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Rating: 
Summary: A good commuter's tape
Review: A series of brief conversations for the more experienced student. The tape is completely in German except for a short introduction to each conversation. Each conversation is heard three times in a row, with the middle one spoken slowly to give you a better chance at grasping the words. The accompanying booklet contains the texts of the conversations along with English translations. This is another good choice for that morning commute!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent way to improve listening comprehension
Review: An excellent concept, inadquately realized. The method of speaking first at a normal pace--often difficult to understand on first hearing--and then more slowly and carefully enunciated, is of great value, and justifies the reasonable price. However the tapes have a serious shortcoming in the area of vocabulary building, which is, of course, fundamental to learning a language. The problem, the serious problem, with these tapes is the colloquial English translations. These translations, while essentially accurate, frequently give the student little or no idea of the specific meaning of the German phrase, of the individual German words. English words are used as translations which, if then looked up in the dictionary, give words in German different from the original German word. Also, instead of using an English cognate, which would aid the student in fixing the meaning of the German word, in a translation that, at worst, would be slightly awkward, a colloquial English translation is used that, although it accurately expresses the meaning of the sentence, uses words that do not accurately express the meaning of the words used to make up the sentence. Vocabulary building is sacrificed for English style, where style is at best, of secondary importance. For instance: "Wahrend wir uns das uberlegen, giesse ich mir einen Drink ein un schaue mir die Sportnachrichtin im Fernsehen an." "Uberlagen" is translated as, "thinking about it", and "giesse" as "make". However "uberlegen" is more generally translated "considering", and "giesse" as "pour"--both perfectly reasonable translations in this context. And going the other way, "thinking" is of course more usually translated "denken", and "make" as "machen". "Considering" and "pour" are two useful words, but one would not learn them from this dialogue. And then: "Kann ich Dir auch einen Drink mixen?" which could be quite adequately translated: "Can I also mix you a drink?" but which is translated: "Can I fix you one?" The English translations are all chatty exchanges that might well be used as movie subtitles that have as an objective the transmission of general meaning. Unfortunately they are of limited, and in fact in many cases, of negative use for learning vocabulary. What is needed here are obviously not word-for-word literal translations such as, "Can I you also a drink mix?", but rather translations that stick as close as possible to the German words used, where possible to the German word order (although German makes that difficult), make maximum use of cognates, and that do not combine or separate sentences to satisfy English diction, even at the expense of some awkwardness of expression. The closer to a literal translation, without sacrificing coherence, the better. The objective is not to learn how to translate fluently into English, but rather to understand and speak acceptable German.
Rating: 
Summary: Let's Talk German Today
Review: An excellent concept, inadquately realized. The method of speaking first at a normal pace--often difficult to understand on first hearing--and then more slowly and carefully enunciated, is of great value, and justifies the reasonable price. However the tapes have a serious shortcoming in the area of vocabulary building, which is, of course, fundamental to learning a language. The problem, the serious problem, with these tapes is the colloquial English translations. These translations, while essentially accurate, frequently give the student little or no idea of the specific meaning of the German phrase, of the individual German words. English words are used as translations which, if then looked up in the dictionary, give words in German different from the original German word. Also, instead of using an English cognate, which would aid the student in fixing the meaning of the German word, in a translation that, at worst, would be slightly awkward, a colloquial English translation is used that, although it accurately expresses the meaning of the sentence, uses words that do not accurately express the meaning of the words used to make up the sentence. Vocabulary building is sacrificed for English style, where style is at best, of secondary importance. For instance: "Wahrend wir uns das uberlegen, giesse ich mir einen Drink ein un schaue mir die Sportnachrichtin im Fernsehen an." "Uberlagen" is translated as, "thinking about it", and "giesse" as "make". However "uberlegen" is more generally translated "considering", and "giesse" as "pour"--both perfectly reasonable translations in this context. And going the other way, "thinking" is of course more usually translated "denken", and "make" as "machen". "Considering" and "pour" are two useful words, but one would not learn them from this dialogue. And then: "Kann ich Dir auch einen Drink mixen?" which could be quite adequately translated: "Can I also mix you a drink?" but which is translated: "Can I fix you one?" The English translations are all chatty exchanges that might well be used as movie subtitles that have as an objective the transmission of general meaning. Unfortunately they are of limited, and in fact in many cases, of negative use for learning vocabulary. What is needed here are obviously not word-for-word literal translations such as, "Can I you also a drink mix?", but rather translations that stick as close as possible to the German words used, where possible to the German word order (although German makes that difficult), make maximum use of cognates, and that do not combine or separate sentences to satisfy English diction, even at the expense of some awkwardness of expression. The closer to a literal translation, without sacrificing coherence, the better. The objective is not to learn how to translate fluently into English, but rather to understand and speak acceptable German.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent way to improve listening comprehension
Review: For someone at an intermediate to advanced level, this is the best method for maintaining or improving listening comprehension that I have yet found. The format has been described in previous reviews so I won't repeat that here. I have both the German and French versions of the tape so I can comment on them from the prospective of someone with widely differing language abilities. Since I spent two years in Germany and studied German at the university level, I could understand the German tape the first time I listened to it. It is an excellent example of normal conversation - something all too often lacking from your typical language course, which seems to either present tourist phrases or delves into classical literature. This is normal spoken German such as you might hear regular folks speaking in Germany today. There were few words that were not familiar to me and those that were are probably regional variations or colloquialisms not common in central Germany where I lived. As a previous reviewer pointed out, the tape is not primarily intended as a means of vocabulary acquisition and the English translations are quite free. Better to simply look up the German word directly if you are unfamiliar with it. For comparison, the French version (which contains the exact same stories) was much more difficult for me. I have studied only a couple of semesters of college French and have never lived in a French speaking country so, as others have pointed out, I have had to listen to the tape many times to even begin to gain a good comprehension of the spoken French. It certainly helps that I already know the stories from the German version. Too often language courses present individual sentences for listening comprehension. This gives you time to listen carefully and then think about what has been said. In real life (and in this tape) the conversation doesn't stop for you to think about what was said and you can quickly find yourself lost. You could listen to a radio broadcast or movie but then you would have no transcription to let you review what you heard and it can't be slowed down to help you catch what you're missing. This tape allows you to do just that and I highly recommend it. (Interestingly, with the advent of DVDs, I've noticed that you can pick the spoken language and subtitles independently allowing you, for instance, to choose to view a film in French along with the French subtitles. Unfortunately most movies seem to come in English, Spanish, and French so it doesn't help my German. I haven't tried it in French yet to see if the subtitles are an actual transcript of the spoken language but that would be another effective method for improving listen comprehension.)
Rating: 
Summary: Keep up your German skills
Review: For those of us living in a non German-speaking environment it is vital to keep up our knowledge of the language somehow, and I find audio cassettes an excellent medium. This 90 minute tape features four dialogues, each split into three or four parts. Each part is spoken once at normal speed, then again very slowly, so that one can catch all the words clearly, and finally again at normal speed. This is an effective method as it promotes comprehension and reinforces by repetition. A booklet with the full text of the dialogues accompanies the cassette. My main regret is that there is only one tape.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for insomniacs!
Review: I bought this after reading the glowing reviews - I'm afraid I was disappointed. I'm sure it is through and would teach me German - if it didn't send me to sleep first! I'm not sure driving and listening to this at the same time should be allowed. All you hear is very dry and emotionless voices repeating words - a man says the English, then a woman repeats the German word twice. No hints on pronunciation, no cultural advice, no music, no enthusiasm, *nothing* except these two voices. You also need to listen to the tapes over and over again before you start to learn the words. However, I'm sure this would appeal to some people, and it is very through. Personally, I need a little more enthusiasm and joy in my life!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent guide for learning from scratch
Review: I recently decided to learn German to help me in my business, I travel to Switzerland regularly. This course was the best I've tried to help me learn the language during my daily commute. The format is easy to follow, it leads up to more challenging information with each tape. The tapes must be listened to more than once though, to get the full benefit of the information being given (there is a lot to learn!). The workbooks are very good also, they give more information about verbforms and conjugation rules.
Rating:
Summary: best method for long term memory learning
Review: The "Learn in your car" series on languages is the best method I have come across in my attempt to learn a foreign language (short of taking a course). You hear actual pronunciation and don't have to follow along in a book to know what is being said. I current live in Europe and this course on tape really works. It starts with simple vocabulary building and works through all parts of speech and complex sentences. I highly recommend this to anyone tired of reading in a language book how a foreign word should sound. It also allows you to change the balance on your stereo so you only hear the foreign language part, which lets you quiz yourself even more. I have a 45 min drive to work and just playing these tapes back and forth I have a very useful and functional language ability. It easily allows for the repetition required in learning a foreign language.
Rating:
Summary: Good Listening Comprehension
Review: This is just one cassette with an accompanying booklet, but it serves its purpose as good listening comprehesion. The level is intermediate, but even beginners will benefit from just hearing the language spoken clearly in dialog format. Each dialog is repeated three time, once normal (for a studio recording), once very slow, and once at normal conversational speed. There's not much else to say because there's nothing particularly amazing about this program . .. but if you are learning German and want to gain listening comprehension, it's definitely worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: simple, elegant and a joy to use
Review: Wanted to brush up some very old high school german, saw this at the Library of all places and gave it a go. I have a 2 hour commute each day and this has definetly made this time much more productive. Very simple format, easy to catch onto and learn I've found. Found this product to be fairly useful and want to purchase a copy for my own personal use, outstanding product and a lot cheaper here then at the Penton Overseas website.
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