Self Teaching Foreign Lanuguage books.

[Tekki]

I have a lot of free time at the moment and plan on getting back into school in the next 6 months. In the meantime I'd like to fill this time with something constructive. I will be going back with foreign language in mind and wanted to know if anyone had any experience with workbooks. I usually carry around something to read at work for breaks, and have a lot of time at home to study.

Any suggestions on a German Work book? I'm looking at a 4th Edition "German in Review" at the moment. I don't want to worry too much about vocabulary, that will come later. I'd like to mix it with basic grammar primarily, with vocabulary secondary.

I drive 20-30min to work everyday (40-60min total in car) so audio suggestions are welcome too.

[_chuchu]

Rosetta Stone

[Kerberoz]

Rosetta Stone

This, plus school textbooks in the language if you can get your hands on some.

[Pirian]

Rosetta Stone is the answer. It's more expensive, but it really is worth it.

[Qalbert]

http://uploading.com/files/cdda63d5/german.rar/

[Tekki]

rosetta stone isnt very portable lol.... I actually do want to try it at home. but was wanting something to do on breaks and when i travel.

[Not not Mattaru]

You can find pretty good podcasts as a supplement while you travel. I am not sure of a good one for German since I don't practice German anymore, just look for the higher rated/staff picks under the Education section fro Podcasts.

As far as textbooks I am not sure, the only big company that comes to mind that does a lot of different languages is Berlitz - which I would think would not be like an academic textbook meant to be used in a classroom setting.

[Cream Soda]

Rosetta Stone is the answer. It's more expensive, but it really is worth it.

or free

[kawaiiuzume]

if you want something portable that's quick I've had some luck with the Japanese and Korean lessons from here
http://innovativelanguage.com/

the German one is here, I haven't listened to it since they started out so I'm not sure how they are now. I don't think they let you download everything for free just the a certain amount of time back but if you keep up on it, you can get quite a bit out of it if they are anywhere near as good as their Japanese and Korean counterparts.
http://www.germanpod101.com/index.php

[Baha]

Would Rosetta Stone V2 still work on a win7 64bit system? V3 torrents don't have Thai sadly. :/

[Kerberoz]

I don't see why not... it's XP software, not old old stuff.

[Darus Grey]

I wouldn't pay a cent for Rosetta Stone... developed by language acquisition experts my ass...

Honestly the only reason to buy any software/book is for vocabulary.

The entire grammar of most languages fills up less than a page frequently. You also do yourself an immense favor learning all conjugation forms at the same time and not one every few months like a traditional course does, helps you avoid one of the major fluency barriers later on(Favoring the simple present because you worked with it the longest, which causes you to word things in round-a-bout ways that sound unnatural).

[Slapper]

I hear German is a pain in the ass to learn

[Beckwin]

I would say that it is pretty useful to at least get a handle on present, past, and future quickly... however in the case of German I'm pretty sure there's some specific grammar for talking about the historic past and such that would be pretty useless for quite some time. In German you'll also have different forms for some tenses for written vs. spoken.

One source I found interesting about language learning is here:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog...-plus-a-favor/

This guy also has some other relevant articles, but this one in particular I found to be personally useful. Pay attention to the sentences he lists for translation:

The apple is red.
It is John’s apple.
I give John the apple.
We give him the apple.
He gives it to John.
She gives it to him.
I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.

Getting native German translations of those will give you an instant crash course in pronouns, verb conjugation, how auxiliary verbs work (tip: in German, verbs after the conjugated one go at the end of the sentence), and so on. From there, you can simply change a few of the sentences to past and future tenses.

I did this with a Korean native speaker, and while I don't have the overall results that this guy talks about in his blog, I can confidently say that I was able to quickly apply the concepts learned from doing this in real-world situations.

I also want to recommend the website www.livemocha.com. I definitely have some criticisms of the material offered, and it would not function very well as your sole source of language learning, but the activities are very time-friendly: you can knock out some flash cards or sentence building in 15-20 minutes or you can spend longer and add some writing or speaking exercises to your study session. Plus you'll be able to find native speakers to chat with. I've mostly used this site for Korean, but I've dabbled in the German as well just to see what I can still do.

As for car studying... if you get a good book with an audio CD, play that in your car. Often you'll get conversations and/or vocabulary on those CDs. Just play it on your way to school/work, you can even try the more advanced stuff you can't quite comprehend yet.

Unfortunately it's been quite a while since I've studied any German, so I can't recommend a good text for you.

Hope any of this helps.

[Darus Grey]

Not just Present/Past/Future as a note:

Present Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect
Preterite
Imperfect
Past continuous
Conditional
Past Perfect
Future
Future Perfect

Some languages also have the simple future and the subjunctive.

I'm not sure which ones German features, but that's a list of all the different tenses that generally have different conjugations. As I said, it's really helpful to learn them all at once.

edit: Actually just read the wiki article, they actually have the breakdown in german now that I look.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense

[Scorp]

Hey Tekki. Random suggestion, if a large chunk of the time you are learning from home but have nothing to do with the commute time then instead of the expensive textbook style learning tapes you can look into kids books on tape.

They tend to be read really slowly and contain a lot of basic grammar mixed with general vocab.

[Viq]

the German one is here, I haven't listened to it since they started out so I'm not sure how they are now. I don't think they let you download everything for free just the a certain amount of time back but if you keep up on it, you can get quite a bit out of it if they are anywhere near as good as their Japanese and Korean counterparts.
http://www.germanpod101.com/index.php

^ I'll second this. I got a great deal of use out of their Korean site when I first started trying to learn that language. If the German one is on par with the quality of the Korean site, then I can't imagine a better place to start.

[Beckwin]

Not just Present/Past/Future as a note:

Present Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect
Preterite
Imperfect
Past continuous
Conditional
Past Perfect
Future
Future Perfect

Some languages also have the simple future and the subjunctive.

I'm not sure which ones German features, but that's a list of all the different tenses that generally have different conjugations. As I said, it's really helpful to learn them all at once.

edit: Actually just read the wiki article, they actually have the breakdown in german now that I look.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense

Ok, I see what you're saying. I'd agree that in most cases, basic grammar and the tenses can be summed up in about a page.

On that note, do you know any resources for 1 page grammar for a variety of languages?

[Milks]

kannst du schon ein bisschen deutsch und möchtest einfach es verbessern?

or you just want to learn it for fun? why german? first, think about if you seriously want to learn the language. if you aren't serious, and can't devote serious time, it's hard to really learn anything at all.

if you really want to try something that will work wonders for your commute to work, try listening to michel thomas's audio courses. they're very easy to follow if you can ignore the idiots working with him.

[Vigilia]

Also, once you have the raw basics down, get children's books. It's kind of similar to what Beckwin said, but it's so easy to repeat simple things from children's books along the lines of "Where is the cat?" "Here is the cat!" "Cat is on the chair" "Cat was outside" etc. etc. and those are the building blocks of any language. Also, if you have more of a picture memory like some of us do, the illustrations do help. Rosetta stone works on similar principle in that you start with the basic building blocks of a language and work up like a child would.

Traditional adult textbook learning is often harder as it tends to start teaching you from a business/tourist point of view and you instantly jump into practical things like "I'm an engineer and I specialize in quantum physics" or "My phone number is 00139456238756". Which, while practical for some, are just a horrible way to get stuck into a new language if you genuinely want to learn to use it and not just get through your business/holiday trip.