Deutsche Welle's questionnaire on their language courses

Deutsche Welle sent me an email today on a questionnaire of theirs on their language courses. I have only the highest praise for Deutsche Welle and quickly accepted, but the one exception, a course called Radio D, was given exceptionally low marks from me. Radio D is a kind of Frankenstein's monster-like contraption, something seemingly created by a group that decided to combine a set of haphazard ideas into one course that tries to be everything and succeeds at nothing. It reminds me a bit of that opening scene in The Majestic where some unseen Hollywood executives take an otherwise good script and add enough slapdash ideas to the mix that it turns into a monstrosity by the time they are done with it.

I also still have no idea why they ever thought it would be a good idea to introduce regional dialects in a course for utter beginners, plus characters who pepper their speech with English, Spanish, Italian and French. Confusing as hell if you don't know any German, annoying if you do.

But enough with Radio D. Everything else got top marks and I was glad for the chance to give them direct feedback instead of just writing about it here. Deutsche Welle is the only national broadcaster I know of that has more than enough resources to take you from an absolute beginner level to fluent.