Behind the Wheel German (6 CD Course)

Rating:
Summary: A Real Bargain. Clear and Modern Approach!
Review: A Very Excellent Offering. This Course has two exceptional and outstanding qualities:

1) There is an enormous amount of useful instruction included in this course by both the male speaker and the native German speaker, both of which are excellent in their clarity and pronunciation. This approach is ideal for any car commute or even a long trip . An optimal approach that taught me lot of useful German in a minimum of time.

2) The course is clear, concise, and very modern in its approach. My Behind the Wheel German course was fully edited and professionally produced as well.

The results I have received from using this excellent course speak for themselves. I couldn't be happier with my choice to learn German using the Language Dynamics method and Behind the Wheel German. I encourage anyone wishing a fast, clear and no-nonesense approach to learning German to try this superb course.
It is a real bargain for the money.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Bargain. Clear and Modern Approach!
Review: A VERY mediocre offering. The tapes have two glaring, and inexcusable, shortcomings:

1) There is an enormous amount of meaningless talk, jabber really, un- or only tangentially, related to the course, by the male English speaker. Unless one is going on a long trip, time is at a premium. What is required is a minimum of English to indicate what the German is about, and a maximum amount of German. Unfortunately the tapes are full of extensive pointless blather by the English speaker. This is extremely bothersome under any circumstances, and during relatively limited commuter trips, an inexcusable waste of listening time.

2) It is, if not full, certainly replete with errors: Incorrect translations. Inexcusable. Here it is somewhat difficult to know whether the German speaker did not understand the English, or whether the English speaker did not make the pattern clear. In any event it is obvious they are not speaking from a printed, carefully checked and edited written script.

The English speaker is apparently playing the role of someone who does not understand or know German. That is ridiculous to begin with, but is compounded by the fact that the English speaker does not, in fact, know German. And his ignorance, compounded by the German speaker's less than complete command of English, leads to inexcusable errors.

These are tapes produced on the cheap by ill prepared individuals whose limited command of the languages involved does not permit them to overcome the lack of preparation of the scripts.

A real disappointment and waste of money....

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: After just two weeks commuting with Behind the Wheel German and I am ready to visit my wife's German relatives in Bavaria.
Our long distance phone conversations with her family confirm that this course has put me on the right track to eventual fluency in the German language. They are so impressed that I can speak so much German already. I even learned a few idiomatic 'folk' expressions from these CDs.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Multi-Track Car German Course
Review: I am a fan of Language Dynamics and have purchased and reviewed a number of their courses.
I first purchased the cassette version of Behind the Wheel German a year ago and was quite pleased with it.
I later purchased the CD version and was delighted to discover that the CD version has been wonderfully revised,
meticulously edited and has been given multiple tracks which daily makes my language learning experience much more efficient and enjoyable.
Anyone who says that these CDs are the same as the cassette version is simply not telling the truth.
The CD version is by far the best of the two but I did like the booklet that came with the cassette version.

Rating:
Summary: This package has some strengths but...
Review: In terms of packaging, these CDs were just copied from original cassette tapes, and instructions re rewinding and repetition were a little silly. The fifth CD was an exact copy of the fourth. In terms of substance, the teacher specializes in Romance languages and relies heavily on his native speaker for explanation and pronunciation. A minor criticism concerned one word that the teacher repeatedly mispronounced while the native speaker tried to gently correct him. The teacher's poor pronounciation did not allow identification with students but rather was just annoying. The teacher did give the clearest explanation of future verb tenses that I have heard, and this was helpful. Insufficient time was spent on past verb tenses and vocabulary. Like many of these products, far too much time was spent on teaching counting in German. I am thoroughly sick of every German audio CD that spends hours teaching how to count from one to ten.