Other Resources (A quick review)
Posted Nov 27, 06:56 PM by ben
I thought it would be interesting to blog my journey into learning German. Somewhere in that thought process I forgot that I don’t typically braindump online which has shown through the lack of posts over the last few months. But I am still moving along.
The local library has several books and audio CDs on German. I’ve listened to Living Language: Drive Time German which is a four CD set that I’ve not yet completed. I made it through the first CD which started at the basics and focused on vocabulary. For example, “The car is red” [das auto ist rote] or “is the car old?, no the car is new” [ Ist das auto alt? Nein, das auto is neu]. This was a good primer and I need to get back to it.
Instead I’ve been focused on a 5 CD pack by Pimsleur with the first 10 lessons of their basic German package. The “approach” itself is based on a scientist named Pimsleur back in the 40s who focused on the words by importance and a scrict regiment of repeating at specific intervals. It even has a Wikipedia page. At the moment I’m on lesson 7, each is 30 minutes and you are expected (as based on wikipedia) to attain a 70% comprehension level before moving onto the next lesson. I do highly recommend this method and am sad that the entire 100 lessons cost ~200 dollars. Once I’m done with the 10 lessons I’ll move onto other audio CDs.
Which brings me to two other resources. One is the local channel 71 Community College of Baltimore County which shows “Guten Tag” (best link I could find) twice a week. I just added the showings to my eyeTV schedule. The show itself is a bit past my learning curve but I still enjoy trying to follow it [Ich verstehen nur ein bisschen!]. It also introduces language vocabulary such as Dative vs Accusative etc (Wikipedia truely is a goldmine as a reference guide for introductions). The second resource that can be used in conjunction with audio CDs is Mango Languages, a web 2.0 flash-based language tutorial with roughly 100 german lessons. I’ve not delved too deep into mango yet but was impressed by the first two lessons (each around 100 slides, with audio and color coding to show grammar differences between English and German).
Oh, and I now have several CDs of rammstein on my iPod as an attempt to immerse myself in the language. I’m certainly looking at finding better ways to do this. I (almost) wish I had some German Star Wars DVDs as I already know the English close to word for word. I shouldn’t admit to that.
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
