Basic Dutch (Routledge Grammar Workbooks)

This is my second Dutch book. I'm self-taught and hoped the exercises would expand my command of the language, but instead, I feel like I'm regressing.A lot of the exercises are fill-in-the-blank, so it helps if you can already read the language at A2. However, I realized that it was possible in several cases to follow the grammar rule and get the correct answer without having any understanding of the language. Het-words were starred so you knew which rule to follow. Strong verbs were starred so you knew which conjugation rule to follow. This does not challenge the student to recognize words in context and remember which category they fall into. In exercises regarding simple past, the answer key just had -de or -te referencing which ending to choose, assuming the student knew and would not make mistakes on identifying stems that differ from the infinitive form. When I was trying to figure out the hen/hun/ze use, there were no example sentences with hun and in all the exercises, not a single one used hun.In exercises where we are asked to construct a sentence, all the elements of that sentence are supplied, so it might be a test of a single verb conjugation and/or word order. However, due to the presentation of the exercises, it's not always necessary to understand the words you are arranging. I don't feel that I've become better at constructing sentences.I've completed 21 chapters hoping it would get better, and I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the rest. This was not the book for me.