Please watch the free videos before purchase, especially the lectures Der Regenschirm and Der Regenschirm: commentary & summary, to make sure that this course is a good match for you.
Welcome to my course! This is not a traditional German course, which means we will not start with phrases to introduce yourself, that you then have to learn by heart. Instead, we will work with very simple sentences straight away, and then you will learn the German grammar along these simple sentences.
You will learn everything that you need on this beginner level, so you are not going to miss introductions, what to say in the supermarket, restaurant and so on, only you will learn it when you can actually understand and formulate it yourself. So what this course is aiming for is giving you a maximum of flexibility in using the language rather than working with phrases, of which you might not understand the structure.
The lectures are mostly bite-sized and supported with visuals to help you remember all the new things you learn.
Don't feel pressured if you have no knowledge of German. Try to do what you can - everything will be explained eventually. When you review the lectures with the German sentences later, it will already seem a lot easier. There is an English translation for each new word integrated in the video lectures. Use the section 'Describing things' to get used to the sound of the language. The section after that is about the pronunciation rules. Later, you can return to 'Describing things' and apply some of the pronunciation rules already.
For each topic there are lectures that solely contain examples. Use the pauses in between to repeat the sentences. You can also adjust the speed setting on the Udemy video player (bottom left: 1x) if you feel that things are going too fast (or too slow).
The practice video lectures have been designed for on the go situations as well as for home studying. That way, you can pick whichever version suits your situation better: fully digitalized or with pen and paper, or both, since repetition is key in language acquisition. The two test versions to choose from will be available after we have covered some basics.
Apart from the practice video lectures, there are also quizzes, exercises (e.g. translations, sentence building) and some additional downloadable material, which you can find by clicking on the "Resources" fields attached to some lectures in the lectures overview on the right side of the video player. The solutions are included.
I tried to go into as much detail as possible but of course there could still be situations, in which you might struggle. Remember that this is a video course, so you can watch lectures over and over.
(This course does not contain mock testing as a direct preparation for standardized language tests.)
