PeterMollenburg wrote:Speaking of courses that remind you somewhat of French in Action I also own a rather comprehensive German course by the name of Fokus Deutsch. As with Destinos and French in Action, Fokus Deutsch was an "Annenburg/CPB Project" - what this means exactly I'm not sure. I suspect funding for these three courses in the USA was made available via the same avenues so that the video series could be filmed. Like the other two courses WGBH Boston was involved also, but unlike them (of course), the Goethe-Institut was also involved. We may have discussed this German course at some point (I don't remember- I know i've mentioned it here and there but where exactly on the forum in what context I don't recall exactly). The video series of Fokus Deutsch contains 36 episodes, each 15 minutes in length. They can be watched online for free (Youtube, prob elsewhere as well). The series doesn't appear to be as well known as FIA or Destinos, nor does it get as much attention on Amazon (ratings are hit and miss, but the poor rating i've seen are due to minor things such as not receiving the right product - delivery issue- which I personally feel is unfair for any books/products to be judged as per Amazon's/postal service issues). Transcripts can be found for free as well. Okay enough ranting about course, which you've already stated you're not too keen on doing too many... (typical me)
"You interest me strangely, Jeeves." I've spent the last 20 minutes looking around at Fokus Deutsch stuff, and I like the idea. One improvement over FIA is that there are German subtitles (I really wish FIA had optional French subs), but the downside is you can't turn them off. The professor in this course sounds clearly American, which is a big problem in my opinion. Also, the video quality I found on Youtube is atrocious, so I'm not sure I could stand watching them. If I could find better quality video I would probably at least watch all the videos.
But while watching them I found two other video courses I might watch simply because they have better video quality: the BBC's Deutsch Plus (A2/B1) https://youtu.be/-uxbZ3LGOSU?list=PL8hC8V2akLT7_EqMwp2HRbjuFYhgsAsy0 and Extra Deutsch (beginners) https://youtu.be/yhP3OT2hxAE. Remember Extra French? I like it because the language is fairly easy to follow, and the cheesiness of the whole thing makes it fun (although I imagine most school students would hate it). I've found videos of these on Youtube with good enough video quality, so I'll probably watch them some time in the coming months.