German Audio Course (Collins Easy Learning Audio Course) (English and German Edition)

This is an initial review. I have finished half of the lessons and am very pleased with the format and content. I will be traveling to Austria and Germany in a few months and have been using other sources to learn some useful phrases, pronunciation for various situations (traveling by train, public transportation, checking in an out of hotels, etc) that I will be facing. So far I am very pleased and satisfied with this course and consider it much better than the others that I've tried in the recent past. The format concentrates on learning to understand and speak to native speakers with fairly simple but very useful phrases. Each lesson focuses on a few useful phrases to use and then presents short examples of how and when to use those phrases with native speakers. The situations allow you to pronounce the words/phrases in various situations while communicating with a native speaker. The situations help you to listen, understand and reply with fairly simple but useful language. After learning to hear and respond in those situations, there is a review section for the preceding sections to reinforce and improve listening, understanding and speaking skills. One very practical skill that I particularly consider useful is to learn to tell native speakers that you don't understand and to politely "move on" if there is no way to bridge the communication gap. While the real test will only come when I get to Austria and Germany, I am feeling confident that this course will help me. I will write another review after I return from my trip to report how useful this course was during my travels. I have tried other sources, for example, Babbel and Rosetta Stone, but have found the format of this course much more focused on being able to "navigate" everyday situations in a more concentrated, practical way.

Teaching method is very effective for basic conversational German. Easy to review and retain some of the basics.

Works

Great course. I enjoyed learning German.

Having always wanted to learn a foreign language. I brought this as German appealed to me. I listen to it whilst driving to and from work. I have just finished disc 2. It is very good to learn from and the chances to repeat are very good. I feel I could get by with the basics already. Only given 4 stars as sometimes the speech is not clear enough for me to understand fully. But you get the gist. I do recommend this though.

This course is a quick way to get to grips with the essentials of the language as a first time visitor, or student of the language. There are sufficient repetition and review modules to ensure memory should be secure for the diligent student.

Brilliant course. The 4 cd's cover a reasonable amount of useful language. The lessons are well structured and give plenty of opportunity to practice speaking.With most courses the English explanations get really annoying as you get more proficient, so this course has a summary section at the end of each unit where just the Italian parts are played and you can get plenty of speaking practice.The booklet is adequate and is not necessary to follow the course, so you can listen to the course in the car, unlike some courses where you have to follow the book.I just wish there was another follow-on course to take you to the next level.

i have been studying German for many years but was a bit rusty.This course has led me to further my reading through the learning German through short stories. At 74 I am enjoying reviving my language studies ..the others being Spanish and French that I had studied to A Level in the 1960's

Been using for the last couple of weeks whilst driving to work, thought I’d be a bit more productive with my time.Easy to follow CD, teaching the basics. I’ve glanced at the booklet and that seems to have a good level of detail also.Looking forward to completing all 3 CDs and putting my poor German accent to the test