"QuickAssist," the program presented in this paper, uses natural language processing (NLP) technologies. It places a range of NLP tools at the disposal of learners, intended to enable them to independently read and comprehend a German text of their choice while they extend their vocabulary, learn about different uses of particular words, and study German morphology. Learners can access a dictionary, a thesaurus, a concordancer, request a morphological analysis of complex words and query the German Wikipedia for additional information. Abandoning the idea that the application should assume control of the learning process and provide the learning objects, "QuickAssist" enables users to work with a German text of their choice that is available in electronic form. The results of an initial user study are presented at the end of this paper. (Contains 3 figures.)