I’ve been meaning to move onto a new language at some point for about a year or so here despite my Spanish not being perfect (it’s actually waned a bit since I’ve been so busy, but I’m back into it now) and I really thought it was going to be French since that’s a language I’ve always been interested in and it’s the next highest in demand for native English speakers to learn after Spanish. However, unexpected circumstances occurred and an interesting opportunity presented itself…
As you know, if you read my article on how to learn vocabulary, I discovered a site called Coursera about a year ago and have since taken several classes through it and been extremely impressed every single time. If you’re not familiar, Coursera offers completely free university level courses online and is the largest such website currently available (and the best, in my opinion). A couple months ago (It’s January 6th, 2015, so this would’ve been around late October last year) I came across a course called ‘Auf Deutsch: Communicating in German Across Cultures’ and it looked so good – coupled with the fact that there were no French courses being offered – that I decided to sign up for it, learn German as my next language, and start a website on it as is my M.O. In preparation for the course, which was due to start in late December at the time, I started learning German from books, various online sources, and via my ‘Telenovela Method’ where I use popular media in the language I’m learning to teach myself.
Regrettably, the course has since (as of this writing) been postponed indefinitely (the start date is just given as “To Be Announced”) however by the time that happened I was already a month and a half deep into German, had purchased the domain and set up WordPress, and in other words just pretty well invested myself into the language…so here we are…German it is then! Hah. The website is called:
Learn German with Andrew – Tips, Lessons, Resources, and More
And I’ve already got my first post up where I concisely review all the various online German dictionaries I could find, pick what I think is the best, and explain why:
Best Online German Dictionary, Why It’s the Best, and 7 Other Good Ones (Runners Up)
I’m very careful to only talk about that which I’m actually qualified to talk about, and I recognize that right now, being just a beginner with a couple months experience in the language, that isn’t all that much. I figured the dictionary post would be a good starting point, and you’ll see many more such posts from me where I’ll share all the useful information and resources that I learn while teaching myself German that I think would be useful to other people interested in learning German. If this is you I really hope you’ll subscribe or otherwise follow it (I’ll tweet all new posts when I put them up via my Twitter account if you prefer that).
Just to be clear, I’m still working on my Spanish and you will still regularly see posts on here about it.
Cheers,
Andrew
