german-learning-context/README.md

Menschen German — Co-learning Context Repo

This repo tracks what I've actually covered in the Menschen German course (course book + workbook), lesson by lesson, so that Claude (or any LLM) has exact context on my vocabulary and grammar level when we study together.

How to use this with Claude

At the start of a study session, point Claude at the relevant lesson file(s) under the current book folder (e.g. A1.1/course-book/lesson-05.md and A1.1/workbook/lesson-05.md), or the whole A1.1/INDEX.md for a running summary. Ask Claude to only use vocabulary/grammar that appears in those files (or earlier lessons) when creating exercises, example sentences, or corrections — this keeps practice within what I've actually learned.

Structure

A1.1/
  course-book/lesson-XX.md   ← vocab, grammar, dialogues from the course book
  workbook/lesson-XX.md      ← additional vocab/exercise types from the workbook
  INDEX.md                   ← one-line summary of every lesson so far
A1.2/                        ← added once I move on to the next book
  ...

Adding a new lesson

1. Upload photos or a PDF of the course book / workbook pages for that lesson.
2. Claude extracts content into lesson-XX.md using _template.md.
3. Review and correct anything Claude got wrong or over-summarized.
4. Update INDEX.md with a one-line entry for the lesson.
5. Commit.

Audio (listening exercises)

Hueber (the publisher) releases official Transkriptionen PDFs for both the Kursbuch (course book) and Arbeitsbuch (workbook) — these are the primary source for audio content, not the Lösungsschlüssel (answer key, found at the back of the workbook, which is a different thing). Raw audio files are not stored in this repo (see .gitignore); only transcripts (text) are, since that's what gives Claude context.

Primary workflow — official transcripts:

1. Get the Kursbuch and Arbeitsbuch Transkriptionen PDFs for the relevant book (A1.1, A1.2, ...) — search "Menschen [level] Kursbuch/Arbeitsbuch Transkriptionen pdf Hueber", or check the publisher's site.
2. Send/upload the pages for a lesson the same way as course book/workbook content — Claude extracts the per-track dialogue text into that lesson's .md file under "Audio / Listening".
3. No review needed for accuracy — these are publisher-official text, not ASR.

Fallback workflow — local ASR (only if no official transcript exists for a given track, e.g. supplementary listening material):

1. Get the audio files locally (publisher CD/app/download), any folder outside git.
2. Run scripts/transcribe.py (uses faster-whisper on GPU) to transcribe them:

   pip install faster-whisper
   python scripts/transcribe.py "<path-to-lesson-audio>" "A1.1/course-book/transcripts/lektion-XX"
   

3. Skim the .txt output for ASR mistakes (names, numbers, fast speech) and fix them.
4. Reference/paste the transcript into the lesson's .md file under "Audio / Listening", flagged as ASR-generated (the template already does this), or point at the transcripts/lektion-XX/*.txt path — transcripts are small text files so committing them is fine.

Adding a new book (e.g. A1.2)

Copy the A1.1/ folder structure (minus content) into a new A1.2/ folder and repeat the process.