German with Ease Assimil Language Learning Program is yet another course to learn German. It combines an audio program with a book that you follow along with. It is a bit different, however. They do a poor job of explaining how the course works, so here’s my explanation.

There are 100 lessons split into two “waves”. In the first wave, lessons 1-49, you are only supposed to “listen, repeat and understand”. Don’t memorize anything or pay too much attention to the grammar rules. Each lesson is only about two minutes long consisting of a short dialog, followed by a few written exercises. Every seventh lesson is a review and explanation lesson.

The second wave starts with lesson 50. In the second wave, you do the lesson as normal.
After you are done, you go back to an earlier lesson. For Lesson 50, the second wave lesson would be Lesson 1. Listen to the earlier lesson. Repeat it out loud. Then cover up the German and translate the English into German.

After you finish Lesson 100, go back through lessons 50 - 100. Listen to the lesson, repeat it, then cover up the German and translate the English into German.

They claim the course takes five months. That’s one lesson per day. If you have some German knowledge, I can’t see how it could hurt to do more than one per day.

The voice quality on the CDs is very good and they are very clear and they speak very slowly.
Perhaps too clear and slow as no one talks like this, but it’s a good starting point.

Author: Hilde Schneider
Pages: 416
ISBN: 270051050X