What is the best audio course to teach yourself German?

The best audio course to teach yourself German is one that makes you speak, not one that just talks at you. It gives you a phrase in English, waits while you say it in German, then lets you hear a native speaker say it correctly. It teaches the most common phrases first and keeps bringing old ones back. The audio course from 30daysGerman is built exactly like this, and there are a few well-known alternatives worth knowing about too.

What to look for in a German audio course

• It pauses for you. If you only listen, you learn to recognise German. If you answer in the pause, you learn to say it.
• Native German voices. You are copying what you hear, so it had better be right.
• Useful phrases first. "Das ist", "ich habe", "kann ich…?" come up in every conversation. The weather forecast doesn't.
• Old phrases come back. A phrase you heard once is gone by next week. A phrase you've said five times in different combinations stays.
• Short lessons. Five to fifteen minutes, so one fits into a single trip.
• It works with the screen off. You should be able to lock the phone and put it in your pocket.

The well-known options

• Pimsleur is the classic of the "hear it, say it" method. It's thorough and slow-paced, and today it is sold as a subscription.
• Michel Thomas puts you in a room with a teacher and two students and builds sentences step by step. It's good for understanding how German fits together, with less drilling of everyday phrases.
• Language Transfer ("Complete German") is free and uses a similar thinking-out-loud method. It's excellent value, but it's a single recording without a structured app around it.
• Coffee Break German is a friendly podcast. It's more listening than speaking, and works well alongside a course rather than instead of one.

The 30daysGerman audio course

It has 63 lessons and about four and a half hours of audio. Each lesson teaches two or three new phrases, drills them straight away, shows them in a short exchange and then mixes them with everything from earlier lessons. The phrases are ordered by how often they come up in real spoken German, so the ones you'll hear tomorrow come first. It plays with the screen locked, remembers where you stopped, and the introduction is free. You pay once, with no subscription.

How to get the most out of any audio course

Say every answer out loud, even in a quiet voice. Don't skip the pause. Replay a lesson if you missed more than a couple of answers. And do one lesson a day rather than five on Sunday.

If you'd also like to see the words written down, 30daysGerman has an interactive course too: 16 chapters with over 2,000 words and phrases. Start with the audio course, the interactive one, or both. It's your choice.