Good luck with that… I think interacting with a coach/teacher will be less frustrating. Face to face you can see and hear how words are formed. You can’t ask a tape to repeat something slower or tell you what you are doing wrong.

No offense of anything, but unless one has had prior experience learning languages, or is fluent in other languages, one likely will not learn much German via distance learning. Maybe they’ll pick up some vocabulary, but not much beyond that. We Americans are exposed to language far too late in school, with bad results.

One will likely become frustrated with the seemingly incomprehensible grammar and the syntax of the language and give up on learning one of mankind’s greatest creations….”Deutsch.” Only in a 1:1 relationship with another person who speaks German (a teacher, boy/girl friend, etc.) can one learn the guts and the spirit of the language.

The best way is immersion. Immerse yourself in the language. Cultivate German speaking friends and learn how to speak German through osmosis. German 101 courses in community colleges are a good start. German magazines, websites, penpals, etc. I had the advantage of living in Germany, where as a hobby, I translated every car brochure I every came across. Silly, mundane things like that give one one’s mastery.

But to learn German, i.e., to be able to express yourself and to understand it, you have to become intimate with it. One has to live and breathe it, understand its grammar and its grammar in relation to English grammar, question it, translate it, read it, fight with it, watch TV and movies “auf deutsch.” Then, one day you’ll dream in German, and in doing so, you will have crossed the threshold into some command of the language. Your command of the language will be relative to your exposure and understanding of it.

Don’t give up. The reward will be command of a language and insight into a culture of almost limitless depth and often transcendent beauty. Having an appreciation of French and Russian is not a bad idea, either.

Good luck.