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German books available? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| dlopes21 Newbie Brazil Joined 5080 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English | Message 1 of 11 22 June 2010 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi. I started taking German classes at the start of the year, but they seemed too slow
and boring, and I've decided to self-teach. For the past month I've been looking for a good German book/method and I can't decide between the hundreds of options. What I'm looking for, is a method that can take you far in the language, not just to the upper-basic/lower-intermediate level. Not necessarily FAST, since I don't believe in those magic 30-day courses, but far. I'm inclined to buy either Assimil or Living Language Ultimate, mainly because they are readily available at the bookstores (I live in Brazil, and finding imported books is hard and expensive over here). Anyone used these extensively? Other suggestions are appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5615 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes  Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 11 23 June 2010 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have Assimil French and Living Language Japanese. I would go with Assimil. I like the
Assimil approach so much it will be the first book in any other languages I pursue later. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| enigmaucb Newbie United States UsedCardBoardBoxes.c Joined 5073 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: German* | Message 3 of 11 28 June 2010 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hi, I've never heard of Assimil. How is that compared to Rosetta Stone? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5615 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 11 28 June 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
About 100 times better and 100 times cheaper. Assimil courses give you native speakers on audio to follow along in the book with translations with grammar and usage notes. Rosetta Stone is a very expensive flash card program. Many free alternatives on the net. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5154 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 5 of 11 29 June 2010 at 8:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would never touch Rosetta Stone. Books I'd recommend for German would be German How to
Read and Write, The Everything Learning German Book. I have Living Language Ultimate German Beginner to Intermediate (not received it in the mail yet until July 12th -_-) so I don't know how good the book is. But I did read in side and seen the tables of contents. From what I seen and some of the chapters. It is quite good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5796 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 6 of 11 29 June 2010 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I find it hard to go far with textbooks. They usually don't have enough content in them, but even if you have a really long series of textbooks then they'll be full of boring 1-page dialogs. If your emphasis is on going far, then I suggest that your first goal should be to move to native materials as soon as you can.
Once you know enough basic German to start reading a real book, then you no longer have no limit on how far you can go. It will also go much faster once you have some interesting content. You don't have to know every word to read a book. You just need to know enough to get the general idea so that you can enjoy the story, even if you don't understand 100%. This is easier with "young adult" books that use simpler words, and is also easier if you use a translation of a book that you've already read in another language. Also, if you use a translated book, then you can look at your native-language version to see what things mean, without needing to look up individual words in the dictionary. When I started reading German books, I understood almost nothing. But it progressed very fast. I "read" 50 pages of a novel without doing any dictionary lookups and barely understood, but then when I went back to the start of that same novel it was a lot easier already, so clearly I learned a lot of words without looking them up. The process went faster when I picked 1 page and looked up all the words I didn't know, and then continued reading normally for 10 or 20 more pages. Or I'd pick 1 or 2 words per page and look them up later. All of this is better and faster when you also have an audiobook to listen to. After this experience, I'm really reluctant to recommend any textbook courses to people, although among textbooks I've found Assimil to be the best by far. It's hard for me to learn any language with only one source though, and everything is much more fun when you're working with real content. Also consider buying some German TV, or German-dubbed american TV. For the price of Rosetta stone, you can buy a lot of books and TV series to watch, and then you'll have months of fun content. Check amazon.de and you'll find lots of interesting things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6931 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 7 of 11 29 June 2010 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Oh gawd...not Rosetta Stone again!!! You've got to hand it to them for their advertsising campaigns, if for nothing else. Well obviously, for nothing else.
OK, German, is it? dlopes21, how rich are you? If money is no object I'd check out Linguaphone's offerings. And although I have never used the German version I've been so impressed with Living Language Ultimate courses, that I imagine the German ones are of similar quality to the others, and they do have an advanced course. OK, now a bit of a rare one, but if you want real, advanced conversational German, you might like to seek out the older generation 3rd stage BBC course called 'Ganz Spontan'. It may be available through AmazonUK. The 1st and 2nd stage courses are also excellent, but the units on East Germany kind of show their age. BBc have done a more recent two-stage course too. Hope this helps. doviende, just checked out your site and it looks very useful indeed. Congrats on a great blog! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5395 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 8 of 11 29 June 2010 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's an understatement too! If I had to choose ONE program, I would choose Assimil, hands down. Rosetta Stone is absolute garbage, I don't think they could pay me to use it. Assimil is an all around GREAT program, I have 4 of the their programs, everyone is top quality. I love Assimil :) Best of luck to you!! Jordan 1 person has voted this message useful |
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