Answers
Nov 17, 2013 - 07:49 AM
Hueber (a publisher) has a number of easy literature books, graduated in difficulty, that come with questions on the reading AND a CD, so you can hear what the text is supposed to sound like and hear the cadence of the language. Very nice. Around $20. When I travel I do Pimsleur Level IV because the audio portion (as opposed to reading and writing) in Fluenz is, well, a bit lame.
Nov 18, 2013 - 10:35 PM
I have used German POD 101 which is an excellent website you might check into. I have also since last year, used "Penpals International" and have had mixed results. I also attended a Berlin language school for several months last year as a complete beginner-fantastic experience! I have also found several inexpensive German native tutors to help me enhance my conversational skills via the internet.
Nov 18, 2013 - 10:40 PM
I forgot to mention this other website called "about.com/german. It is an excellent resource-I have downloaded onto my printer a lot of useful grammar and vocabulary info into my German binders. Ingrid Bauer is the person responsible for the content and is superb. Please check it out!
Nov 19, 2013 - 03:36 AM
I am an expat in Germany and my company also provides a tutor. The course book we're using is "Begegnungen - Deutsch als Fremdsprache A1+" covers a lot of the same material plus a ton more vocabulary for a variety of situations. I've found that while the tutoring introduces a concept, reviewing it in Fluenz as well helps me internalize it. I'm also about halfway through level 2 and while I now know how to ask a ton of questions, I often can't understand the answers. Thankfully many Germans are much more fluent in English than I am in German, though I can tell they appreciate me trying rather than immediately asking "Sprechen Sie Englisch?"
At work we use the site http://dict.leo.org/ for translation, it has a variety of translations in multiple contexts if a word has multiple meanings. It's the best online German<->English dictionary I've seen so far. Google translate is okay for large passages of text, but it really fails on conjugated separable verbs and larger constructed words.
We also plan to start watching German language movies with the subtitles set to German and television with closed captioning on to start improving listening comprehension.
At work we use the site http://dict.leo.org/ for translation, it has a variety of translations in multiple contexts if a word has multiple meanings. It's the best online German<->English dictionary I've seen so far. Google translate is okay for large passages of text, but it really fails on conjugated separable verbs and larger constructed words.
We also plan to start watching German language movies with the subtitles set to German and television with closed captioning on to start improving listening comprehension.