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85 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
Good for grammar, but don't expect much vocabulary, 9 Nov 2004
Is this a good course? It depends on what you want to learn or what you think it ought to contain. Previous reviewers have noted the lack of vocabulary taught: "I do not know when I will be able to do it" is a typical sentence. Michel concentrates on sentence construction and verbs to the exclusion of almost everything else. This follows his philosophy that verbs are the cornerstone of a language and everything else is just vocabulary (which, by implication, is left as an exercise for the listener). Very few nouns and adjectives are taught and there is virtually no acknowledgement of the existence of case and gender other than pointing up the difference between "mich" ("me") and "mir" ("to me"). At the end of this course, you will not have learnt even such a simple sentence as "Ich möchte eine Tasse Kaffee" (I would like a cup of coffee). Michel teaches the present, future and conditional tenses of verbs, but not the past - so you will be unable to tell a German what you did yesterday: and "Sie" but not "du" so you will be unable to address close friends and family correctly, "you" being translated in German as "du" for close friends, children, and family, and "Sie" for everyone else. (Though this is hardly going to be a great problem unless you get to know a German really well!)HOWEVER, one of the big problems with German, at least for an English-speaker, are the word order rules that result in sentences that literally translate as "Can you to me tell how I to the station go?" English may be a Germanic language but word order in it has been heavily modified by French - blame the Norman Conquest for that - and the big plus of this course for me is the concentrated drilling in forming sentences. The most oft-heard phrase on the CDs is "How would you say...?" - and Michel expects you, and his two students, to work it out for yourselves, following which he gives instant feedback on what you should have said. A few hours of this, advancing one small step at a time, and you'll find yourself saying some quite complicated things, AND getting the words in the right order - which is often very different from English - as long as they don't involve nouns! There is also a LOT of practice with the German modal verbs, or handles as Michel calls them (can, want, like, may, will - the sort of little words we use all the time). Another big issue is prepositions, which rarely translate simply between the two languages, and Michel tackles a few of these, such as the difference between "wenn" and "ob", both of which translate as "if". At the end of the course you won't be able to say much of any practical use, but you will be in a position to slot any vocabulary you learn later on into meaningful sentences which are grammatically correct, and you will understand a lot of how the language "works". The Advanced course does in fact address some if not all of the criticisms above - which suggests that this course is just not long enough to be a "complete" course.
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