Lindsay Dow's "Successful Self-Study" Course - A Full Review

Hi everyone, and strap yourselves in for today's review post all about a new course released by Lindsay from Lindsay does Languages. The course is called Successful Self Study, and it's all about every single step you need to follow for teaching yourself a language.

If you're a solo language learner hoping to meet an ambitious goal this year, read on to discover how Successful Self Study makes language learning easier.

Is This Instructor Worth Your Time?

You'll already know that Lindsay is my co-host on the Creative Language Learning Podcast. Lindsay is British, but she's one of the language-craziest people I know. She has studied over 8 foreign languages,.

Last year, she completed a self-directed university degree at the Open University. This means the end of 6 years doing a distance-learning course - the pinnacle of self study! And at the end of those 6 years, Lindsay has mastered a skill that so many of us struggle with: how to focus on your language studies and make real progress.

So before I go any further, let's go full disclosure: I have a lot of time for this person, and I believe she's totally trustworthy when it comes to language learning.

Lindsay has created the new course Successful Self Study, and allowed me a Sneak Preview so I can review it for you today.

The TL;DR Version: 7 Things You Need to Know

1. This course is perfect if you're trying to learn a language by yourself and you struggle with

   1. Having no time to study
   2. Getting distracted all the time
   3. Loneliness
   4. Lacking the commitment to your studies
   5. Feeling like you're stuck
   6. Over-researching and reading too many "guides to language mastery"
2. It's great value when you add up 60 items, consisting of videos + guides + the most incredible workbook I've ever seen + a private online community + downloadable bonuses
3. The thing is this: If you're learning a language by yourself, this is going to save you so much money and time in the long run that it would be ridiculous to mess around on Facebook's "Polyglot Procrastination" forums any longer
4. I liked the course structure and found that the approach throughout is totally about the practice - this is designed to make you do stuff!
5. It contains 3 amazing webinars, including my excellent goal-setting class with Lindsay that we held right at the start of the new year
6. That workbook really is the BEST language learning book I've ever seen, and I wish I could go into a book shop and buy a printed version. Do yourself a favour and download it today
7. Overall rating: 4.5/5

If you're ready to find out more and see the full curriculum, head over to Lindsay's site and watch the first video.

If you want to know more about what's inside Successful Self Study, let's have a look together.

The Look and Experience

This course is a combination of videos, workbooks, audio, and some extra downloads. It's hosted on the Teachable platform, which I can only applaud as this is what I chose as your best experience for the Fluent courses, too. The video selection is 50% Lindsay's friendly vlogging style and 50% screencast videos which demonstrate how different apps work.

The audio sections are going to be downloadable so you can listen and learn on the go (I haven't heard these yet, but they are announced for the release date.)

What's Inside The Course?

This course is divided into three main section, prefaced by a cute little introduction featuring Lindsay's own story as your instructor.

Section 1: Study Skills

The first section of the course is a short tour of the best practice in studying a foreign language by yourself.

The topic breaks down into aspects like motivation, productivity and how to build a language learning habit for the long haul. This section is what you think you already know, until you find yourself googling "how to speak a language tips" because you actually don't. Nice and useful to have it all in one place, and Lindsay definitely speaks from experience.

There's a definite focus on developing a routine, and it's just perfect for you if you're someone who needs to make every minute count. She's thought of every possible question: motivation, time management, confidence, productivity. It's like a secret library of self study shortcuts.

The course section can be kind of intense if you apply it all in one go, so remember that you have lifetime access and take it step by step. But you know...if we all wanted an easy hobby, we'd be Netflixing and not learning languages.

Section 2: Language Skills

Okay, this is a strange one for me but I bet you're going to like it lots. The second part of Successful Self Study is all about getting into learning a language (not just anything). It's structured perfectly featuring the 4 core skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) together with vocabulary and grammar. Exactly how I would do it!

Lindsay is super practical She doesn't waste too much time telling you why each aspect matters, instead the approach here is this:

If we know we gotta do this thing, how can be make it the easiest thing ever?

As a result, it's motivating and very actionable. Within just a few minutes of watching these videos, I promise you're going to be excited to try out new tools and jump deeply into your new language.

She recommends the best possible tools for every aspect, so that you can come away with a roadmap for learning vocabulary, grammar, and every important language skill you need for fluency.

Section 2 is my favourite because it's the most "language-nerdy". I like background and research about what works for us from a scientific or social perspective. This isn't covered in the videos, but easily accessible with links to Lindsay's best articles around the web.

Section 3: Tech Training

The list of tech training resources is excellent - overall she's demonstrating 11 different websites, apps and tools. None of them costs any money at all, so this is like the ticket to the biggest free online playground you've ever seen. You're guaranteed to find something new to try - my favourites were Periscope and italki.

Some of these videos felt pretty basic and could be a little shorter. Things like joining Facebook groups seem obvious, and many of you have done this already. Having said that, remember that I'm pretty tech-savvy, I write a blog and it's my job to know this stuff.

I don't think as a learner you need to become hung up on the two videos about the tool you already knew. Use this section in line with your own priorities, and you'll have saved yourself a likely 300 hours of googling over the next year.

The key is that you don't just find it, but you do something with it. And the way Lindsay builds in this accountability is absolutely fantastic - let me tell you more!

Now THIS Is Going To Double Your Productivity

The absolute key to a course with so much content is to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Lindsay doesn't tell you when, how, or for how long you should work on this.

But this doesn't mean that you're left alone. Quite the contrary!

The course structure and delivery are solid, and Lindsay concludes every single lecture with an actionable exercise - you don't get to be passive. As a fellow online teacher, I rate this a very good thing.

The one thing you have GOT to do right after sitting down and clicking the purchase button (if you choose to) is download that amazing workbook.

It's an editable PDF. But that description does it no justice. Let me try and say it differently.

I Love This Self Study Workbook!!!!

This workbook is the single most awesome self study language learning resource I've ever seen. If you are one of the people who liked the 3-Week Planner in Fluency Made Achievable, you are going to faint with excitement at the sight of this thing.

I would really hate for super-keen learners to discover it halfway through the course. So do yourself a favour and listen to me here: You want to download this and have it by your side as the course companion, as it contains every planning worksheet, printout, notes section, EVERYTHING.

The one thing it was missing at the time I tested it was a table of contents to help you navigate through the book, but Lindsay has promised to add this in the next edition.

You can choose to have the workbook with you and make your notes on the computer, or to print it out. In fact, send the PDF to my local printer and have it bound. The workbook is just really, really good.

Bonuses

The bonus section contains starter credit for italki and HelloTalk plus four webinars with a bunch of experienced and knowledgeable guests (spot me and my super-cool hoodie) on topics like goal-setting and maintaining motivation.

Conclusion

Yep, we've got to a conclusion stage at the end of this super-detailed review.

Successful Self Study ratings:

• For structure and engagement (workbook!), it's 5/5.
• For video quality, it's 5/5.
• The tech training is a 3/5 in my book, because I would skip a lot of it.

For the results you can expect from taking this course, it's 5/5 because if you do the work, it is guaranteed to

• help you learn a language quickly
• teach you that discipline so you don't feel overwhelmed and busy
• boost your confidence so you actually start speaking within a few weeks
• save you money - with all the tools, a new langauge can be studied very cheaply.

Overall rating: 4.5/5 - highly recommended for anyone new to studying by themselves or struggling because life is busy. So that's all of us then.

How to Get Started

You can join Lindsay's Course Successful Self Study today.

It's easy peasy:

1. Follow this link to get to the course page and select the yellow course
2. Click "Enroll in Course"

2017 Update: Lindsay has recently updated this course and added a huge amount of bonus content, including training for grammar, better reading, speaking, listening, and lots more. It's priced at $120 which currently represents ENORMOUS value. Go forth and try it - well done, Lindsay!

Here's that sign-up link again: http://www.fluentlanguage.co.uk/selfstudycourse

So you're getting

• the world's most awesome workbook
• tech training
• 6 language study videos
• membership in a private online community of language learnears
• bonus webinars
• PDF guides to help you master language exchanges, YouTube & more
• practical self study tutorials
• my audiobook.

Compare that to $500 spent on Rosetta Stone, or at your local Goethe institute. WHOAH. Go for it.

Tell Me More!

Have you joined Successful Self Study? How did you find it? I'd love to hear what you thought in the comments below.

*This offer's good throughout 2017.

Taming the Dragon: My 3-Month Welsh Language Learning Update

Welcome to my first progress report on my own language study. It's pretty comprehensive and longer than my usual blog articles, so I figured we'll just jump in!

First of all, let me give you a quick impression of how the past 3 months have gone:

• I've been spending 1-3 hours per week on my Welsh studies, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less
• I've been combining a good bunch of resources and several people who talked to me in Welsh
• I'm feeling really positive about my progress and where I'm headed

3 Month Progress

One of the best ways of tracking my language learning progress is blogging about it, which is probably the only way that I know how long I've been at this.

So here's where I'm at: I didn't seriously start learning Welsh until I returned from honeymoon in September. So that makes it about 3 months of study, the often-cited time it takes to build a habit. And I'm shocked at how much progress I have made.

Here is an in-depth update of exactly what has been going on, and how I'm feeling about my 4 core skills.

Understanding Welsh

Understanding groups listening and reading, and I feel significant progress particularly in understanding spoken Welsh. Don't get me wrong. I've still got absolutely no clue what is going on when people talk at normal speed, or when I'm watching TV in Welsh.

But I've been repeating my input and training myself to pick out the words that I do know, and it's made a big difference.

For example:

• I am beginning to anticipate Welsh words based on the English subtitles in TV shows or on Youtube (if you want to know which shows I like, listen to podcast episode 31)
• Understanding and spotting patterns that occur regularly in Welsh is becoming easier as well, which means I'm now able to know where sentences start and end, and if they're in future, past, or present tense

In the coming months, I would love to be able to understand more social media posts in Welsh. Lucky for me, most Welsh speakers are bilingual (Welsh/English) and post in both languages.

The progress goal here will be to recognise and know more nouns and patterns, which I can study just by tracking what I look up in the dictionary.

Speaking Welsh

I've called this section "speaking", but I actually mean producing language in both speaking and writing. Here again, I feel like my progress has been awesome.

I'm absolutely ready to speak Welsh at any time. Sure, it will be terrible Welsh. It will be full of mistakes, and I'll last about 20 seconds without an English word.

But none of that matters. It isn't about the quality of my speaking. It's about doing it over and over again, little and often.

2 weeks ago, we went out for drinks with some new people. One of them turns out to be Welsh and we started talking. I wasn't Shakespeare, but I managed to ask her if she wants a drink, talk about my studies and a little bit about where I'm from. Respectable progress for 3 months of slow burn study!

In the coming months, my next goal is that I'd like to speak Welsh on the phone. Calling up a B&B or a language school with an enquiry is a simple enough task, but it has instant feedback in case I can't get my words out.

Here's How I've Been Studying My Language

• Community Class

I went to a class called Clwb Siârad in Preston, where I met a great mix of native speakers and language learners. The most amazing thing about Welsh Club is the fact that they're "offline polyglots" - a large group of language lovers in my county that I never knew about. The Welsh learners were speaking and learning more than just Welsh, so that our lesson ended up featuring 6 languages altogether.

• 1-to-1 Tuition

Working with a 1-to-1 tutor is a huge benefit to my speaking skills! I've not been able to commit to weekly lessons, but decided not to let that stop me. Instead, I book a session with Mererid around once a month to top up and consolidate what I've been working on.

I learn something new in every tutoring session, and always come away feeling inspired and positive.

• Say Something in Welsh podcast

This podcast is currently my main speaking resource, and prompts the listener to speak continuously and right from the start. I worked with this concept before when I tried Michel Thomas, but this system of focusing entirely on patterns is easier to follow and more effective in my mind.

Main downside: I've got to find vocabulary resources for words somewhere else, meaning it trains patterns and structure way before it adds many words.

• Instagram

Believe it or not, Instagram is a regular place for me to get just a little bit of Welsh language and practice what I'm doing. I've started giving every post a level of "added" Welsh by talking about the photo in both English and Welsh. The kind community of Instagram users out there (especially #iglc folks) has been great at helping me with corrections.

In the coming months, I also want to add the Cwrs Mynediad book, which I downloaded as a £5 app for my iphone. And of course, there's that Duolingo thing which has now got the Welsh language. I am not a big Duolingo fan, but happy to give it a try.

A Problem I Need to Solve: No Study Corner

When I'm at my laptop, my mind switches into work mode and language learning is more difficult (priming affects how we learn languages). I can tell I'm more engaged and make better progress when I am studying differently, on the couch or the stairs.

This explains why building my Memrise course and watching the BBC videos has fallen behind - both of those only work on a desktop AFAIK.

In the next month, I want to find a study corner in my house. It won't be easy, because my house is pretty tiny, but with some creativity I think the Welsh corner is going to be a great resource.

All in All: A Feeling of Ease

Welsh is the first language that I am truly teaching myself, without attending any regular group classes. It's also the most modern self-taught process I've ever used, because most of my first languages were studied in school in the 90s when mobile phones looked like this:

I'm wondering what exactly is different between this language and Russian, my previous experiment. Russian had the added difficulty of Cyrillic, so it was slightly less accessible. I also didn't feel the same level of curiosity in the end - Wales and Welsh are more exciting to me right now, and that is an entirely personal thing.

And ultimately, the materials and speakers I've worked with are just so supportive and welcoming. They are what's made my studies feel easy, and I think a feeling of ease is the key to keeping going.

Overall, I feel like things are going well. I have regular success moments, even tiny things like completing an episode of my study podcast. Those are the key to keeping going, because I never feel like I'm stuck.

Saying I'm feeling ease does not mean I'm actually "good at Welsh" yet. It just means that I'm feeling progress without frustration. But ultimately, my goals and results belong to me and this is exactly the result I am happy with.

Book to Try: Fluency Made Achievable

If you're learning a language and you haven't read my book Fluency Made Achievable yet, check it out today. Fluency Made Achievable is my guide to what it takes to learn a language and do what's necessary for achieving that feeling of ease and fluency.

It goes into depth about those 4 core skills and helps you understand why they matter and how you can create easy routines for yourself in language learning.

And now that I'm learning a new language again, I can tell even more just how useful it is to get your practice right and I want you to benefit from the same insights.

If you do own the book already, let me know how you used it in your own learning routine in the comments below!

And of course, please share your thoughts and updates on YOUR language learning routines. In other words, I invite you to comment on this post and tell me more about your own studies. I love hearing what you're up to!

11 Short & Sweet Tips To Help You Learn a Language in 2016

Ahh, happy new year to all of you! Even though the last two weeks have been quite busy, I did take a few minutes to note down my resolutions for the next year.

One thing that struck me this year is something I had not realised before. There is this huge difference between goals and resolutions. A goal is something specific, concrete, something that you can achieve and then feel good about your success. A resolution is deeper and comes from your emotional centre. It's about what you really want to change in your life.

Language Learning Resolutions vs Goals

Resolutions are often ambitious and come out of the desire to improve something and feel better as a result. Here are some great language learning resolutions:

• To become fearless in the face of talking to strangers in a foreign language
• To feel comfortable watching foreign TV without subtitles
• To become less self-critical
• To build a habit of reviewing vocabulary every single week 

Success comes from combining ambition and goal. So once your ambition is set, think about how to break it down into goals - how much can you do in 3 months, how much can you do in a week? Documenting all those goals will give you a clear roadmap, with the resolution as your fuel and the ambition as the destination.

How to Start Reaching That Language Learning Ambition

The following set of tips is a summary of the best advice that Lindsay and I discussed in Episode 30 of the Creative Language Learning Podcast. You can listen to the episode to find out how we go about learning our own target languages, Japanese and Welsh.

1. Work With a Diary or Calendar

Automating a new habit is such a fantastic way to stop negotiating with yourself. If your diary usually has things like doctor's appointments and meetings with your boss in it, how can you question its authority? So use that rock in your life and start adding little bits of language study time, for example coaching sessions or vocab reviews.

2. Don't Rely on Empty Time

Instead of hoping for that Duolingo-at-the-bus-stop moment, set some time aside as a regular appointment with yourself. Lindsay sets time aside from 7am to 8am so she can enjoy an hour of language learning where she can do what she wants to do. I'm less consistent but have a Sunday afternoon study hour where I work on learning my languages.

3. Don't Be Quiet About Your Resolution

It's too easy to commit to a big resolution without even telling people about it. But when it comes to actually doing stuff, it helps to look out for other people that want to do the same. As language learners, this is more true for us than any other people. You want to learn a language, so you want to talk to people. Get started with the "people" part of it now and find a language learning buddy or a tutor to support you.

4. Build on Existing Habits

If there is a slot in your day that you repeat regularly, you have found a great opportunity to learn your language. For example, I know that every morning I sit on the stairs in my house and drink a coffee. The coffee is already a fixed part of my day, so adding a daily Welsh practice or reviewing one page of my learning notebook won't take too much willpower. Instead of going on Facebook before you drop off to sleep, could you spend 10 minutes with the flashcards?

5. Make Your Chunks Big and Small Enough

When you are studying at beginner level, it's too difficult to aim for passing the big C2 immigration exam. When you are advanced but haven't got travel money for the next 6 months, it's too unrealistic to aim for that in-country conversation with a native speaker. These goals need to be broken down so that you can see the end in sight of your current project. What can you do today so that it's a bit easier for you to get to the vision tomorrow?

6. Be Super Precise

Precision is essential for setting a good language learning goal. You must define exactly what it is that you are aiming for. Fluency is a vague desire, but what you need is more than that. Your goals have to be measurable in precise terms, so try to zoom in on those step-by-step achievements. For example, I tend to avoid putting my goals in terms of "having a conversation". Instead, I may want to finish Lesson 8 in my textbook next week or say 15 new sentences based on what I already know. The key is to DO something that will make you feel good when you've done it. Imagining your success does not count.

7.Once the Course is Set, Do Not Question It

It can be so tempting to set a big ambitious goal and leave a little bit of wriggle-room open for yourself when things don't quite work out. When you are setting your New Year's Resolution, is it so ambitious that you already know you're going to fail? If yes, then revise it. Halve it. Make it achievable so that you know you'll be committed.

This is where writing a goal down and sharing it come in handy. Write it in the comments of this blog article as a first step! Set yourself a reminder to come back to it. Whatever you do, don't just go away and forget what excited you enough to get started.

8. Repeat Your Successes

Meeting a goal doesn't mean that you'll never have to do it again. It is the first step to building an awesome new habit. So once you've had your first Skype lesson, you're one step further along the way. But you're not there. You may never be there.

Last year, my New Year's Resolution was to become a more punctual person. But that is an ambition and not a goal. A goal would have been to say "I will turn up 10 minutes early for every appointment I have tomorrow". And for the first day, I did just that. I was super proud! Now imagine what would have happened if I'd just stopped caring after that goal. I'd be just as late as I always was. But if I met the goal every single day, I'd start building new pathways and habits and become a more punctual person.

9. Identify What's Driving You

Behind all our ambitions for becoming a polyglot, more fluent, a better student, a more productive person, there is an assumption that you have a problem right now. It's extremely important to work out what drives your ambition and to identify this personal issue, so that you can start observing the progress you are making. Even if you don't meet every single goal or milestone along the way, are you learning more about yourself? Are you making progress? Are you trying out a new way of thinking?

10. Observe the Progress

It's very common to feel like you are falling behind within the first few weeks of the new year energy. But could you critique yourself in a positive way instead of being self-critical? Don't forget that failing to meet a hard goal doesn't signal a major failure. I'm reminded of Ron Gullekson's recent blog post where he spoke about failing the German exam he had spent months preparing for. Does that mean Ron is a complete German failure? No! He went through intense preparation, so even he still benefited from a tight learning schedule and improved his written German.

Finally, here is a great tip if you feel like this time is not right for resolutions, but you still want to welcome 2016 in the right way:

11. Set a Theme, Not a Resolution

If you didn't have the energy or courage to set yourself a specific goal, the theme for your year, month, or week can act as a wonderful guide to take its place. It also helps you focus on appreciating what you have got right now without becoming too self-critical. As I am entering a new year in my language studies and my teaching business, my theme will be "Figure it out!", a message to myself that giving up isn't what I'm here for.

What Are Your New Year's Resolutions?

So now it's over to you:

• What are your plans?

• How are you going to make sure you stay committed?

• Have you found a buddy yet?

No matter if you have a language learning resolution or something else, I'm looking forward to reading about what you're planning in the comments below.

For more tips about how to learn a language the right way, check out Lindsay's new course Successful Self Study or my popular books Fluency Made Achievable and The Vocab Cookbook.

Podcast Episode 30: How to Achieve a New Year's Resolution of Learning a New Language

Welcome to episode 30 of the Creative Language Learning Podcast, and as always I can't tell you how excited I am that this show is happening. 30 episodes marks a significant point - the show has been running for two years and brings you regular language love on your commute, in the gym and everywhere else.

How long have you been listening?

Here's what's in the big episode 30:

• How to find the time for language even when you're megabusy
• Community Classes and Polyglot Clubs have lots in common

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS!

• What we think about the resolution that is "I will become fluent in..." or "I will learn the language..."
• Why "fluency" is an ambition and not a goal
• The unfailing SMART goalsetting technique
• Working out what is driving your resolution and "what your problem is" can help you get more motivation to change
• How can your resolution serve you even if you don't achieve it?
• Why is excitement essential when fear is destructive?
• And what are our themes and resolutions for 2016?

THE EPISODE TAKEAWAY

Set yourself a theme for the new year!

WEBINAR ON SATURDAY!

Join Lindsay and Kerstin - that's us! We'll be discussing how to set successful goals in 2016.

LINKS AND TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE OF THE CREATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING PODCAST

• Welsh Club Preston
• Mirror.co.uk: 5 Cheap Ways to Learn a Language
• BBC Languages
• Forget New Year's Resolutions on I Will Teach You a Language
• How to Achieve a New Year's Resolution to Learn a Language on Fluent in 3 Months
• Onions have layers
• The Four Tendencies of Gretchen Rubin
• The Inner Game of Tennis

Three Little-Known Facts about Speaking German

One of the most common ambitions that language learners share at all stages is that of speaking the language fluently. Fluency means a lot to you, and it pulls together aspects of confidence, expertise, speed and pronunciation.

Maybe you're dreaming of speaking German with ease and a perfect accent. No one will recognise you as Jonny Foreigner as you flirt your way through the trendy bars of Berlin.

If you're a German learner, I'll soon be ready to help you out with one of the five: sounding more like a native speaker. Behind the scenes of Fluent, I'm currently building my first German course, and this one will focus on making you sound very good indeed.

Curious about how I'll do it? Let's start with a few home truths:

1) The e is never silent in German

Even at the end of a word, you have to sound this out. Confusingly that sound is called a 'schwa', but don't worry, you don't have to 'schwa'-y as you produce the sound. In my course, I'll show you how to do it.

2) V and f and w are all fricatives

What the heck is a fricative? 

The Fricative Mouth Shape: Teeth touching lip slightly, air pushed through the space produces the sound.

Well, it looks a bit like this:

Fricatives are all the sound that you make when pushing air through a constricted space. I know that sounds kinky, but it's more or less an "f" sound - sometimes they're harder and sometimes softer. In German, the most unusual fricative fact is the fact that we pronounce our w as one of these little things. Ever heard a German speak English in a heavy accent? You might notice them saying "ve are valking to the vall". This is what you want to reverse-engineer when you learn German. Crazy, right? I'll be teaching you more about it in my videos - good job you'll get to hear my demo along with the explanations!

3) Germans don't all roll the r

Some of us can't even do it at all. We make a sound that's much closer to the French r...it's called an uvular fricative but you don't have to learn the whole phonetic language too. Just listen, try out how you can produce the sound and see if you can hear the difference in the practice words. Here's a video explaining how to do this in detail:

In the coming weeks, Fluent Language is going to run a powerful email series to help you improve your German pronunciation. We'll share specific steps with you that make it easy to develop the perfect German accent. No matter if you're a German beginner or very advanced, you will learn something new.

Of course Southern German dialects such as Franconian and Bavarian are known for their beautifully rolled r, so it isn't true to say that rolled r doesn't appear in German. But it helps to know that this is proof of our very strong regional dialects (you have to read about the Mosel one).

What do you struggle with in German?

Now you know that you're not alone if you find it difficult to say some German words, I would love to hear which ones cause you the biggest problems.

Leave me a comment here and tell me all about the trickiest German words!

I'm very excited about bringing you the course by the end of next month, and would love to keep you up to date. If you want to learn more about speaking German with confidence, check out the German Pronunciation Masterclass. It's a video course focused on one thing: helping you sound AWESOME in German.

The course includes 

• close-up photos and videos of every letter in the German alphabet to help you practice saying them at home
• easy explanations that don't confuse you with a lot of phonetic words or complex diagrams
• interesting examples and a special lecture on dialects to help you understand German speakers from anywhere