6

I intend to start learning German and I found two brilliant courses on the website of Deutsche Welle, one called Deutsch Interaktiv and another audio resource called Warum Nicht.

I would like to know what properties and aspects I should take into consideration so that I can decide which one will fit to me.

Improve this question
10
  • 8
    If you want to get a high level in short time, buy a compact grammar, a dictionary, buy an A1 learners novel, sit down and start reading. Write down all the words you don't know on paper. Get the next book, do the same. And learn all the words. Forget about conversation. Just do that for 3 months and learn about 2000 words and getting started talking will take only a week. Forget online courses. They're too slow and waste too much of your capacity on clicking things. They are the way they are because they want to make it fun. Getting a good level fast is not fun, though. It's work.
    – Emanuel
    Oct 30, 2014 at 8:31
  • Thank you so much for your comment.Do you think it can be possible for someone to reach his A2 in December of this year?,second please give me some books you reommend in A1,A2,B1. Thanks
    – Ahmed Elbatt
    Oct 30, 2014 at 8:51
  • Thank you so much and sorry for my non suitable question I will try to edit it in more convenient way.Thanks Takkat :)
    – Ahmed Elbatt
    Oct 30, 2014 at 9:20
  • 1
    100% sure. A2 is realistic if you really want to... as for books just look for DaF-Lernkrimi
    – Emanuel
    Oct 30, 2014 at 10:13
  • 1
    I second what Emanuel said. Focus on learning basic vocabulary first and get used to these words. You'll find all these words in any textbooks and online courses. And you'll find a lot of examples there, too. Vocabulary is what you need to make you understand. – It's helpful to me that I add example sentences to my flash cards. I don't learn "book - Buch", but "book - Buch 'Das Buch hat 1000 Seiten' 'Das Buch ist langweilig'". This way, you learn how to use the word, you repeat other words and you learn basic grammar.
    – Em1
    Oct 30, 2014 at 10:48

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

It is very important to understand that the gender of a noun is the most important element to learn when learning the German language. Without knowing the gender of a noun, it is impossible to properly form a sentence correctly. If the course fails to include the article when teaching nouns, it should be avoided.

For example, if the course only teaches you that "Haus" is the word for "house", it should be avoided. The course must teach you that "house" is "das Haus/die Häuser".

Deutsch Welle (DW) is a good place to get supplemental learning material. In addition to their website, they have some audio podcasts on iTunes. I like the slow news podcast, where the current events are read slower than they are in normal new broadcasts.

The only problem with the DW is that they are designed for multinational students living in Germany. The vocabulary lists are not going to have English translations in many cases.

If you are looking for a really good online course, you might try Duolingo. It is free, fun and slightly addictive.

Two absolutely essential resources are the dict.cc and leo.de websites. Both sites are off-shoots of the Mr. Honey German dictionaries available at Gutenberg.org by Winfried Honig. Dict.cc allows you to download their entire database for your personal use. I downloaded it. It is a CSV of over 1 million rows.

Lastly, be sure to look at youtube.de as a source of German material. There are a large number of German language audio books available including many kids books. I constantly listen to German audio books. There is nothing better for students who are not around German language speakers on a regular basis than listening to German language books. I recommend the speakers David Nathan, Dietmar Wunder, and the great Dirk Bach.

Improve this answer
0

Online?

Sign in to a German chat. Ask the people in the public room/channel (in English) if someone is interested and patient to talk to you/to teach you. Go into a private room/channel and start talking/learning with him/her.

Don't give up if it doesn't work well at the first few tries. Chats are like normal fairy tales: there are princes and princesses vs. trolls and evil witches.

Once you've learned the basics and found (an) appropriate partner(s) switch to Skype voice, just to name one of the many VoIP environments.

Improve this answer
0

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.