I find this quite curious. There must certainly be differences between schools, particularly with regards to pricing. But on what grounds do you (all in thread) find one school 'better' than another?

Is the courseware? Is the price? Is it the size of the groups (surely they all range from large to individual)? Is it location? Flexibility of course times? Or is it the teacher that you get and your own willingness to learn?

No school out there has a magic wand. Does it not depend on your own personal methods for learning? I know people who have picked up more German through osmosis than others who attend lessons. What about TV, there's a box that will babble High German to you all day long, for the cost of a TV licence.

I'm not knocking schools, I attended one (Swissing, teacher; Anna, brilliant) - I guess I'm trying to find the criteria that make one better than another. I abandoned my books early on, they're all childish, but on the oter hand watching childrens TV will teach a beginner more German than trying to thrash it out over Faust. My teacher was smart enough to realise that I understood the books, but I'm not shy and what I needed was to get as much conversation in in the given time period. So we put the books aside, we would talk, and she would pick out the patterns of my mistakes and strengths.

I think learning a language is functional, I'm going shopping, so... 'how much does this cost?' 'do you have it in another size?' 'I would like...' and so on.