Balloon, I am an American, and I have recently hired a private tutor for German. I actually have my third lesson Tuesday. I am supplementing this with an Istart app, and YouTube vids and movies on Netflix. I really don't know shit yet, but am hoping to be able to somewhat converse with people when I go back next Christmas. I would say if you have extra money laying around, get a tutor. It is $50 and hour for me and my wife, and she comes to my house. She's not a native speaker, which was kind of a letdown but there are not many that I could find, but she lived in Germany for a few years and taught English at the university level there as well as teaches College German here now. I also posed this question a while back, and asked about German forums where you could read and pick up the language, which DKII pm'ed me. I figure that's what a lot of people do, like all of the paki gimmicks on here. It's easy to pick up slang on a place like this as opposed to speaking like you're writing a letter. Good luck.
