Can anyone recommend language learning materials? Either software or a book or cd... whatever you used that worked for you.

I've been using Rosette Stone to learn German and it worked out quite well, people don't even notice I'm not German.

It's available for many different languages.

Rosetta Stone: The World's #1 Language-Learning Software. Choose from 30 languages

EDIT: It's software btw.

What did you use to learn English?

Well, I got English classes in school, "some" time ago though.

Maybe that's the reason my English isn't as good as my German. I mean who did like school while being young...

I never knew English was your second language for a long time until you said something. Your English is better than a lot of American's English.

Yeah, it is quite good. You can tell though that he has to work at it. When it's late, and he gets tired, he makes mistakes. That's no where near being a criticism by the way. I'm quite impressed that he knows 3+ languages well enough to converse in them.

Given the education most American students receive at public schools, that's not surprising in any respect.

My uncle swears by Pimsleur, though what makes it so fantastic for learning languages I've yet to learn.

I've found that class environments where the language is given plenty of practical application work best for learning a given language.

Out of curiosity, MRiGnS, what is your native language?

native language = Italian.

second languages = German, French, English, Luxembourgish, little Spanish

I was attending a public school ;P

That's one of the problems when you're not "living" the language.

the only real way i see to learn a language is to move to a county that speaks the language, and go around and try yourself. i am native German speaker, and only learned English once i moved to America. the school didn't teach me anything beyond "My name is..." and so on.

and yes, public schools in America teach even less...

Didn't know that existed. Is it a germanic language?

yes, Luxembourgish language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Luxembourg is not far away from where I live, I work there and do spend some of my free time there.

It's kind of funny they speak that language there, as the laws are in French and media is in German. It wasn't that hard to learn as it is very similar to the German dialect of the Saarland. It's kind of a mix between German and French.

No... Italian one of course.

I'm told that Rosetta Stone is probably one of the best systems available for learning a foreign language. I've been thinking about taking up Either Japanese or Russian myself.

It's pretty pricey, but if it works that well, I guess it'd be worth it. I'm seriously considering learning Japanese myself. Plenty of people to practice on here.

I've spun off the OT posts about language and education in general to their own thread. Find it here.

rosetta stone wins hands down. expensive, but very effective.

I think programme for kids or elementary students is very good material, when you are in intermediate level.

Pimsleur - the only system I used and found it quiet effective for learning how to speak languages. I had to use additional materials for learning how to read and write the languages I have learnt. Not a big difference in prices between Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone systems.