You may not have a huge budget to spend on learning German. You may not have a huge amount of time. The truth is that these two variables are generally inversely proportional when it comes to solving a problem. This means that the more money you can throw at your problem of learning German the faster you are likely to learn the language. Conversely, if you don't have much cash to splash but want to learn the language, the chances are that it will take more time to get to a conversational level.

You may not have a huge budget to spend on learning German. You may not have a huge amount of time. The truth is that these two variables are generally inversely proportional when it comes to solving a problem. This means that the more money you can throw at your problem of learning German the faster you are likely to learn the language. Conversely, if you don't have much cash to splash but want to learn the language, the chances are that it will take more time to get to a conversational level.

Both cases can be represented as follows.

You get a round trip to Germany. During your stay in the country, you take an intensive course to learn the language. After the course you stay on or do a bit of traveling to consolidate and improve you language skills until you reach a satisfactory level. This will cost you a fair amount of money but will get you to a reasonable fluency ans will probably save you a great deal of time.

The other way is to stay at home and simply buy a home study course. You could go for a traditional book and tape/cd method or something more elaborate like a software program that has all sorts of bells and whistles to improve your learning experience. Despite which course you select, you can attain a proficient level of German if you stick with the course.

This method will take longer than living in the country where you are trying to learn the language. but this is hardly surprising as it is virtually like learning part time by comparison to the immersion method.

So how do you learn German quickly and cheaply ? How do you get the best of both worlds - save money and time ? That is the question on everyone's lips. And the simple answer is to live as if you were in Germany or some other German speaking country. In other words bring the immersion method to you.

You may live in the back of beyond and rarely see a person, let alone a German speaking person so how can you immerse yourself in German if this is the case.

This is where books, TV, radio, internet, and DVDs can come in handy. Immerse yourself in the language by listening to German music, watch German movies or TV programs. Leverage the power of the internet to learn German. Go to all the video sharing websites like youtube to find German language videos. You can find all sorts of stuff like interviews, music and documentaries. Some are even subtitled with English.

You can also visit online forums for German-speakers or people keen to learn German/English. Look for podcasts on German language courses. Most will be free provided you have an internet connection. Many authority websites like the BBC have language courses that you can learn from for free.

Try to have whole days dedicated to just German. This is hard if you have a family and kids but it may be easier if you are on your own or even with a partner. If your partner is learning German too then it can actually be a bit of fun. Weekends are easier to devote to learning of the language because you don't have many outside commitments or can limit your commitments.