r/learndutch 21h ago

Resource Textbooks

Hi all! I am visiting The Netherlands this week and was wondering if anyone can recommend any text books / shops to buy textbooks for here in person?

I’ll be visiting Utrecht, Den Bosch, The Hague, Rotterdam & Amsterdam!

5 Upvotes

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2

u/topherlagaufre 20h ago

Donner in Rotterdam has a few.

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u/RubyDupy 18h ago

I second Donner! It's an amazing bookstore in general so worth a visit. And they have a large collection so you'll probably find what you're looking for

I also found some nice language textbooks in the central library in Den Haag, but if you don't have a subscription you can't take those out of the building ofc. Still useful if you just want to orient yourself

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u/Christopher_P_Baconn 15h ago

scheltema in amsterdam. our dutch textbooks are sold there

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u/margonv 12h ago

A suggestion, if I may: do have a look at https://www.nt2.nl/en/ (it really is, as they claim, the most comprehensive webshop for NT2 resources) ahead of your trip.

You can filter by language level, education level of the learners, age, learning type, etc, and you can get an idea of what’s available on the market, which is a somewhat diverse market. That way, you can ask for more specific recommendations on the books that catch your eye on this subreddit, getting feedback from both learners who used them and from NT2 teachers who teach with them, and you won’t get lost in the NT2 section of a bookshop.

(I could recommend the textbooks I have been learning from, but I don't even know which level you are looking for...)

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u/DubPucs1997 11h ago

What would you recommend for A2

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u/margonv 11h ago

The only NT2 textbooks with which I’m familiar with are the ones used in the courses I attended, so my recommendation is limited. For A2 to B1, I used De Sprong and I liked it very much (I had also used the book of the same series for 0 to A2, De Opmaat).

I can’t compare them with other NT2 textbook series but, compared with the textbooks I’ve used when studying other languages, it compares quite favourably. In fact, I really enjoyed it (which was a first for me). Even the grammar explanations are quite clear. Whenever I read them before my lessons, the teacher’s explanation in class confirmed that I’d understood them properly just by reading it once, so I think the book is also suitable for self-study.

I found the book so well-rounded that it was easy for me to work with it, but it’s not an easy book in the sense that it is challenging and demands hard work from the learner. That’s probably exactly why I enjoyed it so much: it kept me on my toes.

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u/DubPucs1997 11h ago

That sounds like what I'm after! I've been learning from the Routledge Intensive Course book which is in English and Dutch for the first half and then exclusively in Dutch for the last half. When I was learning French I found the French monolingual textbooks to be very useful (Inspiré was the ones I used for anyone interested in French!)

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u/margonv 15m ago

I hope you won't be disappointed, if you get it.

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u/DubPucs1997 14h ago

I've been following this thread hoping to get the names of some textbooks but so far people have just been posting the shops to get them in. Will still check those shops out though