How should I learn German?

[ciphergoth]

I must learn German. Anyone got any recommendations on the best way to do it?

I don't want to memorize a phrase book; I'm not very good at that and I don't think it really stretches far enough. I'd like to feel like I understand what I'm saying. I'd like ideally to get back to O-level standard German, in which I miraculously scraped a C but was really at D standard or so. I need spoken German to the extent of understanding "You have to get off here; the tram is turning left" and written German for phrases like "Added quick hack to the Java virtual machine for IFA demo".

I'd love to have half decent pronounciation. I used to have a good ear but now my attempts to say anything in German cause giggles.

Should I blow £54 on this set of CDs?

• "German with Michael Thomas Complete Course CD"

Should I trust in good old Auntie?

• "Deutsch Direkt: Cassette pack"

Should I go down some other route?

• "German language learning: results 1 - 50 of 524 items"

ajva? Anyone?

cheers...

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

One suggestion to add to ajva's excellent ones:

Sesame Street.

No, really. Find a German cable channel that carries the German version, or buy videos of it from amazon.de, or something. Lots of repetition and gestures, which really help with some of the tricky stuff like prepositions and remembering how to say numbers and names of letters of the alphabet, etc. It's how my Mum started.

If you decide to buy a course, my personal experience with trying to learn a bit of Gaelic was that videos helped a lot more than audio alone. I also found that I wanted more grammar than the course provided (same problem you're describing with the phrase book approach, I think), so you might want to have a look at the accompanying printed materials first to see if you're going to get that. Borders on Charing Cross Road seemed to have quite a good selection when I was looking to brush up my French.

I'm trying to update my German at the moment by reading a German local newsgroup; you might find that useful for the technical stuff once you understand a reasonable amount of the basic grammar and vocabulary, if there are relevant German-language ngs for the sort of stuff you're doing.

Good luck with it, anyway!

Liz