Skip to content
DuoText
Log inGet started

Original stories · German with English

Gymi-Geschichten

German adventure stories at the level of the Zurich Gymi exam. Free to read in the browser, each with the English beside every paragraph.

About the series

Long German adventure stories for readers of about eleven or twelve, set in real Swiss places: an old mine above Sargans, the Old Town of Zurich, Mount Pilatus, a steamer on Lake Zurich, the Rhine Falls. Each has a mystery, a real choice for its young hero, and a chapter ending that makes you turn the page.

The language is pitched at the German part of the entrance exam for the Langgymnasium in the canton of Zurich (the ZAP, or «Gymi-Prüfung»): the kind of vocabulary, sentences and idioms its reading texts use, written in Swiss spelling. After the story come exercises of the kinds the exam asks for, on reading, words and grammar, and writing tasks for the Aufsatz, with the answers on a separate page.

Every paragraph has the English beside it, so a child whose German is still growing can check a sentence and read on, and a parent who does not speak German can follow the story too. For a learner of German the stories are B2: demanding, but written to be read for fun.

The stories are independent practice material. They are not published by or connected with the canton of Zurich or its exam.

Auf Deutsch

Spannende Lesegeschichten für die Vorbereitung auf die Gymi-Prüfung (Zentrale Aufnahmeprüfung ans Langgymnasium im Kanton Zürich): Abenteuer an echten Schweizer Orten, in der Sprache und auf dem Niveau der Prüfungstexte, in Schweizer Rechtschreibung.

Nach jeder Geschichte folgen Übungen zu Textverständnis, Wortschatz und Grammatik sowie Aufsatzthemen, wie sie an der Prüfung vorkommen, mit den Lösungen auf einer eigenen Seite. Kostenlos im Browser lesen oder für Kindle und Kobo herunterladen.

B2 stories