Frustrating

The app is frustrating and getting more so. You can only choose to begin at beginner or intermediate, nowhere in between. You cant skip anything, so for lessons that cover material you already know, you have to go through the whole process of hearing, then spelling (with only the correct letters provided) the words, and then a drill.

Youre told to learn the article as part of the noun, but it is not consistently provided so look it up on your own. This isnt an immersion course, so please provide the articles.

Throughout all the beginner classes you never get a chance to compose or type an entire sentence on your own. In the classroom, I was speaking and writing complete (granted brief) sentences from day one.

Now in the intermediate courses, Im still being spoon-fed letters and words and just selecting word order or plugging in words here and there in dialogues. Then out of nowhere Im asked to write several paragraphs. Thats a bit of a leap. Id rather start with writing individual sentences.

In the intermediate courses, the drills arent broken up as much. As the screen fills, I cant scroll the page up so that I can see what I am typing. The virtual keyboard covers the areas to fill in and I have no way of detecting typos. (Speaking of which, the app has a few which I dont really expect from a product I pay for).

The not being able to see what Im typing is just poor design and a deal breaker for me.

Some of the German speakers over emote, but in general the quality of the speaking is excellent. The teaching methodology isnt as good but it isnt awful, just inflexible, assumes that you know grammatical terms and concepts, and doesnt quite get the job done. Too much time wasted on vocabulary few people need, not enough time on learning essential nouns, verbs, and expressions.

crabBapple8 about Babbel – Learn German