Skip to content

Judgment Day: Learn German Easily – The Final Report

Facebooktwitter

The second Smart Language Learner case study is over.

It was definitely another interesting journey for me.

I knew very little German and have certainly picked up a lot of things on the way.

So, how did it all go?

Read on to find out.

First, a Quick Recap

This is the final report of the case study on the German language course: Learn German Easily.

Please note: the links to the course sales page are affiliate links, which means that, should you purchase, I’ll receive a commission(at no additional cost to you). You can rest assured that the case study is an honest presentation of my results and experiences with this product.

The course claims it can help you learn German without the need to learn the sometimes complicated German grammar. The course creator says that by listening, repeating and answering questions in German, your brain starts to acquire the language step by step, eventually allowing you to think in German.

stopwatchTime Spent

The case study ran from May 22 until August 21.

A three-month period to get a good impression of the value of the course.

I spent fifty-five 40-minute sessions with the course. Which is a total of about 37 hours.

I don’t think it comes as a surprise that I can already reveal that I didn’t manage to reach fluency in German. Of course not. As you should know by now, there’s no such thing as fluency in just 37 hours.

The Results

Because the course is all about repeating short audio units, the majority of the time is spent doing just that: repeating. As I said in an earlier report, I like working with short bits of material and really absorbing it. The downside is that progress through the units is slow.

The course has no fewer than 76 vocabulary lessons. I only got to unit 26.

Even so, I definitely learned quite a bit.

Not really enough to hold simple conversations — I tried, but me and my conversation partner were mixing languages in order to understand each other — but still enough to see that by completing the course I could be able to do that.

plus-smallThe Positive

During the case study, I quickly noticed a few positive things about the course.

Apart from the units and stories I completed, I also took an extensive peek into the stuff I didn’t complete and I found that the course has a lot of depth. It isn’t quickly-thrown together material.

I don’t really understand why the course creator decided to call the main lessons “vocabulary lessons” as you will learn as much grammar as vocabulary. Maybe because they are more focused on vocab, while the stories especially target verb conjugations.

Talking about the stories, they are pretty good. As I said in an earlier report, they may seem somewhat childish, but they are engaging and can be considered as the highlight of the course.

The stories offer Q-and-A audio in the different German tenses. So you have to answer the same questions but each audio file offers them in different tenses. You start with the present, followed by the two past tenses. I really like that, as it’s an easier way to learn the harder past tenses through the easier present tense.

The only potential drawback is that the stories are longer and it takes more time to get through them.

min-smallThe Negative

The course narrative is entertaining but — apart from the stories — working with the course not so much.  It isn’t necessarily worse than other courses, but when it’s advertised as a fun way to learn German you would expect a bit more.

Personally, I’m not too bothered by it. Learning can often be a taxing experience. Yes, there are times when it’s fun. Other times you just want to watch TV or play video games. Just the nature of the game, I guess.

This method is all about repetition of the same material, over and over, until you ostensibly automatically pick up the words and grammar structures.

The cost of this is a bit of boredom sometimes.

Wrapping It Up

Learn German Easily is definitely a useful product to learn German. Of course, a single language course on its own isn’t sufficient to reach fluency in German. You’d need more materials and of course real-life practice.

Taking everything into account, I can see how this course could play a respected part in anyone’s strategy to learn German. Especially if you hate learning grammar the traditional way.

Facebooktwitter

Advice on Language Learning... Straight to Your Inbox.

To get notified when I publish something new, sign up for Smart Language Learner below.

I won’t bribe you with anything, other than saying you’ll be a valuable member of the club. ;-)

Enter your email address below to get started:

Your privacy is important! No Spam. For more info please check our privacy policy here.