Next Steps in German with Paul Noble

by Paul Noble

Take your German to the next level with Paul's tried and tested method guaranteed to deepen your understanding of the language with his easy-to-follow approach. Next Steps is an intermediate course, for non-beginners, which follows on from the Complete German Beginner's course.

Genres: Language, German Literature, Audiobook

Audible Audio

Published March 7, 2019

Reviews

[Irena Pasvinter · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like to study slowly but thoroughly and yet prefer not to be bothered by grammatical terminology, if you don't mind repeating and revising every little bit of knowledge ad nauseam, you'll love Paul Noble's foreign languages courses, including this "Next Steps in German" course.

I personally find Paul Nobles courses useful but rather boring, and for me boring equals annoying. Spaced repetition is all very well -- it's an excellent methodology that has been proven to be effective. I have no problems with spaced repetition in Pimsleur or in Michel Thomas's audio courses, but Paul Nobles takes it to the whole new level.

It's not just spaced repetition, it's spaced chewing and rechewing. It's as if you take a language steak, put it into a food processor, turn it into a baby food mash, then feed it to your toothless listeners with a teaspoon. And what if they might have grown some teeth along the way? Never mind. Once in a long while they might be allowed taste an unchewed sentence, but you will immediately revert to the teaspoon force-feeding.

So what's not to like? "Practice makes perfect" (to quote the old saying and the name of an excellent language self-study series). Yes, it does. But there's practice when you lay out a foundation and keep building upon it, and then there is Paul Noble's approach: each time you want to add a new brick, you must rebuild the whole row all over again.

Even the new vocabulary is introduced with a peculiar magic formula: the X in German, the X is Y.
For example: the weather in German, the weather is das Wetter; the fever in German, the fever is Fieber . But it's NEVER just "The X in German is Y". Well, perhaps this is the quintessential part of Paul Noble's language teaching methodology (aka his new vocabulary magic spell), and it might do wonders for many listeners, but it only does wonders of irritation for me. I much prefer "The X is Y", and in my opinion "A B C" is "X Y Z" works even better.

All in all, the vocabulary and grammar material in this "Next Steps in German" course is useful and well-organized. The English text is voiced by Paul Noble himself and German sentences by a female German native speaker. If you are not bothered by excessive slowness and repetitiveness, you'll enjoy it. Otherwise... Listening to it while taking care of the household chores helped me to persevere through the boredom.

Read in 2022.

[Michael Ries · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this audiobook; I love how the author would repeatedly start with simple concepts and gradually build them up to create more complex sentence structures. The audiobook works by telling you some new vocabulary or grammar, and then has you immediately put it into practice; there are pauses where you have to reply in German and then a correct response is given. This book is for people of an intermediate German knowledge level; there is a previous audiobook for beginners, which is called “Learn German with Paul Noble for Beginners – Complete Course”. At the end of the audiobook there are lots of revision chapters, where you quickly fly through the whole course again. I’ve not used an audiobook to learn a language before and I must say, I really loved learning German like this!

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having not done the basic course, but my knowledge of the language from high school and duolingo over the past year, I found it fairly easy to keep up with. Some phrases were more difficult than others without knowing how they're spelled, to understand the pronunciation better. And endless repetition. It really did feel endless at times.
I could not have listened to this with less than 1.25 speed. Just too lengthy. So good for getting some basics of the language, but to speak naturally even in basic conversations, you do need more.

[Karin Rosner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a challenging refresher of a lot of grammatical constructions I had forgotten, and some that I am still having trouble with. This series gives the listener confidence to continue and master the A1 basic level. There is much more to learn.

I'm disappointed that he didn't cover a few concepts that are very basic at A1, like the "ein/kein" vs "nicht" pattern However, the patterns he introduced are drilled very efficiently.

[Courtney Coombs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this to brush up on some things. It's very, very slow, which is good for figuring things out, but does make it tedious. I was hoping for more things I didn't already know, so it was somewhat boring for me, but I do think it would be great for people just learning. I have a hard time with auditory learning in general, so I tend to avoid language learning this way, but I can see this one being useful for starting from scratch (Starting with the first one).

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on language.
Paul Noble finds all the English words that are similar in German and teaches you those.
He asks a native speaker to say the sentence. Very repetitive and slow.
I ran it at 1.5 speed, then 1.25 speed as the sentences got more complicated.

I did a couple of years German at school and some Duolingo so didn’t start with his beginners course.

[Amber Hyde · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 Stars.

Still great!

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice intro into B1 level of German. This is just as good as the beginner course. I just wish it was a little longer, there is a lot to cover at the B1 level.

[Phillip Fitzsimmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly, highly recommend this book. the author walks the reader though how the basic German language works.

[Paul Pryce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used the audio version of course as it doesn’t make sense any other way. I learned some new things an refreshed some old. There is a lot of material.