Aspiring polyglot

When Eric was a baby, my oldest sister was studying German. Eric and I learned to say, "Nudelsuppe ist sehr gut!" (Noodle soup is very good!)

Years later, my youngest sister (meine Schwester) was studying German. By this time the oldest had long exited her German phase. I found the aural only approach of the Pimsleur German course an excellent introduction. It taught me to say fluently, "Ich verstehe nur ein bisschen Deutsch." (I understand only a little bit of German.)

I am again dabbling in German. The internet offers tremendous learning opportunities for aspiring polyglots. My current favorite is an online audio German language course for beginners called Radio D.

Unlike Pimsleur, Radio D also includes the script of the lessons, so I am now also learning to read German as I learn to understand more of it. For an avid reader, learning to connect the sounds of a language with their written representations constitutes an important part of the language learning process.  At some point with Pimsleur, I began craving to read  the conversations on paper that I could understand by hearing them.  Radio D fills that need by helping me to advance while at the same time helping me to learn to read the language.

Radio D lessons can be found at:

http://www.goethe.de/lrn/prj/rod/enindex.htm


Whenever someone asks my recommendation for a self-study language learning course, my first choice for beginners is always Pimsleur.   HEARING and LISTENING to the language first, without seeing the words, is an important part of learning.  My three years of French study in high school and follow up years of French courses in college left me dependent upon reading to understand what was being said.

At the Lycee Franco-Americain International School, I was placed in an immersion environment in which people do not hold up cue cards or subtitles for me to read as I listen to their words.  This immersion has created more growth in my French language learning than all the years of studying in high school, college, and community school classes combined.  For beginners, Pimsleur offers a simulated immersion environment, not a "listen and repeat like a parrot and try not to fall asleep from the boredom" method. 

To understand why THE PIMSLEUR METHOD™ is different, go to

http://www.pimsleur.com/The-Pimsleur-Method


P.S.  My all-time favorite book on learning languages is Barry Farber's "How To Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own"

http://www.amazon.com/How-Learn-Any-Language-Inexpensively/dp/0806512717