German Pod 101 Review

Saturday, December 2nd

2023 German Lesson Reviews

German Pod 101

• Lots of material, especially for beginners
• Option to slow down the audio
• Compare their audio with your recorded speech
• Variety of vocabulary topics
• Humor-infused
• Limited lifetime free access

Do you remember learning a language in your high school classroom? It was probably more engaging when the teacher added a little fun and humor, or when you got to learn and use vocabulary that was useful to you. Those units with vocabulary you didn't care about seemed to last forever. GermanPod101 recognizes that we want to learn what interests us, so they've designed their curriculum so that you can choose to learn vocabulary and phrases that you think you'll use. You can go in any order of lessons to make that happen. And when you listen to people speak another language, doesn't it seem that they talk quickly, and you wish you could slow them down? GermanPod101 has technology to let you slow down the audio to a pace that's good for you.

Take a quick quiz to determine your level

After a quick quiz, GermanPod101 suggests the level at which you should start. It also offers to replay the questions for you, showing your answers alongside the correct ones, so you can learn from your mistakes.

Hooray for non-boring flashcards!

If you learned a language well in high school by studying those flashcards, you'll like GermanPod101. The flashcards will feel warm like an old blanket, but with newfangled technology. The entire vocabulary list offered by GermanPod101 is over 800 words, but they break it down into workable lists. Whenever there's a word presented that you already know or can easily memorize, just skip it. If you need help pronouncing it, play the short video where a native speaker says it for you, repeats it, and says it slowly so you can both hear and see the details of the word by watching them pronounce.

Easy-to-follow lesson structure

First you will see a written dialog, and you have the option to click on the speaker icon to hear each sentence. You can record yourself saying the same line and listen back to yourself next to the actual audio. You can judge yourself to see how well you did or if there are words you want to work on pronouncing better. GermanPod101 doesn't have speech-recognition technology, where the program analyzes your speech, letting you know what it understood and what you said that was off. (That's a nice feature, but not strictly necessary for effective German lessons.)

Listen and record

After you decide what to work on, you can re-record yourself, again, comparing yourself to the native speaker. After you work with the dialog for as long or short as you'd like, there's a list of vocabulary. You can see the word in both German and English, and also hear the word in German. What's nice, as well as unique, is that you can slow down the audio to half speed to really catch what they say and how. There's also a slide show of the vocabulary words. It's nothing fancy or animated, not much different than the pen/index card method. At the end, there's a quiz, such as true-false questions, to see if you mastered the material. In addition, there are grammar notes and oftentimes a brief cultural or idiomatic lesson.

Learning paths

GermanPod 101 has a suggested curriculum called a learning path. You can start where they suggest and continue along that path. If you prefer to make your own path so to say, that's fine, too. Their suggested learning path doesn't go from basic to slightly more challenging in each lesson, as they know you might choose your own path instead, and they need to make the lessons so you can jump around. It's not a problem, it just might not be what you expect.

Not lacking in the intermediate and advanced lessons

Many online language programs have a mountain of content at the beginner level, and wane as you get into the intermediate, and especially the advanced levels. Not so with GermanPod 101. They have a good quantity at all levels.

Light humor

You can have the dialogs via video or audio. The audio dialog is set up like a podcast. Judith and Chuck present the dialog, and they also banter. Banter in a second language is refreshing. So often, language-learning dialogs are dry and include forced vocabulary and grammar, so they lose the sense of real-life conversation. In real life, people banter, they have fun, and GermanPod 101's dialogs include that.

They gradually reduce your English helps

In the beginning lessons, there is more English to help you. As you get into the intermediate and advanced levels, they use less English to help you along. Don't worry, you should know enough German at that point to not rely heavily on English as a crutch. Remember that if your goal is to have a German conversation with someone, they won't be using a bunch of English to help you, so it's good to have your instruction mostly in German.

Pricing and membership options

With GermanPod 101, you have four membership options:

• Monthly membership: full access to all of the material online at German Pod 101 as well as the Camino app, the vocabulary lessons and podcasts; ability to record grades and monitor progress. When you sign up with the monthly membership, they offer a 7-day trial to give you a taste.
• Lifetime membership: Lifetime access to all of the above in the monthly membership.
• Premium: You'll get over 400 hours of lessons, in-depth explanations for each lesson, dialogs with breakdowns, a list of the top 2,000 German words, an audio dictionary, access to additional apps, quizzes, and study tools, and daily, motivational mini-lessons via the Daily Dose of German, for $10 per month, with a 24-month subscription.
• Premium-plus: includes all of the Premium features, plus a one-on-one instructor, for $23 per month, with a 24-month subscription.

If you're not into buying a membership and would rather have a free option, you can get new audio and video lessons every week, the first three lessons of every pathway or learning track, the German word of the day, the top 100 core German word list, some vocabulary and phrase lists, and access to some of the material on the Camino app.

Membership structure is confusing

The fee structure is one of the complaints we have about GermanPod 101. They mix plans like basic, premium, and premium-plus with monthly and lifetime options. It can be confusing to figure out which program plan couples with which payment plan. Other reviewers have had the same critique about their pricing. The pricing description above is the best we could do at deciphering.

60-day satisfaction guarantee

The free program has many lessons available for you to enjoy. If you choose to purchase a subscription, more content is offered. If you decide that GermanPod 101 isn't what you're looking for, you have 60 days to decide and get your money back.

Downloadable MP3s and PDFs

The MP3s and the PDFs are downloadable so you can learn at any time, not just when you have an internet connection. The written grammar instruction included in the PDFs are super clear and thorough. All this material can be downloaded, and one reviewer suggests that you download whatever you can during the free trial period so you can have perennial access to it.

Level 101 - and not the best conversationally

GermanPod 101 is best at the beginner level. It does progress to the intermediate and advanced levels, but it isn't the best program out there if you want to end up feeling comfortable in a German conversation. It is a traditional course, similar to one you may have had in school, and it's fun. We do like that you can slow down the audio so you can understand and speak German better. If you are looking for something a little different and with newer technology to have fun learning, check out our more highly-rated online German programs.