learn german

I’ve finally got around to taking this seriously again. I have – or at least I think I have – basic and advanced German and a language building programme by Michel Thomas now on my media player. It’s good particularly for grammar and sentence structure because Michel really drives it home, and he goes over things so thoroughly and clearly that you can remember them and it’s easy to learn.

I think to date I’ve only completed three or four basic CDs from beginning to end but they’ll need listening to again as I lose odd words sometimes. I’m gonna take it seriously and listen to it religiously for a week or so to get more phrases to properly sink in.

Hoping to get back into this again now. At the moment I can’t say much, and I seem to have difficulty remembering what I’ve learnt.

Currently, I can do the basic introduction, i.e. my name, age, nationality, my birthday, where I live and who with, relatives who live elsewhere, and what I like to do in my free time, without assistance.

I can also say a few basic phrases about understanding each other, asking about mood etc. etc. Just the very basic stuff really.

For those right at the very beginning of their language learning adventure (much like myself), and who persevere to teach themselves as I do, I’d like to share a few links I’ve come across that have helped me pick up one or two things:

Beginner phrases – http://www.smartphrase.com/German/ge_general_words_phr.shtml

A wealth of info – http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/

Tons of stuff, dunno if it helps or hinders – http://pukkagerman.com/season1/german_sayings.html

Also, for anyone who is interested, I have the Michel Thomas German Language Builder discs 1 & 2, which is essentially around 2 hours of various conversational phrases and sentences. To tell the truth I haven’t listened to it all myself yet but what I’ve heard so far is good. If you want this, let me know and we can come to some kind of email/MSN/other file transferring agreement (the cds are divided into multiple 4-12 minute long tracks) =)

I bought a phrasebook and an English – German dictionary and downloaded some free language software (www.beforeyouknowit.com) to help me with this goal, but since I’ve set myself up to learn German, I’ve been needing to brush up my French, so this goal is on hold for the next 11 weeks.

I’ve decided that instead of learning a couple words every time I feel like it (as I have been) I’m going to buy some language tapes/software as soon as I have some money, which will probably be in about a fortnight.

I was thinking about this, http://www.linkwordlanguages.com/german.htm, and there are a couple of interesting packs on Amazon too. Can anyone suggest anything?