On the other hand, I can still remember the Marsaud family from the Longman Audio-Visual French course I was taught wayyyy back in 1977. I can't for the life of me remember a single word of French, but I remember the characters. BTW, not all courses take the "family soap" approach. Certainly, the two separate sets of books I've used for German tend to concentrate on situations, and also expose the pupil to a wider section of German culture. For example, we had chapters on Berthold Brecht, on the Weimar Republic, Falco (!) and Herbert Gronemeyer (better known in the UK as the ginger bloke in 'Das Boot', but in Germany a very big pop star). Steve