City Travel Guides
Home Page > Go back a page
Books : RAPID GERMAN: 200+ essential words and phrases anchored into your long-term memory with great music. Vol. 1. EARWORMS mbt ( Musical Brain Trainer)
Rating: 
- Fantastic!
I thought my days of learning a new language were long gone. I have been listening to this audio CD for 6 months whilst driving, and I have absorbed the entire CD.
I disagree with the other reviewers that the music is boring! This music is deliberate, it goes to the beat of the words that you are learning to, and this is why you are able to recall the sentences easily. You learn a "song" and you just "sing" it back. It's so much easier to remember a song than sentences, same as you can remember stories better than facts. "Facts tell, stories sell" and it's certainly true in this audio CD.
Rating: - Effective and painless
This is a very good tool for learning a fairly broad collection of basic words and phrases in German. I've found it very easy to pick up a reasonable number of words and phrases and be able to stitch them together in different ways simply by listening to this CD while going to work or pottering around the house.
It takes the format of an English-speaking man and a German-speaking woman who repeat a number of phrases several times over a music track (I hesitate to call them "tunes"). Each of the 11 tracks includes a number of words and phrases an a broad topic, such as "Directions" or "Asking for Something." I don't know the science behind it, but I imagine the music is intended to help you relax and the repetition (which is more or less in time to the music) helps fix things in your brain. It's all done in a very gentle style - the music is pretty innocous and the tone of the speakers' voices is soothing and more or less conversational.
The only downside is the quality of the music. I guess that in order to make it relaxing and ensure its appeal to as wide a range of people as possible they've had to make the music as bland as possible. It's not quite as bad as lift muzak, but it does sound something like the soundtrack to a cheap holiday show. Music purists will probably find it unbearable, but the purpose of the CD is to help you learn German rather than break new musical ground, and it fulfils its purpose very well. I've certainly found it much more succesful than the majority of the book/ tape combination packs I've bought for other languages in the past.
Rating: - Superb
Rapid German Volume 1 is superb. Here I am, one week after first listening to it. And I can instantly recall and say loads of different phrases in German. Not just words on their own. Phrases. Complete sentences. It took me years and a trip to Paris to be able to have such confidence in my French. Yet, here I am, able to speak phrases in German. I have tried other language learning products/software. With those products comes all the anxiety of making sure you remember the phrase, get the pronunciation right and remember the word order. This approach to language learning gets rid of all the anxiety, nerves and frustration normally found within the learning process. I have detailed experience in accelerated learning and still, I have not seen anything as good as this product.
Rating:
- A fun and easy way to learn
I have been living in Austria for a short time. I did not speak German at all when I arrived. It has given me the courage to talk, instead of just listerning. It is the most natural way to learn a language. I listern in the car, whilst ironing. It is ausgezeichnet.
Rating: - Excellent CD
My husband and I have been really impressed with this Cd. I've listened to it in the car for the last month and have just returned from a weekend in Germany. I was amazed at how much I could say.
Since then we've also bought the French, Mandarin and Italian one!
- Fantastic!I thought my days of learning a new language were long gone. I have been listening to this audio CD for 6 months whilst driving, and I have absorbed the entire CD.
I disagree with the other reviewers that the music is boring! This music is deliberate, it goes to the beat of the words that you are learning to, and this is why you are able to recall the sentences easily. You learn a "song" and you just "sing" it back. It's so much easier to remember a song than sentences, same as you can remember stories better than facts. "Facts tell, stories sell" and it's certainly true in this audio CD.
Rating:
- Effective and painlessThis is a very good tool for learning a fairly broad collection of basic words and phrases in German. I've found it very easy to pick up a reasonable number of words and phrases and be able to stitch them together in different ways simply by listening to this CD while going to work or pottering around the house.
It takes the format of an English-speaking man and a German-speaking woman who repeat a number of phrases several times over a music track (I hesitate to call them "tunes"). Each of the 11 tracks includes a number of words and phrases an a broad topic, such as "Directions" or "Asking for Something." I don't know the science behind it, but I imagine the music is intended to help you relax and the repetition (which is more or less in time to the music) helps fix things in your brain. It's all done in a very gentle style - the music is pretty innocous and the tone of the speakers' voices is soothing and more or less conversational.
The only downside is the quality of the music. I guess that in order to make it relaxing and ensure its appeal to as wide a range of people as possible they've had to make the music as bland as possible. It's not quite as bad as lift muzak, but it does sound something like the soundtrack to a cheap holiday show. Music purists will probably find it unbearable, but the purpose of the CD is to help you learn German rather than break new musical ground, and it fulfils its purpose very well. I've certainly found it much more succesful than the majority of the book/ tape combination packs I've bought for other languages in the past.
Rating:
- SuperbRapid German Volume 1 is superb. Here I am, one week after first listening to it. And I can instantly recall and say loads of different phrases in German. Not just words on their own. Phrases. Complete sentences. It took me years and a trip to Paris to be able to have such confidence in my French. Yet, here I am, able to speak phrases in German. I have tried other language learning products/software. With those products comes all the anxiety of making sure you remember the phrase, get the pronunciation right and remember the word order. This approach to language learning gets rid of all the anxiety, nerves and frustration normally found within the learning process. I have detailed experience in accelerated learning and still, I have not seen anything as good as this product.
Rating:
- A fun and easy way to learnI have been living in Austria for a short time. I did not speak German at all when I arrived. It has given me the courage to talk, instead of just listerning. It is the most natural way to learn a language. I listern in the car, whilst ironing. It is ausgezeichnet.
Rating:
- Excellent CDMy husband and I have been really impressed with this Cd. I've listened to it in the car for the last month and have just returned from a weekend in Germany. I was amazed at how much I could say.
Since then we've also bought the French, Mandarin and Italian one!