I had some background studying German in college and living there a couple of years courtesy of the US Army. But that was quite a while back. Now, I decided as a hobby to brush up and improve my German skills. This is an excellent tool to assist me in this goal. One interesting thing is that I have a lot of background noise where I live; however, the speech recognition is able to do a very good job except when one of our pet birds squawks. All of the speakers but one speak very clearly and slowly so you can catch the appropriate pronunciation. I provided feedback about one speaker who speaks so softly that it is hard to distinguish sounds, but this is probably something you could easily encounter in speaking to a native German. The application is very good for grammar understanding and building a vocabulary; however, it has been good for my learning to supplement the course with some German short stories at my level to better learn expressions and dialog in different situations and locations. Overall, I am very pleased with the course.