For the last couple of months I have been attempting to learn German. I’ve really wanted to be able to speak another language for many years now, and recently I got off my backside and begun trying to learn.

German was the obvious choice as I studied it to GCSE in 1995-1996 and I got a grade B at GCSE. I have a two German dictionaries and Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) on my side so I begun to try and improve my German. I started off trying to read some German News websites. I then got a book out of the library (a novel in German Language) “Red Dragon” or “Röte Drache”. What I soon discovered is this wasn’t going to be a walk in the part, oh no, I was only recognising maybe 1 or 2 words per paragraph. Not only that on looking up the words in my dictionary many didn’t appear and I suspected from my German knowledge that is was because of the different forms of verbs and the different cases…

What I consoled myself in was the odd phrase I could spout out which seemed impressive to me. E.g. “Kann ich ihnen helfen?” or “Wie komme ich am bestern zum Bahnhof bitte”, or “Ich habe meine Regenshirm verloren”.

The translations I was doing just didn’t make sense, and entering them into Babel Fish wasn’t much user. Babel Fish helped and gave hints but I still couldn’t even pick up the general gist of what I was reading.

So back to basics, I found myself a basic course on the BBC website that was very good, I learned some basic vocabulary and refreshed on some basic grammar. http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/lj/ I got some basic German courses out of the library, some with CDs or cassettes, but I found I was covering the same ground, I felt I had a reasonable grasp of the basics.

I went back to my German novel, but I didn’t see much of an improvement. And looking up each work in the dictionary (and often not finding it) was becoming very frustrating.

I searched the web for German training courses that would take me from this beginner level through to being able to read these books. Frustratingly I could not find anything on the Internet, all that seems to be offered is this basic courses which all covers the same ground. There doesn’t seem to be anything that takes you to the next level. What I want is some good strategies for improving my vocabulary and grammar….

What I did was find the website http://www.dict.cc this site is a really good German dictionary it allows you to look up any word (whether German or English) and gives you back a list of matching German and English words or phrases. And it tells you whether the words are verbs, prepositions, adverbs, etc. This would often give me a clue to what verb a particular form was I could then look this up in my dictionary.

I then purchased two very good books:

• “Essential German Grammar” publisher Hodder Arnold
• “German Verb Handbook” published by Berlitz

I have been studying the grammar book and that has enabled me to get a basic understanding of how sentences form, the clauses in a sentence and the different types of words. The verb book is very good for looking up verbs (quicker than my dictionary), its useful for when constructing sentences as it lists all the different versions of the verbs.

From this new understanding I was able to translate the first chapter of Red Dragon and I got the general gist of it.

I’m a little frustrated that I’ve got no one to practice with and no feedback on the translations I do and the passages I write. I got a good book of short stories from Penguin which gives the text in German and English and it is interesting to translate the German and if I can get the gist of the sentences and then compare my translations to the English.

I tried getting a German pen pal on the Internet, good luck anyone that tries this. Sadly all I end up getting is poorly written love letters from third world countries requesting my email address, I haven’t yet had a genuine response, so that’s a shame.

What I want to do next is a classroom course, I’ve looked for German A Level courses at night school, but so far I haven’t found any – nowhere in Essex seems to do them. So I’m going to continue to study my grammar and do translations, I will write again once I’ve got a better strategy for becoming fluent.