German group

[M23]

First post in this thread everyone. I'm not sure if I'm even "learning" German now--it sort of just snuck into my days recently--but I've been going through Duolingo's German course and I have to say it's the best Duolingo course I've tried thus far.

Usually with Duolingo courses I become frustrated with the scarce grammar notes and I find it really difficult to learn with Duolingo as a complete beginner, but with German so far all the grammar is just clicking. I don't know if it's because this Duolingo course is better than others I've messed around with, or if German just seems more logical to me.

Anyways, it's only been three weeks so I may be speaking too soon here, but Duolingo is fun and useful this far!

If you are interested a couple of us are in a Duolingo group. There is room to join in if you want (EYFAD7).

I have been enjoying it so far as well. I finished the Spanish course many moons ago and I just wasn't enjoying it as much as I am enjoying the German one. It is also a nice little tool to help me squeeze in some German when I am on the go - which seems to be my default state nowadays. Last week was really helpful as well because WalkingAlone and I were in a nice little arms race to get the top slot for the week, and that helped push me to get a few extra lessons/refreshers in.

[Fortheo]

First post in this thread everyone. I'm not sure if I'm even "learning" German now--it sort of just snuck into my days recently--but I've been going through Duolingo's German course and I have to say it's the best Duolingo course I've tried thus far.

Usually with Duolingo courses I become frustrated with the scarce grammar notes and I find it really difficult to learn with Duolingo as a complete beginner, but with German so far all the grammar is just clicking. I don't know if it's because this Duolingo course is better than others I've messed around with, or if German just seems more logical to me.

Anyways, it's only been three weeks so I may be speaking too soon here, but Duolingo is fun and useful this far!

If you are interested a couple of us are in a Duolingo group. There is room to join in if you want (EYFAD7).

I have been enjoying it so far as well. I finished the Spanish course many moons ago and I just wasn't enjoying it as much as I am enjoying the German one. It is also a nice little tool to help me squeeze in some German when I am on the go - which seems to be my default state nowadays. Last week was really helpful as well because WalkingAlone and I were in a nice little arms race to get the top slot for the week, and that helped push me to get a few extra lessons/refreshers in.

Thanks. I joined, but i only do like 3 or 4 lessons a day, so I doubt I'll give you all any competition on there.

My name is teteran123 on Duolingo.

[M23]

First post in this thread everyone. I'm not sure if I'm even "learning" German now--it sort of just snuck into my days recently--but I've been going through Duolingo's German course and I have to say it's the best Duolingo course I've tried thus far.

Usually with Duolingo courses I become frustrated with the scarce grammar notes and I find it really difficult to learn with Duolingo as a complete beginner, but with German so far all the grammar is just clicking. I don't know if it's because this Duolingo course is better than others I've messed around with, or if German just seems more logical to me.

Anyways, it's only been three weeks so I may be speaking too soon here, but Duolingo is fun and useful this far!

If you are interested a couple of us are in a Duolingo group. There is room to join in if you want (EYFAD7).

I have been enjoying it so far as well. I finished the Spanish course many moons ago and I just wasn't enjoying it as much as I am enjoying the German one. It is also a nice little tool to help me squeeze in some German when I am on the go - which seems to be my default state nowadays. Last week was really helpful as well because WalkingAlone and I were in a nice little arms race to get the top slot for the week, and that helped push me to get a few extra lessons/refreshers in.

Thanks. I joined, but i only do like 3 or 4 lessons a day, so I doubt I'll give you all any competition on there.

My name is teteran123 on Duolingo.

Sometimes I have weeks where I can stay in the game. Some weeks a couple lessons a day is all I can squeeze in, so on those weeks we can duel for third place.

[MikyMouse]

Dear all,

I only yesterday discovered this forum and after having skim read all the posts in this thread I decided to join in.

As for my German learning story...

At the beginning of August last year (so approximately a year to date) I moved to Austria not being able to speak a word of German. Just before moving I purchased myself a set of BBC German Language books called: Talk German 1, Talk German 2 and Talk German Grammer. I am not sure if anyone else here has used them as I've never seen them mentioned. When I arrived in Austria I started going through the 1st book in the series and then switched to Duo and back to the books again. Other than those resources I tried out Memrise very briefly as well as one of the DW courses. Recently with all my travels and work commitments I just haven't been committed to learning but really would like to learn the language. To date, I've completed book 1 of the aforementioned series, started book 2 and abandoned Duo, but quite honestly the books are a tad boring.

I guess my proficiency is between the A1 and A2 level (I did an A1 preparatory test online a week or so ago, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I only got 1 answer wrong).

Right now I have a new found determination to learn the language (starting Monday this week) with maximum effort that I can exert. At the moment these are the resources that I'm using (or should I say just started using):

• Language Transfer: German
• Memrise (German 1)
• Tandem (a chat app)
• as well as, as much background / immersion material as possible (Deutschlandfunk radio on the way to work and the odd TV series in the evening

Once I've made my way through Language Transfer I plan on doing the Warum Nicht? courses by DW as well as continuing with the Memrise packs. After that I am not quite sure. I see lots of mentions of Asimill (but only the 1st course being available from English as a base), Mark Thomas as well as Pimsleur. Can anyone advise on where I should turn to next? The Pimsleur course seems to be quite pricey, but I am willing to spend the money if it'll get me ahead. I've also seen a plethora of other online resources such as FluentU, Rosetta Stone etc. etc. Do any of you subscribe to Memrise Premium?

Lastly, a big thanks to all the contributors here, the information that I've found in this thread already so far, has been very helpful.

[Cavesa]

Hi, welcome!

I don't think Michel Thomas or Pimsleur would help you, and the cost is pretty high. You are beyond that point probably. Rosetta Stone is crap. And Memrise Pro doesn't give you anything that useful for the price, plus Memrise is being changed a lot now, and not necessarily for the better, I would wait before paying. However, you can access a lot of free courses made by the users, and they tend to be better than the official ones (but it's been some time since I looked at the official ones, I really disliked them). Anki is another great option of an SRS. Clozemaster is very good, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The resources on the Deutsche Welle are great, Assimil is awesome. But you might profit a lot from a normal course with all the grammar, vocab, exercises, and so on. I like Themen Aktuell, I am in the middle of the second volume, and I really like it. But there are many more options. Language Trasfer is good, but the German course is being created extremely slowly, I am not sure how far it leads now.

Before you start spending a lot, I'd recommend visiting a few libraries around, perhaps they might provide you with a lot of resources. Or at least the bookstores, to leaf through the books you consider, instead of buying blindly.

[MikyMouse]

Hi, welcome!

I don't think Michel Thomas or Pimsleur would help you, and the cost is pretty high. You are beyond that point probably. Rosetta Stone is crap. And Memrise Pro doesn't give you anything that useful for the price, plus Memrise is being changed a lot now, and not necessarily for the better, I would wait before paying. However, you can access a lot of free courses made by the users, and they tend to be better than the official ones (but it's been some time since I looked at the official ones, I really disliked them). Anki is another great option of an SRS. Clozemaster is very good, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The resources on the Deutsche Welle are great, Assimil is awesome. But you might profit a lot from a normal course with all the grammar, vocab, exercises, and so on. I like Themen Aktuell, I am in the middle of the second volume, and I really like it. But there are many more options. Language Trasfer is good, but the German course is being created extremely slowly, I am not sure how far it leads now.

Before you start spending a lot, I'd recommend visiting a few libraries around, perhaps they might provide you with a lot of resources. Or at least the bookstores, to leaf through the books you consider, instead of buying blindly.

Hi Cavesa, thanks for the welcome as well as the insightful info especially on the resources. I think that I'll finish up the German 1 'official' course (which shouldn't take me too long) and then look for the other courses by users that you mention. I actaully forgot to mention that I have Anki already, and am building my own deck on it of words that I see in my chat app that I have to look up. Hopefully that will give me a way to recall these words. Thanks for the Clozemaster recommendation - I've signed up and can really see the value in this already!

Good to hear positive feedback on DW - I'll be sure to visit them after I've completed the Language Transfer course. FYI at the moment they have 37 episodes with more scheduled to be released in September. They plan on recording more in October with the final set being released in November.

Thanks again for the recommendation on Themen Aktuell I had a quick look and they do look interesting. Did you buy the bilingual versions I presume? Did you buy the glossary and CDs too? From what I can tell there seems to be 3 parts to Themen Aktuell 1 - The workbook (ISBN 9783192516900), the 2 CDs (ISBN 9783190316908) and the glossary (ISBN 9783190816903)? There seems to be a few more German only books in the range.

I did think of that so will search my local libraries, however I'm not too hopeful for any English based material in the Austrian libraries.

Thanks again for all the tips and suggestions

[WalkingAlone13]

Hey MikyMouse, welcome to the forum!

I know Cavesa has already responded with some good information, but I just wanted to add to it a little. You mention that you are using the official Memrise course, I did up to 6, but I would only recommend going up to 4. There starts to be little phrases and such that with hindsight would not be worth learning early on. I really like the 4k Wordlist for German when you move away from the official courses. Apart from that I would try to find a Memrise course of the workbook you decide to use. I believe there are such unofficial courses for themen Aktuell (Not sure which is goes up to), Schritte international and at least the first 3 Menschen books.

I would also point out that there is actually more to Memrise pro now other than the graph features. I previously wrote a post about this before realising that the features I was referring to were pro features. I have not tried these on the website, but on the app you get many more features such as grammar, dialogues in which you have to complete, and also you see the video snippets of native speakers using the word/phrase. The grammar sections are not mandatory in completing the course, and I believe there are three per course. Note that these features are only available on the official courses to the best of my knowledge, and actually, because of the addition of these new features, it is entirely possible that the annoyances from the fourth course onward have been removed/bettered. I cannot say how much I would pay for these additions, in all honesty, and I do not remember how much it costs to become a pro member - I won my membership.

The Themen Aktuell coursebooks receive a lot of praise in general, but after buying them I found them unusable. I could not even sell mine on. If you are able to check them out in person, or via pdf or similar first, I would highly recommend it. Some other books for consideration, though the same applies as for the above, would be the Menschen series (we used these at university) and my personal favourite, Schritte international/Schritte new. I have unfortunately had to buy/work with quite a few different coursebooks and for me the Menschen and Schritte series were the only ones I could get on with. I am finding that coursebooks are definitely a very personal thing and different for everybody.

The last point I wanted to touch on was that I am not sure how useful you will find the Warum nicht audio course. I would place it inbetween the first Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. It was more useful in terms of gaining cultural insight than vocabulary acquisition. On the other hand, I highly praise the DW Deutsch interaktiv course. You do need to create an account before you can use it, but it's no hassle. This course has a bit of everything and is incredibly thorough. I was going to say for a free resource but that would not be fair at all as it is more thorough than a lot of courses in general.

Pimsleur and Michel Thomas helped me out a lot early on but as you are already in a German speaking country, you possibly have other means of practising your spoken German, so if that is the case, they would definitely not be worth the price tag, especially Pimsleur.

You might also benefit from some short cartoons on Youtube. I started off watching Kirby in German as the episodes are roughly twenty minutes and it was not overly tedious to pick up on everything. I wish you all the best with your German adventure.

[MikyMouse]

Hey MikyMouse, welcome to the forum!

I know Cavesa has already responded with some good information, but I just wanted to add to it a little. You mention that you are using the official Memrise course, I did up to 6, but I would only recommend going up to 4. There starts to be little phrases and such that with hindsight would not be worth learning early on. I really like the 4k Wordlist for German when you move away from the official courses. Apart from that I would try to find a Memrise course of the workbook you decide to use. I believe there are such unofficial courses for themen Aktuell (Not sure which is goes up to), Schritte international and at least the first 3 Menschen books.

I would also point out that there is actually more to Memrise pro now other than the graph features. I previously wrote a post about this before realising that the features I was referring to were pro features. I have not tried these on the website, but on the app you get many more features such as grammar, dialogues in which you have to complete, and also you see the video snippets of native speakers using the word/phrase. The grammar sections are not mandatory in completing the course, and I believe there are three per course. Note that these features are only available on the official courses to the best of my knowledge, and actually, because of the addition of these new features, it is entirely possible that the annoyances from the fourth course onward have been removed/bettered. I cannot say how much I would pay for these additions, in all honesty, and I do not remember how much it costs to become a pro member - I won my membership.

The Themen Aktuell coursebooks receive a lot of praise in general, but after buying them I found them unusable. I could not even sell mine on. If you are able to check them out in person, or via pdf or similar first, I would highly recommend it. Some other books for consideration, though the same applies as for the above, would be the Menschen series (we used these at university) and my personal favourite, Schritte international/Schritte new. I have unfortunately had to buy/work with quite a few different coursebooks and for me the Menschen and Schritte series were the only ones I could get on with. I am finding that coursebooks are definitely a very personal thing and different for everybody.

The last point I wanted to touch on was that I am not sure how useful you will find the Warum nicht audio course. I would place it inbetween the first Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. It was more useful in terms of gaining cultural insight than vocabulary acquisition. On the other hand, I highly praise the DW Deutsch interaktiv course. You do need to create an account before you can use it, but it's no hassle. This course has a bit of everything and is incredibly thorough. I was going to say for a free resource but that would not be fair at all as it is more thorough than a lot of courses in general.

Pimsleur and Michel Thomas helped me out a lot early on but as you are already in a German speaking country, you possibly have other means of practising your spoken German, so if that is the case, they would definitely not be worth the price tag, especially Pimsleur.

You might also benefit from some short cartoons on Youtube. I started off watching Kirby in German as the episodes are roughly twenty minutes and it was not overly tedious to pick up on everything. I wish you all the best with your German adventure.

Hi WalkingAlone13!

First of all thanks for such a detailed response - it is much appreciated, especially as a beginner faced with so many resources these days.

On Memrise, thanks for the tips. I'll perhaps stick with the 1st 4 official courses and then move on to something else. Perhaps the 4k words that you mention. It certainly makes sense following one of the ones based on my chosen course book. On the course book itself thanks for the alternatives, I'll be sure to have a look at them.

I just had a look for the Schritte New books and can only seem to find them in German only. Is this the way that they are / are meant to be or are there bilingual versions (English / German)? I definitely think that I'll get a coursebook of sorts as part of my learning process going forward. Chances are that I'll also start from again A1 and go from there, ensuring a solid grounding - or do you think it's a better idea to jump into A2? As I mentioned in my 1st post I'm not sure where exactly I am in the scheme of things .

With DW I'll be sure to check out the interaktiv course as well for something to do after Language Transfer, however the coursebook that I go with coupled with memrise might very well keep me busy enough. As for my exposure to German in Austria, I find it not to be that helpful in all honesty. The German spoken here is in a strong Austrian dialect which makes it near impossible to understand vs "Hoch Deutsch". I've spoken to a few foreigners here and they all seem to agree. As for practicing spoken German, that's what I plan on using the Tandem app for and so far it has proved to be a fun and engaging learning experience with native speakers. I suguest having a look at it if you're interested .

Lastly, thanks for the recommendation on Kirby - I often want to watch something in German as immersion in the language, but again there is simply so much out there and often watching the series that I normally watch in German is at a too high level for me right now.

[MikyMouse]

PS. Has anyone had any experience with the Hueber Sprachkurs Plus A1/A2 coursebook? I see that it is by the same publisher as the previously mentioned resources and has English as a base. It says that it was published on the 17th August 2017... which was a few days ago (ISBN: 978-3-19-199475-4)

[aokoye]

I did think of that so will search my local libraries, however I'm not too hopeful for any English based material in the Austrian libraries.

Is there a specific reason why you're looking for general textbooks (as opposed to grammar textbooks) that are based in English? If I were you I would find an English grammar book (the Hueber Essential Grammar of German book is a good one and easy to find in Austria) and get a textbook that is entirely in German and has an English glossary. I personally don't actually like the way any of Hueber's general textbooks are laid out (but that's just me) but there are a ton of other DaFbooks. I know a number of people who like the Studio D/Studio 21 books and I personally like the advanced level books from Schubert Verlag.

In short, don't let the lack of English intimidate you. It's going to be far easier to find a quality textbook that is totally in German than one that is in German and English.