Customer Reviews

All-Audio German, Basic-Intermediate (Living Language Series; Book and 6 Cassettes)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

i found this course to be very helpful, thorough, and entertaining. it is an excellent learning tool for the price bracket. the key is listening to each tape at least 10-12 times. it will keep you busy for a while. very practical phrases, and up to date vocabulary.

"All-Audio German" is very good at what it does. I found it to be an excellent suplement to my other German book/tape course. (I think it would be difficult to learn grammer with out a text book). The lessons are entertaining and varied, and a great way to make use of driving time. Be advised that the lessons progress at a rapid pace. It will help to have a pause and rewind button to enable reviewing vocabulary, provide extra time to answer quiz questions, and reviewing those occasional fast spoken German lines.

I believe this TAPE is good for people that just want a review of German. The phrases and grammer are spoken too fast to comprehend. If they pronounced the words and phrasese just one third as fast, I would be happy. Rest of course is fine. Still use these TAPES in addition to other learning material. Well worth the price.

If you have a commute like mine, this series is a godsend. With enough repetition, I was able to pick apart the sentences, though some were quite fast. I learned alot, but I agree that having some sort of companion book for 5-10 minutes of grammer review per day was critical.

That being said, a bit more care in production would have produced a far superior product. For example, there is at least one case (lesson 4) where a word in the written dialogue was spoken during the initial reading of a dialogue, but not the second time through. In addition, the series has an annoying habit of using words without introducing them. Words such as 'diesen' (this) and 'heute' (today) were used repeatedly in early lessons before being properly introduced in a later lesson. Similar complaints can be lodged against the written 'bonus' lessons on the web. Plurals, for example, are part of the material for lesson one, but are not explained until lesson 6.

Consider yourself warned. I find that as long as I'm aware that they do these things, they don't bother me so much. The final verdict is still positive, as most other language lessons require much more reading, which I don't have time for.