Are there any German resources similar to C-F.com?

[yueni]

Just a little bit of background. I took 4 years of German when I was in high school, and at the time, was fluent enough to have simple conversations in Germany. I was probably around a B1 or B2 level of fluency. Since I have not actively used or kept up with the language since then, my German skills are extremely rusty. My sentence-making skills are shit right now. If it's not the disgustingly easy "Wie heisst du?" and "Ich habe Hunger" type of sentences, I'm pretty much useless. My goal this year is to brush up my German and at least regain what meagre language abilities I used to have.

 

I would like to know if anybody has any online or offline resources that they can recommend me. I am based out of Shenzhen at present, meaning that my nearest Goethe Institut is in Hong Kong, so night classes aren't quite practical at the moment. However, I think I can at least do basic self study to revise old knowledge that I used to have. I did some research and I've gotten the following recommendations:

 

• Schaum's Outlines: German Grammar 
  • https://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-German-Grammar-Outlines-ebook/dp/B00H878Q5Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1515244999
• Hammer's German Grammar & Usage
  • https://www.amazon.com/Hammers-Grammar-Routledge-Reference-Grammars-ebook/dp/B01NBIGHXK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1515245090

 

Are there any specific apps, forums, blogs, vlogs, etc. that would be useful and/or helpful in studying German? If there's a chinese-forums.com German equivalent website, that would be amazing. Duolingo and other similar apps are not useful language study tools for me, as they are too easy and too arbitrary, and I'm a very orderly thinker, especially wrt learning German. Are there any good TV shows, podcasts, movies, music etc. that would be good watching/learning material? I have a bunch of old music and things from when I was learning German, music by Wir Sind Helden, Bluemchen, Das Dritte Generation, etc. Not really sure that Rammstein counts...

 

My German language goals for 2018 are:

1. Read one full article from der Spiegel per week.
2. Finish reading Das Parfum by Patrick Suesskind
3. Be able to actively and deliberately string sentences together in a coherent fashion.

 

 

 

[wibr]

Deutsche Welle offers courses, news, videos, podcasts etc for people learning German.

[xinhuar]

I would recommend the German is Easy Blog at https://yourdailygerman.com/. I used to reference it a lot when it was totally free, but now I think you can read 2 posts per day for free or become a member. The writer is really hilarious and does a good job at explaining various words and concepts in German.