrich Maerker Verlag has taken this opportunity and taken it to the next level. This small, independent publisher offers bilingual and multilingual children’s and young adult books, specially developed for educational purposes. The books offer more than just a story in two or more languages. The goal is to encourage communication within and between languages. These books make an important contribution to foreign language acquisition and language development.
Why Bilingual Books?
But why are bilingual books an effective tool for learning foreign languages and specifically promoting foreign language acquisition? Well, stories tell of our lives; they convey our experiences and our knowledge. Bilingual books and reading material go a step further; they transcend cultures.
D.S. Felix, Author of Multilingual Books
The author D.S. Felix has a broad knowledge of languages, foreign languages, and language teaching. She speaks several languages herself and has lived in various countries and cultures. Her expertise in literature, linguistics, and history, combined with a broad general knowledge, finds its way into D.S. Felix’s stories. The result are unique books with real added value.
Didactically Designed Books
The bilingual children’s and young adult books from Friedrich Maerker Verlag were specifically developed for foreign language acquisition. The key is that they are reversible or flip books, meaning each book begins on one side in the foreign language: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, or Persian… and from the other side in German, Spanish, or English. But that’s not all. The text is enlivened with illustrations, and there are also vocabulary explanations, as there is thematic vocabulary that facilitates comprehension. A key aspect are the numerous interlude questions.
Questions encourage active and reflective reading. These questions are all easy-to-answer questions designed to encourage conscious reading. To enhance the playful nature, individual letters from the answers to the questions are collected at the end of the story. Many books also feature word games for vocabulary training.
Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Getting children and young people to read is important; it greatly promotes knowledge acquisition. Readers are simply more successful. When readers also read in foreign languages, their chances of success multiply. The bilingual and multilingual children’s and young adult books published by Friedrich Maerker Verlag contribute to foreign language acquisition. Descriptions and a wide range of information for all books can be found in the catalog and online shop. Use these multilingual books to learn foreign languages or to deepen your knowledge.