Of all the courses produced by the Foreign Service Institute , the FAST series are perhaps the best, in the eyes of this author, because of their structure focusing on practical conversational skills. Yet they strangely remain obscured by more commonly known FSI courses.

The FAST course stands for Familiarization and Short Term training. Unlike their sister Programmatic courses available for Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, or the Basic courses which are the mainstay of the FSI series, are less focused on traditional grammar and sentence structure, and instead seek to teach the student vocabulary and phrases tailored toward faster acquisition.

While this approach does not give as extensive language training as the previously mentioned courses, FAST courses meet the needs of individuals looking for audio based language training with a transcript as well as additional exercises.

Typical situations include greetings, use of courtesy phrases, expressions of time and weather, and associated topics. These lessons illustrate these topics using relevant dialogues, with an emphasis on the key vocabulary related to that topic.

The quality of the audio portion is excellent and the text is clear unlike some of the earlier FSI works. The FSI FAST German Course is certainly up to par for anyone interested in learning practical German quickly

Another course to consider is the Euro Talk, Talk Now German program. Designed for beginners who want to start learning the German language as soon as possible, the course is especially beneficial for those aiming at the basics for business, vacation, or perhaps meeting a friend.