Complete language confidence without stepping into a classroom
With "Teach Yourself German Complete Course," you can learn the language from the comfort of your own home, at your own pace. This fully revised and updated course introduces you to practical themes, such as making travel arrangements, meeting someone new, shopping, and other every day activities. Includes two 75-minute audio CDs with listening and speaking exercises.
The course is pretty solid in its method: it mixes the basic information needed to survive in Germany (that is, basic phrases, greetings, politeness, buying stuff, culture, and the like) with grammar explanations, following a steady pace, taking care to show one thing at a time. The way they handle vocabulary may not be to everyone's taste though: it starts out very thorough with translating new vocabulary, but become less and less as you progress units. If you're the type that likes a challenge, or was already acquainted with language (for example, through Duolingo, like I was), you may like this, as it makes you try and infer the meaning of the "non-critical" vocabulary in the used texts and audio, or test the vocabulary you already before. Otherwise, you may find this book a bit frustrating.
Please note this is NOT a complete course of German: it does not teach future tense at all, for example. But it is still a good introduction to the language, and it may be supplemented through other sources (the Teach Yourself Series has other books such as Improve Your German, Further German and Enjoy German, for example). If you're looking for a book with a complete course though, you may need to look elsewhere.
The Teach Yourself book series is one of the greatest educational set of books that you can possibly read! The German edition is no different. It takes you through many scenarios, and helps with a great deal of vocabulary. The book does go into grammar, however not too much to bore the reader. One does not need a large amount of grammar to utilize language effectively. This book is a great first step for any learner of the language, and takes you past the A1 ability so that you can be confident while speaking the language with a native.