Good German learning resources - online, tapes etc - recommendations?

[breadandbutterfly]

DD has started German in year 7 and has a slightly-rubbish-sounding German teacher. Would like to find something to help back up dd's school German. She's an auditory not visual learner so books not much use. CDs or online course (even youtube vids) what I'm looking for. Free or paid.

Can anyone recommend anything?

Hi bread

The BBC online courses are free and really rather good:

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

There's a section on GCSE revision too. And links to a number of news channels - just bear in mind that Austrian and Swiss German are quite different from standard German; even after 20 years in Germany I have my difficulties with them.

I can also recommend the Deutsche Welle courses:

www.dw.de/learn-german/german-courses/s-2547

You can join the 'community' here and talk to other German learners:

www.dw.de/deutsch-lernen/community-d/s-9035

LEO is an enormously popular German-English dictionary and forum:

dict.leo.org/forum/index.php?lang=de&lp=ende

No videos, but good for asking questions and practicing written German.

Any chance you could fly over for the weekend/next summer or arrange a language exchange? That would be absolutely the best way of learning for an auditory learner.

Thanks, Alpha.

My parents are both German! (though sadly never spoke it at home, so I can provide little more than a reasonable accent and a few items of vocab) and we have family in Germany, so I'm hoping that once she can say more than hello, numbers etc she can actually practice conversational skills in German.

Your stuff sounds great but is it suitable for a complete beginner? She's a long way from GCSE stuff... I had a look at the BBC stuff but content-wise, it seemed a bit 'old' eg more about how to book a hotel room than the names of school subjects or talking about hobbies etc. Any thoughts?

I came across CDs by Paul Noble on Amazon - seemed to get v good reviews. Based loosely on Michel Thomas but with native speakers, which sounds desirable. But are quite expensive. Does anyone know if these are any good? Or is Michel Thomas (original) worth it?

Bought Muzzy years ago, second-hand, and despite huge price tag, it's pants.

Had a look at Rosetta Stone online and it too looked absolute pants - v vocab based, not really about speaking the language at all.

Anyone tried any of these or others with success?

Try www.hellomylo.com/

It's aimed at younger pupils and mine enjoy it. You could also try www.funwithlanguages.vacau.com/ Great site, although the pop-ups are annoying.

Ask her if the school has subscriptions to Linguascope or Atantot.

Another teacher-made site with some good games to practise/reinforce vocab is www.yjc.org.uk/

My dc liked Muzzy, sorry you didn't.

Thanks, daphne - those look promising.

Huphuphup - I liked the idea of Muzzy, but despite watching the Spanish version dozens of times, my dcs never picked up more than a handful of random vocab items eg peach - but couldn't use any in a useful or meaningful sentence.