Can anyone recommend a good course for German please?

[FlingonTheValiant]

I took A level German 7 years ago and I've let it slip a bit since then. I used it a bit for my degree (reading textbooks) and the occasional trip to Germany or Switzerland, but it's certainly not A level standard anymore.

I want to bring it back up to the standard it was (hopefully it'll come back fairly quickly), and in fact get much better at it, hopefully a C1 on the European scale if that helps anyone.

From what I've read the Rosetta Stone course isn't advanced enough, but that might just be the way they write it up.

Can anyone recommend an upper-intermediate to advanced course for German please? I want to be able to write well too, so not just speaking and listening please.

Thanks very much!

[MonarchoftheGarioch]

Hi Flingon - are you anywhere near the Goethe Institut? It's sort of the official place I guess, backed by the German government, and they offer loads of different levels and types of course.

[FlingonTheValiant]

Thank you so much Monarch! I live in London, but I'm not sure I can make their classes, but they do distance learning if not.

Thank you very much!

[FlingonTheValiant]

Oh yikes, I just did their test for levels and I've dropped even more than I thought! Back to basics for me I think!

[MotherMountainGoat]

Hi Flingon, I would recommend the Goethe Institute too. They have a super quality of teaching (and prices to match).

Is the BBC online course too easy for you? It's free, so you could try it out without losing anything.

www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/

At the very least it has some cool extra material. I used the French intermediate course as a refresher and found it very useful.

Don't be too shocked at having dropped a few levels - it will come back quite quickly once you start consistently working on it. But C1 is a pretty high level to aim for in any case - I think you'd need to spend some time in the country to get that far. Even a two-week holiday would help (but with no English input during that time).

Viel Erfolg!

[Canella]

hi flingon!
I have to agree with mothermountaingoat - C1 is an ambitious place to aim for to start off with! i've lived in Germany for 2 years now and speak german everyday and wouldnt be confident of passing C1! And languages are always harder to learn if you dont have a chance to practice them on anyone!

But i agree about the bbc languages website - its got some videos to watch and lessons around them.

Some friends here recommended the Deutsche Welle website - not sure if the instructions are in english tho!

Do you have anywhere or anyone to practice on?

[FlingonTheValiant]

Hi,

Thanks for all those. I'll have a look at the BBC and Deutsche Welle.

I'm was planning to aim for C1 as I used to be at B2, so that's where I'd like to get too. But as I've dropped so much I think it'll take me a while just to reach B2 again :(

I'm hoping to put in several holidays to Germany and also do a proper study trip there, so I'd get some practice that way. Other than that I need to find a new German friend, I've lost touch with my old ones.

Thanks again!

[rachel1970]

Two additional suggestions:
You can get (free) German tv with a satellite dish
Most of the German Saturday Schools run classes for adults too - might be worth checking out.
Good luck!