|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Good Feb 14, 2007
We like to listen to the tape in the car. We also listen to it if we are sitting around the house doing nothing. I was suprised that the tape didnt teach the alpahbet just because thats what you always learn first when learning a 2nd lang. but over all its good
33 of 33 found the following review helpful:
Should be called "Learn German While Jogging" Jun 04, 2005
I found the first set, "level one", of the Learn in Your Car German series to be an excellent refresher to basic German travel and shopping words. Years ago I had two years of German in my US high school, but I struggled with the language. I bought this first CD in order to relearn enough German to get around Germany and Switzerland, and ended up listening to the CD both on my 1-hour weekend commutes and while jogging (after ripping the CDs into mp3 format and adding them to my work out setlist).
The CD really does start off with very basic words and phrases, focusing a bit more on travel related words like bus stop, train station, how much does it cost, etc. I honestly think that people whom have not taken German will be able to pick up on the basic phrases, but that people whom speak some German already will find these first 3 disks rather slow.
There are some words included in the lessons that I've never had the chance to use. Furthermore, some of the words are a bit out of date, such as references to the Deutsch Mark. It would have been nice for that track to be updated to talk about the Euro. I also found that the disk and my German language background did not prepare me for situations such as a local offering to buy me a drink!
The CD set comes with a nice, small book. Sadly, while I've found it easy to listen to the CD again and again while jogging and to a lesser degree while driving, I've never found the time to read the book while listening to the CD. I do feel it would help both my ability to speak German and more importantly, my ability to read the language.
I liked this set enough to buy the level 2 set. Furthermore, I found the way the lessons were broken up very useful in skipping tracks and focusing on the vocabulary I felt I'd need.
19 of 28 found the following review helpful:
 Outdated May 10, 2005
Don't buy this CD. I just bought it used for cheap but it still wasn't worth it because it is outdated with lessons on German Franks, etc. It also spends way too much time on individual words instead of basic conversations. I was looking for a CD that would prepare me enough for a two-week trip and these lessons are over the place. I felt there were too much train and train station phrases, they even had the phrase "I'd like a room with a bathroom," which I feel is highly unnecessary these days. I've tried Pimsleur's CDs and they were more practical.
37 of 38 found the following review helpful:
 Stop listening to radio commercials, start learning German! Jan 22, 2005
I just bought and started this set yesterday, and it is *exactly* what I wanted. After reading numerous reviews of this set and the same series in other languages, I was convinced this was the way to go. My only regret is that I didn't buy the complete 3-level set. I can tell I am going to want to continue once I've mastered level 1.
There is an accompanying CD that features an interview with a laguage expert about how to learn languages, but I couldn't wait and started on disc 1. Right away, you are learning German like children learn their native language -- one word, then two words, then short sentences.
I do recommend starting by sitting with the book once. It helps to see the spelling of the words as you listen to the German speaker say them. Not every word's spelling is apparent in my head as I listen, so I found this much more helpful for remembering the words and for overall understanding and pronunciation.
German and English are both Germanic languages, so the language makes sense. It's a very descriptive language and you already know quite a few words from watching war movies or Hogan's Heroes on tv. (Achtung, bitte! Das ist verboten.) The most difficult part will be pronunciation, so I will practice a lot to avoid having a bad American accent as much as possible.
When I was a kid in the early 70s, my family moved to Brazil for a year. There was no system to teach kids Portuguese and my brothers and I really suffered from not speaking the language. Now that I anticipate moving to Germany for a few years, I will do whatever I can to teach my children German as well. I plan to purchase Learn in the Car German for Kids, so we can all learn together. Then we'll go from there.
Bottom line: If you want to learn German easily on your own and maximize the value of your time in the car, get this set!
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Good content, but too quiet Mar 03, 2002
Decent content, well organized. Unfortunately, the audio level is so low that you have to crank the volume way up. Forget that you did that (or fail to react fast enough when the track ends) and you blow your ears out when the next track starts.
|
| | |
