Living Language German, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 coursebooks, 9 audio CDs, and free online learning Unabridged Edition

This is a really good and thorough course in the language that presents in conversational form all the major concepts: verb tenses (present, past, & future) & moods (indicative, subjunctive, conditional, & imperative), idiomatic phrases, and other grammatical structures. It looks about equal to two college semesters of Italian (maybe three, depending on how different schools structure their language programs; it's essentially first-year Italian). I've been using this course for two weeks now and am halfway through it. I wouldn't recommend this pace, but I mention it so you can interpret what complaints I have in light of it.This course consists of 3 books: Essential, Intermediate, and Advanced, and includes a blank notebook and 9 audio CD's that correspond to the lessons in the books. There is also an online language lab for quizzing knowledge. The whole course comes in a cardboard slipcase. The lesson books are about the ideal size: lightweight paperbacks, between the size of a trade paperback and an average college textbook; they're big enough to spread out and work with, but small and light enough to use nearly anywhere. The English type is in black, and the Italian in blue, which aids learning. The course is 46 lessons in all, and seems built around language immersion, emphasizing conversational phrases and language that you might use when travelling to/studying in Italy. From this use, of course, you could go anywhere with the language. This course's grammatical explanations are clear and comprehensive, though I might want many more examples to really understand the concepts from a variety of angles and in a variety of situations. (My learning style is more analytical than intuitive, and I don't mind poring over grammar & verb charts to drink in concepts.) This course does a good job of introducing new vocabulary and grammatical concepts "on the fly," by which I mean it throws these things in without formally explaining them beforehand. The reason I find this a good thing is because that's how one would encounter the language in Italy or with a fluent speaker, and this course trains you to be always attentive to new words, phrases, and grammar. I might like a vocab. list at the end of each lesson for new words introduced in that lesson, rather than the glossary for the entire course at the end of each book. But that LL omits vocab. lists does encourage active learning. The notebook that LL provides seems to be for the purpose of writing down new vocab. as one encounters it, and new idiomatic phrases and verb conjugations, etc. The "Unit Essentials" sections in the Intermed. and Adv. books are useful for summarizing key grammatical concepts; likewise the general language summary at the end of each book. I also might like a comprehensive table of contents to help me review what sections of the course I might need to as I use the language once completing the course. The unit outlines along the top of each page are detailed enough for this, but require more flipping through from unit to unit than would a table of contents. Quizzes come about every 4 lessons to reinforce material. They seem a little short for really testing full knowledge, but that they are short and a little easy does keep you moving through the course, rather than getting bogged down on concepts that you will pick up anyway as you keep using the language. LL points out further resources for using the language, such as Italian newspapers and message boards, and one could even find on Youtube Italian news broadcasts and other audio-video resources. I find the online language lab to be moderately useful: I'm glad it's there, but it doesn't clinch my grasp of new concepts. (The book and CD dialogues do that for me.) Some of the games in the language lab seem distracting, like the word search and "pop the bubbles," but they do lighten the mood a bit. The online flashcards and sentence completions are useful exercises beyond the exercises in the books.Overall, this is a solid course that will teach you Italian. I think the best learning will result from using all the course's materials, as LL suggests, including practicing with the CD recordings, filling up the notebook with vocab., idiomatic expressions, and verb conjugations, and reviewing these regularly. The whole course (Complete Italian) is a good value for the price, though the Essential might not seem so for being so basic. Once I master Italian, I plan to use other Living Language Complete packages to learn other languages.

Ok, First of all as a teacher and vivid language learner, I have to say this is a good course for the experienced language learner or if you need a brush up. I would probably start a beginner in a picture book course, or you could add a supplement to this beginner or essentials section, as they call it. I recommend using all the materials in order to get the most out of this course. The CDs are the most important part for listening and speaking. I would say drill them until you have mastered sentence order, pronunciation, and listening of all follow alongs. The online vocabulary and phrases is the extra supplement. Don’t rush through it. Take your time. If you do this independently, check in with fluent language partners to see how effective your progress is going. All of my German friends are impressed with my speaking now. Again if you are beginner add a German channel, picture books or apps with sounds to help support this material. Take the quizzes seriously, for they are your progress benchmarks, after I complete the advanced version successfully I will go back to Germany. The frame work of this course gives you all essential elements to survive in a German speaking country, study it extremely carefully and write a lot of the phrases and vocabulary words out or on a separate sheet of paper to reinforce the vocabulary. I would even say make flash cards with the vocabulary even though there are virtual flash cards on the supplement website. I give it a 5 even though it’s really like 4.8 or 4.9. It seriously needs images in the book to keep the readers attention. Again you get pictures on the site.

The best beginner/intermediate/ advanced Italian learning series! After teaching beginning Italian formore than a decade and trying various text books, this is the series I landed on and could stay with. It introduces the language in a slow enough way and hits the main grammar points as part of conversation. Good for preparing for a trip to Italy. The audio will help with pronunciation. Parliamo l'italiano!!

Italian is becoming my third language and I must say, living language is amazing. Here is why all the less than 5 star reviews are wrong:if you read the negative reviews, these people are saying it went to fast and they couldn't learn the language when listening to the CD's. This is because this course was not created to be learned by audio only. It is the combination of the audio while reading the book AT THE SAME TIME that makes it work. Everything is spoken that you read in the book. You cannot have one without the other, they are intended to be used together. The people who are giving this low stars are too lazy to pick up the book and read and thought they could get away with just listening to the audio. If you want an audio only learning approach, living language is not for you. They didn't just create the textbook to be thrown away. In my opinion, learning with multiple senses (sight and hearing) is going to give you the best results and if you use living language like it is intended, it does a fantastic job. Living language was recommended to me by a client who was a polyglot. She spoke 9 languages fluently and 5 languages partially. Her father was a translator and spoke 13 languages fluently. She said this was the best program to use for learning a language and I think she is right (I've used multiple and this is the best in my opinion).