Hey guys, I want to learn German.
I set up a LiveMocha account and did the first like 3-4 lessons on it, but they don't really explain anything, I figure it'd be very good way to practise (especially writing and pronouncing since it gets rated by others on the site) and pick up some new words but a terrible way to learn.
Any sites you can suggest for this?
Tons of sites seem to think learning a language == memorising a bunch of phrases.
Others (Like german.about.com) seem to think learning a language == staring at ads, links everywhere and off topic shit trying to figure out what the fuck you're supposed to be reading.
Any decent, effective ways of learning that I can do on internet, don't have the money for a course or anything?
Name:
Anonymous2009-01-25 11:09
Languages online usually suck, I'd recommend getting a textbook (A High school or College one) and going through it, they generally come with CDs full of conversations (with questions about it in the books) and stuff like news articles and extracts from books for reading.
Spend a while each day doing that (don't overdo it, an hour or even half an hour at a time is plenty, any more and you'll quickly lose concentration).
Go back to LiveMocha regularly, and do any exercises you can do (First lots of exercises there just use the verb "to be" and some basic adjectives and nouns, so you should be able to do them soon and pick up a few words along the way), I'd never use it for learning, but as you said, excellent for practising if you can find some good people there to help you and review your work.
I'm trying to learn too and using german-grammar.de.
It teaches the grammar (obvious from the URL) instead of just phrases, it's written by native a German speaker so parts of it it's actually hard to understand the English at first, but it's the best you can get.
Getting textbooks for schools would be fine too, a lot of people are put off using schoolbooks since they think it seems childish, but I'd say just do it, they're the best you can find.