where to learn German?

[kennyabcd1234]

hi
New to this forum and new to German.

I have a plan. That is I 'll spend 1 hour every day on learning German.

I want to focus on reading and writing, instead of oral German, because I think even if I travel to German, I can write and read, oral German might not be very important


Where to start? Is there any good site that provides free self-learning tutorial of German which helps start from beginner to advance and can be stuck to for long time?

[Kazumi]

kennyabcd1234, welcome to the forum.

My advice would be to not spend any money until you've looked at all the good quality free resources for learning German from Deutsche Welle at http://www.dw.de. It should provide you enough resources and options until you have time to look on some courses and perhaps grammars books.

If you are willing to spend some money, then, you can think about Assimil German with Ease. I really liked that course and it was probably the best course from Assimil I have ever taken so far.

On the link below, another user asked about Assimil German. You can read about the feedback provided by other users on here:
http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2522


There are other courses designed for English speakers available. You may read about them here:

http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Courses

It is important to make your 1 hour become as efficient as possible. Therefore, in case you are not familiar with the general techniques on how to study a language, take a look at this link:
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/ ... Techniques

The following link provides some additional information to the information above. It is more focused in some specific skills.
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:How_to_practice_and_improve_your_language

[Alphathon]

There are plenty of free resources online that you can take advantage of. You say you want them to take you from beginner to advanced; that might be a problem, although it depends what you mean by advanced. Most courses start at beginner and end at a lower intermediate level, but since you're new to this that may be what you actually need: an intermediate learner still has a long way to go to be native-like or near-native, but can generally function perfectly well in the language in most everyday situations.

I'd suggest you give Duolingo a try. It isn't perfect and you'll need to use it alongside other resources to learn it properly (especially if you favour explicit grammar), but it's a great starting point. I'd also have a look at Memrise, which is similar in many ways.

Other than courses I'd suggest you set up an Anki deck, so that you can practise what you've learnt. The cards can be as simple as single words or much more complex, particularly using their "cloze deletion" option to give context to what you're practising.

Also have a look at YouTube. There are loads of channels dedicated to learning language in general and German specifically. I like Get Germanized and Deutsch für euch myself, but I'm sure there are many others.

Also you say you will focus on reading and writing. This is fine but I wouldn't neglect the oral language entirely.

There are many paid courses that members on here recommend, such as Assimil (like Nieng Zhonghan recommended), but I'll let other people cover them (see below). They do cost money up front but you obviously don't need to keep paying like you would for a tutor or classes so they might suit you.

I'd go into more detail on all of these and give some more recommendations, but unfortunately I'm restricted to using my phone at the moment, which doesn't really lend itself to long posts. (Also, sorry for any typos that I may have made as a result.) I'm sure you'll get many more suggestions though and there's loads out there, particularly since your chosen language is German.

[kennyabcd1234]

kennyabcd1234, welcome to the forum.

My advice would be to not spend any money until you've looked at all the good quality free resources for learning German from Deutsche Welle at http://www.dw.de. It should provide you enough resources and options until you have time to look on some courses and perhaps grammars books.

If you are willing to spend some money, then, you can think about Assimil German with Ease. I really liked that course and it was probably the best course from Assimil I have ever taken so far.

On the link below, another user asked about Assimil German. You can read about the feedback provided by other users on here:
http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2522


There are other courses designed for English speakers available. You may read about them here:

http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Courses

It is important to make your 1 hour become as efficient as possible. Therefore, in case you are not familiar with the general techniques on how to study a language, take a look at this link:
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/ ... Techniques

The following link provides some additional information to the information above. It is more focused in some specific skills.
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:How_to_practice_and_improve_your_language

I am looking for one best link for learning German, because I don't want to shift between too many links.. but you are generating more links for me

I learn German for fun and pleasure and because German is the only European country I like and I have a plan to visit next year. Yes, I will not to pay any $$$$ ,there are many many many language materials on the web or in the libary

[Marais]

I am looking for one best link for learning German, because I don't want to shift between too many links.. but you are generating more links for me

I learn German for fun and pleasure and because German is the only European country I like and I have a plan to visit next year. Yes, I will not to pay any $$$$ ,there are many many many language materials on the web or in the libary

There isn't one. Read and listen. A LOT. Learn words through massive exposure and in a years' time you will be well on your way.

Check grammar when you get confused but don't spend too much time getting bogged down with small grammar points unless that floats your boat.

I'd learn about things like separable prefixes and things first so you don't become really confused like i did. You don't have to know them, just be aware that that little 'ab' at the end of that 35 word long sentence can be related to the second word in the sentence.

You won't get one link that will 'do it all'. You need a variety of sources and input.

[Serpent]

There's no one best link. Free resources vary in quality, amount of material etc, so your best bet is to have a look at most links you get and choose what to use. Everyone is different too so what I like won't necessarily be what you like.

I really like GLOSS and lyricstraining btw. The latter is a fun resource you can use outside your main studying time.

Nieng Zhonghan's links are mostly about how to learn a language in general, it's just some articles to read once or twice. This will help you organize/plan/enjoy your learning.

Be sure to use music as well, and perhaps to read books/articles (see reading strategies). There's a lot of music online, and many reading materials too. In the long run you'll need to use these anyway sooner or later (along with podcasts/movies/audiobooks). These links were in what he linked above, but I think it's important to single these out. All these meta links are extremely important, though.

Also, Europe has over 50 countries, some of which have a lot in common with Germany, some less. If you have no interest in discovering them, whatever, but you can't really dislike them if you don't even know.

[jeffers]

kennyabcd1234, welcome to the forum.

My advice would be to not spend any money until you've looked at all the good quality free resources for learning German from Deutsche Welle at http://www.dw.de. It should provide you enough resources and options until you have time to look on some courses and perhaps grammars books.

If you are willing to spend some money, then, you can think about Assimil German with Ease. I really liked that course and it was probably the best course from Assimil I have ever taken so far.

On the link below, another user asked about Assimil German. You can read about the feedback provided by other users on here:
http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2522


There are other courses designed for English speakers available. You may read about them here:

http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Courses

It is important to make your 1 hour become as efficient as possible. Therefore, in case you are not familiar with the general techniques on how to study a language, take a look at this link:
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/ ... Techniques

The following link provides some additional information to the information above. It is more focused in some specific skills.
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:How_to_practice_and_improve_your_language

I am looking for one best link for learning German, because I don't want to shift between too many links.. but you are generating more links for me

I learn German for fun and pleasure and because German is the only European country I like and I have a plan to visit next year. Yes, I will not to pay any $$$$ ,there are many many many language materials on the web or in the libary

Actually, Nieng sort of did give you one best link: Deutsche Welle.

But there are many different things you could do in a single hour, and in my opinion you should do more than one thing to keep it interesting. I think most of us here would advocate a "multitrack" approach. However, it is often a good idea to have one thing you keep consistent each day, and supplement that with other interesting things to do. The other important point is that what works well for one person doesn't work well for another, so you will just have to try a few things out and figure out what you like the best. Yes, what you like the best, because the best course is the course you actually keep doing, not the awesome course that you start and quit.

My specific advice would be to go to the Deutsche Welle site and start with their introductory course Warum Nicht? and work on a lesson each day for 30-40 minutes. It is essentially an audio course, but there's also a workbook which explains the grammar a bit, has the text of the dialogues and gives some written exercises. To do a lesson in a 30-40 minutes if you listen to the audio on its own (12-15 minutes each lesson), consult the text and do the exercises, then listen to the audio again. There are just over 100 lessons, and they increase in difficulty gradually that you could do one a day, but you might want to do 5 and then spend a few days reviewing the previous 5 for something like that. Fill the remaining time in your hour with a different interesting resource such as Duolingo, Lyrics Training, listening to music, watching German TV or videos, listening to a podcast (e.g. Slow German, Germanpod101, News in Slow German) , or listening to the free lessons from Language Transfer (they have 26 lessons of about 5-7 minutes each).