About Thank you for buying Conversation Topics! These conversation topics were massively helpful in how | learned German and are very close to my heart. Seriously. See, I'm from Ireland, but | moved to Berlin. And after a while of living in Berlin, | got frustrated that | still couldn't speak German properly. So, like others, | enrolled in intensive courses. These were very helpful, and after a lot of studying, and dativ and akkusativ confusing me, | started to improve and was actually speaking a bit of German! This excited me greatly, and | wanted to use my German in the real world - in bars, cafes, supermarkets, with people on the street. But in almost every encounter, | was met with an English reply! | was devastated, to be honest. Putting in all that work, reading those cases tables, (not to mention the adjective-ending tables!) and not even being able to use it was really annoying! It was also embarrassing. So | set out to solve this problem - | set up an online Discord group. But wait, | hear you say, why didn't | just go to a German meetup in a cafe or bar? Well, the meetups tended to be on in the evening, when | was tired, and far away from my house, and also | was scared of using my poor German in public! It is a vicious catch-22 that language learners go through. Your German is too poor to speak in public, but don't improve because you don't speak in public. | was trapped in a rut and | need to get out.So one night in February 2020 | sat down posted a message to a couple of Facebook groups inviting people to join me in practicing their German online Wednesday the following week. That next Wednesday, | sat down on my couch, opened my computer nervously, and waited, thinking | was an idiot for trying this. But then, someone came online! One person came to my first meetup. | was delighted! From there | ran them every week, then twice a week, and it just grew from there. All of our meetups in Language Gym since that very first meetup are based around Conversation Topics. They have gone through various iterations, but we are still 100% focused on speaking, on conversation! My own German improved massively after speaking online in the group everyday, so that is why I'm a big believer in these topics - it is a huge part of how | learned German! The themes in this book are the result of thousands of hours of speaking, getting feedback from students, native speakers and teachers, and using that to change and improve them. They are designed to get you speaking, to push your grammar and get you confident! Enjoy! Rénaén Mc Guire Founder LanguageGym.com - online meetupsHow to Use Speak! These conversation topics are designed to get you speaking! There are no right or wrong answers to the questions. Alone or with friends In our online groups, we practice the themes in groups of 3 people. Everyone takes a turn answering a question, and then the group moves on to the next question. But you can mix it up as you like Practice them with a friend, a classmate, a group, or read through ther yourself. If you are alone you can write your answers down. This will help it stay in your memory and later mprove your spoken German English translations included The German version is first, and then the English version is on the next page. It is designed this way so if you don't want to be mpted by the English version you can just stay on the original German version of the theme.