Customer Reviews

Oxford Take Off in German: A Complete Language Learning Pack Book & 4 CDs

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This is my first time with a language course of this sort. There are four "Audio CDs" with the course, NOT CD-ROM as Amazon lists it. The course focuses on listening and trying to pick up as much as you can without looking at the written transcriptions, then working with the transcriptions later and studying various rules. I find that there are several minor errors, for example (the book claims that "grauen Anzüge" are the blue suits (should be gray I believe) and some of the dialogue is just silly. There are reviews and tests after each section and frequently a test expects you to know words that you won't learn until following sections - I consider this to be an error but perhaps they want you to buy their dictionary as well. I find that I frequently look up a word has been thrown in without it's translation being included in the lesson yet. Despite those problems, I am learning very quickly with very little effort so they must be doing something right. I usually listen to each section several times, then listen again while reading the transcription in the booklet. Then I read alone and review earlier sections in the book to get the more difficult rules down. The price is low and I was able to pick up quite a lot in just a couple of weeks. The book is small enough to fit in your back pocket and contains a lot of grammatical information at the back in addition to the lessons. As you move through the lessons they begin to give some of the instructions in German and it happens at a gradual pace after you've learned enough to understand. You will need a CD player with a convienient pause (remote control helps) as there is very little space after the phrases you are to repeat. If your CD player doesn't have "search" feature you would do better to buy the tape version or make tapes from the CDs as you will want to back up and hear a phrase again without starting at the beginning of the track.

After trying out several German sets, this is one that I really enjoyed. The dialog is spoken clearly (a problem with some other sets I tried) and is very practical. And you do get nearly five hours of dialog, more than many other sets at the same price.

I'd suggest listening to the recorded sections a number of times, and you WILL learn basic to intermediate German!

I didn't have much expectation with this learning pack book as I never bought this kind of "learn-it-yourself" products before, but I must admit that I was agreably surprised. The package contains 4 CDs of dialogue and this is REALLY helpful, not only to get the pronunciation right but also to feel comfortable with the accent and be able to follow basic conversations (which was my main concern). You get a transcript of the dialogues as well, so even if you don't get everything, you can always follow up in the text. While some dialogues are a little bit silly, most of them are helpful and contain expressions one is likely to use in everyday situations. Grammar elements are explained and progressively integrated in the learning process which allows you to really understand the sentence structures instead of simply memorizing or repeating them - it's a little more difficult, but I think that's the way to do it if you want to learn a new language and be serious about it. A brief summary of basic grammar rules is included at the end of the booklet, so I could look up from time to time to refresh my memory. I don't think any learning pack book can replace classes or immersion, but I found the package useful as a first step to get familiar with German. I think it's a good bargain for the price you pay - you can get it below $30 - and after looking up the (bad) reviews for the (expensive) German version of Rosetta stone, I'm glad I started off with this package!!

It is a very useful tool for anyone learning German, especially if you are starting from scratch, would recommend it.