An Associate Professor of German and Linguistics at Ithaca College in Upstate New York, Professor Pfrehm enlivens his presentation with learner-friendly features, such as these:
Throughout Learning German: A Journey through Language and Culture, vocabulary and grammar examples appear on-screen in German with translations, allowing you to pause the video to review new material and let it sink in. An especially valuable feature is that the listening-comprehension element—a standard component of most language courses—is “baked in,” meaning that it’s integrated directly into the lessons. As a result, you hear increasingly long extracts of spoken German via the dialogues, stories, skits, and other pieces, always with Professor Pfrehm’s explanations in English before and after.
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A Cultural and Linguistic Journey
Professor Pfrehm is an American who fell in love with the German language in college and has visited German-speaking countries repeatedly ever since. Impressively fluent, he has absorbed the culture with enthusiasm and understanding. And since he remembers the frustrations of being a beginner, he tailors his lessons to anticipate the most frequent pitfalls and trouble spots, doing this with a teaching approach that echoes the exciting experience of learning German in a natural setting.
For example, you start the course with the all-purpose greeting, Guten Tag (Good Day), paying attention to German’s pure u tone, which is unlike the “yew” sound in English. But let’s say you’re in southern Germany or Austria. There, the usual salutation is Grüß Gott, which has ü (u with an umlaut). Professor Pfrehm demonstrates how to move your lips and tongue to make this very distinctive German sound. Accordingly, you proceed through the alphabet, learning useful vocabulary and how to pronounce it like a native speaker. And if you know nothing else, a simple Guten Tag or Grüß Gott is a surefire way to break the ice during your travels in the German-speaking world.
Of course, you go much, much farther in Learning German: A Journey through Language and Culture. You’ll plunge deep into the fascinating grammar and sentence structure of the language, along the way picking up cultural pointers such as these:
30 Lectures
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Average 27 minutes each
1
Willkommen!
2
Definite Articles, Gender, and Nouns
3
Personal Pronouns and the Verb sein
4
Regular Verbs in the Present Tense
5
Indefinite Articles and Numbers to 100
6
Eine Reise nach Wien und Salzburg
7
Asking Questions and Numbers above 100
8
The Nominative and Accusative Cases, and kein-
9
Time in German and Possessive Pronouns
10
Coordinating Conjunctions and der- Words
11
Modal Verbs and More Accusative
12
Eine Reise nach Munchen und Rothenburg ob der Tauber
13
Present Perfect and da- and wo- Compounds
14
Ich hab’ mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren
15
Separable-Prefix Verbs
16
Subordinate and Infinitive Clauses
17
More Infinitive Clauses and the Dative Case
18
Eine Reise nach Zurich und Zermatt
19
Reflexive Verbs and Pronouns
20
More Dative and Subordinating Conjunctions
21
The Simple Past
22
Bauerin Barbel und die drei rotbartigen Zwerge
23
More Simple Past and Relative Pronouns
24
Eine Reise nach Hamburg und Cuxhaven
25
Two-Way Prepositions and Verbs That Use Them
26
Comparative/Superlative and Adjective Endings
27
The Genitive Case and the Passive Voice
28
The Subjunctive Mood
29
Eine Reise nach Wittenberg und Berlin
30
Our Journey: The End or Just the Beginning?
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