Customer Reviews
Very good for tourists/visitors - By: Bernard Blundell, 29 Dec 2006 
I did German at school & workedin Stuttgart for four months. However my experiences with the languagein both of those circumstances wasn't really enough for real-world, in-the-street interactions with German people.
The book & CD really do cover the most likely scenarios that you would encounter as a visitor or tourist. The course emphasises that your ability to speak German is not enough - you have to be able to rapidly interpret a spoken answer that contains words you don't know or weren't expecting. It coaxes you into picking out the key words that you do understand.
This was my experience whilst workingin Germany - I could mostly say what I wanted but couldn't always interpret the answer. "Everyday" words like "enough", "always", "exactly" & "perhaps" weren't really taught at school but are frequently used & their use can dramatically affect the meaning of a sentence.
The course's motto is "near enough is good enough" & that's been my experience whilst visiting German. The Germans really seem to appreciate you trying to speak German & are very forgiving when you make the odd mistake.
I'm now looking for a more intermediate course so that I can be more fluent & accurate - suggestions welcome!
Literally instant German! - By: miss r h boyle, 29 Jan 2004 Seriously...from someone who has barely spoken more than 2 wordsin German & who only visited this great country last year I am thouroughly enjoying the book & CD! Ok so i'm only on week 2 but already feel I could happilly begin to use it elsewhere! The clearly laid out text is easy to follow & the flashcards a useful tool! Like with anything it helps to do extra away from the CD & book- whether its post its allover your walls or doing a little extra 'overtime' your sure to pick it up fast with this pack! Don't expect miracles you have to work hard but if this means learning a whole new language then great! Do it! do this one & make sure you get both the book & CD!
I was decieved - By: , 08 Mar 2000 Further to my previous review, I have been forced to admit that this book is a lot cleverer than I gave it credit for. Unlike most course-work books this actually take the time of study into consideration, & if you spend the alloted time, you can actually get through the chapters very easily with time to spare for revision. A big boon is that the dialogues & their translations are placed beside each other & on the one occasion that they spilled onto a new page, they did this together. If only the word lists had been structured better this book would have been the perfect intro to German. The dialogues also have a nice twist at the end. What has Klaus Becker been up to?
A inventive approach to language torpedoed by typesetting - By: , 07 Sep 1999 
OK Class, we want you to start by covering up the words & trying to remember the German Equivalent. Easy? Well it would have been had the lists been organisedin a manner to aid this. This is really the problem with this book. It has high hopes & pretentions & the methods used are possibly first class, but structure like this on the very first exercise is a very good way of causing the sort of stress a book like this aims to avoid. Perseverence is obviously the key, but that can be said of any language book &in that respect Instant German nearly undermines its good intentions. The book itself is witty & certainly takes a diverse approach to learning a foriegn language. But with competion on CD-Roms, stuff like this really should be avoided.
